Use Case Linked Data Service of the German National Library

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Name

Linked Data Service of the German National Library

Owner

Jan Hannemann, j.hannemann(at)d-nb.de

Background and Current Practice

In Germany, authority file data about entities like persons, corporate bodies etc. is collaboratively collected and maintained. This data, as well as the German National Library’s bibliographic data, are relevant to many libraries and other cultural heritage institutions. Conceptual links from this data to several other (national and international) data sources exist, but are not always part of the data representation that is exchanged with other institutions.

Goal

The goal is to publish our library data on the semantic web and make explicit the (semantic) relationships to other data sources. Linked data represents the appropriate conceptual framework.

Target Audience

Users of library data, currently authority file data about people, corporate bodies and subject headings in particular; users of the Semantic Web in general.

Use Case Scenario

Interested users can access the data either through the existing search interface of the library’s web portal or by downloading the data in the form of a database dump.

Application of linked data for the given use case

Linked data provides a suitable framework for publishing the relevant data and linking it to other data sources of interest.

Existing Work (optional)

Related Vocabularies (optional)

See [1].

Problems and Limitations (optional)

Related Use Cases and Unanticipated Uses (optional)

The data offered has been successfully integrated in a variety of projects of other libraries and our own. Most of these are web-based applications for searching and accessing cultural heritage information. The data about persons in particular serves as the basis for semantic linking and as a reference to the original data source (us).

References (optional)

[1] https://wiki.d-nb.de/display/LDS (detailed description of the service)