For review: Benefits, Part III - Benefits to Organizations

********* Please forward to appropriate parties and lists ******

The W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group would like a comments and  
suggestions on the group's final report. All comments should be sent  
to the public mailing list: public-lld@w3.org. Posting is allowed to  
non-subscribers. Because each of these mails contains only a small  
section of the report, it is advised to view the section in its context:

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/DraftReportWithTransclusion

********* Benefits, Part III ***********

Benefits to Organizations

By promoting a bottom-up approach to publishing data, Linked Data  
creates an opportunity for cultural organizations (including  
libraries) to improve the value proposition of describing their assets.

The technology itself can help organizations improve their internal  
data curation processes and maintain better links between, for  
instance, digitized objects and their descriptions, and improve data  
publishing process within the organization, even in a context where  
all the data isn?t necessarily open. Cultural organizations will be  
able to make use of mainstream technologies to manage their data.  
(Today's library technology is specific to library data formats,  
leading to the existence of a special Integrated Library Systems  
industry specific to libraries). Library system vendors will benefit  
from the adoption of mainstream technology as it will give them an  
opportunity to broaden their user base.

Linked Data may be a first step toward an "in the cloud" approach to  
managing cultural information -- one which will be more cost-effective  
than individual systems in institutions. This approach will make it  
possible for small institutions or individual projects to be visible  
and connected, with reduced infrastructure costs.

Moreover, in an open data context, these institutions will gain  
greater visibility on the Web, which is where most information seekers  
may be found. The focus on identifiers allows descriptions to be  
tailored to specific communities such as museums, archives, galleries,  
and audiovisual archives. The openness of data is more an opportunity  
than a threat. One benefit may be a clarification of the licensing of  
descriptive metadata towards openness, thus facilitating the reusing  
and sharing of data and improving institutional visibility. Data thus  
exposed will be put to unexpected uses, as in the adage: ?The best  
thing to do to your data will be thought of by somebody else.?

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Thursday, 16 June 2011 00:13:06 UTC