Re: FAST released as linked data

It's certainly a bit confusing that the "RDF view" is actually a pure 
HTML rendition of the information contained in the RDF, and that when 
you click on the link to the right you still seem just to get an HTML 
page.  Why not merge the two links into one (equivalent to the 
right-hand link)?

Having said that, the actual RDF delivery according to Linked Data 
principles is impeccable: it does the redirection thingy and back comes 
your RDF.  (I've written a little "URL forwarder" CGI program which can 
add the Accept: application/rdf+xml header to the request while 
forwarding it: this lets me grab Linked Data RDF from within XSLT 
transforms using the standard document() function. Worked first time 
with these URLs.)

It would be really helpful if there were a machine-friendly version of 
the search interface: API, structured "search" URLs or SPARQL 
end-point.  Just something to let machines ask "what resources relate to 
'Illinois'?".

Richard

On 15/12/2011 02:55, Karen Coyle wrote:
> The faceted version of LCSH that was a joint project of OCLC and LC 
> (FAST) has been released as linked data. The LD solution is one I 
> haven't seen before and I'm hoping some list members can help me 
> understand it. Here is a link to a page that is a response to clicking 
> on "RDF/XML":
>
> http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/862730/
>
> The instructions say to view source to see the RDF. I did that, but 
> now I would really like someone to tell me what I'm looking at... is 
> that RDFa?
>
> I believe that the entries in the FAST vocabulary are more likely to 
> find matches "in the cloud" than those in LCSH because the FAST 
> entries are less complex. Most of them are single terms rather than a 
> two or more dash-dashed entries. (The remaining dash-dashed ones are 
> often geographic headings with, for example, a state and a city or a 
> country and a city.) Already FAST is linked to GeoNames, which is a 
> good step. (I thought LCSH was also linked to GeoNames but I can't 
> find an example to confirm that.)
>
> Here's a geographic entry:
>
> http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/1205143/
>
> kc
>

-- 
*Richard Light*