Introduction: hbz and Anette Seiler

Dear All,
 
as a new member of the LLD incubator group I would like to introduce
myself and the institution I work for.
 
Regarding myself: I am a librarian working with and interested in
library technology, cataloging and classification, digitization and
semantic web technology. In 2009 I finished a master thesis at Humboldt
University, Berlin on creating linked data out of museum data [1]. 
 
Regarding MPOW:
I work for the hbz (Hochschulbibliothekszentrum des Landes
Nordrhein-Westfalen) [2] in Cologne, Germany. We are a service center
for libraries in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, but we
also have customers and work with institutions all over Germany and
Austria. A key service is the central database for all academic
libraries in our region. Other services concern portals, search engine
technology, open access publications, digitization and more.
 
Since 2009 we engage ourselves with the Semantic Web. Currently we are
active in the following:
 
- SWIB [3] - Semantic Web in Bibliotheken - annual conference on the
topic Semantic Web in Libraries. We organize the conference together
with the ZBW. Joachim Neubert, my partner in organising the conference
is also a member of the LLD incubator group. The next conference [4]
will take place on 29th-30th November 2010 in Cologne. I am pleased to
see, that many members of this incubator group will take part. Those who
don't: you can still register.
 
- Open Data: we try to nurture an awareness of the importance of
publishing library data as open data. Some of the libraries in our
region take part in our initiative and publish their data - at the
moment in some structured format, not yet in RDF (for developments
regarding this, see below). At the moment we are working with a attorney
in formulating legal guidelines (in the German context) for publishing
data as open data. We are also working closely with the Open Knowledge
Foundation.
 
- Linked Open Data Working Group: we have formed an informal working
group to work on problems in publishing linked open data. Participants
are hbz staff members plus representatives from libraries in the region.
We meet about once a month to discuss our work, challenges we are
experiencing and future developments.
 
- For public discussion, especially with the Linked Open Data Working
Group in the hbz region, we have a wiki[5]. 
 
- We have a platform for publishing linked data, called lobid.org
(lobid = linked open bibliographic data). At the moment we have
published two sets of data:
 
1) Data about (library) organisations, based on the ISIL list and the
MARC Organization Codes. For more information see [6]. For an example
see [7]. To see data for another organisation, just change the ISIL in
the URI. At the moment we are convincing libraries, that it is a good
idea to publish information about their institution in RDFa on their
homepage as it will make a automatic update of the data at lobid.org
possible.
 
2) Bibliographic data: using the bibliographic ontology we published
the bibliographic data of those libraries that released their data as
open data in RDF-Triples. Our aim is to link as much as possible to
other data, e.g. the library organisation data (described above) and the
authority data at the German National Library. We will publish more
information about this in the next few days.
 
Other projects we are working on at the moment:
 
- publishing bibliographic data using the RDA vocabulary. We did a
mapping between MAB2 (German bibliographic format resembling MARC21) to
RDA. We hope, that we can publish the results as soon as possible, as
there are many aspects that need to be discussed in the community.
 
- together with the German National Library we are developing a
identifier platform. The aim is to link different identifiers, e.g.
different URIs, ISBNs, ISSNs, etc for the same resource together, using
owl:sameAs or other properties.
 
- publishing information using dcat [8] on library data, e.g. about a
data dump of library data. Here we are in a very experimental phase.
Many unanswered question still remain.
 
- working on a vocabulary for structural data (e.g. CHAPTER is part of
a BOOK). We need this vocabulary to describe relationships in
digitization and catalogue enrichment data.
 
I am looking forward to working with you all. As I will be on leave
during September, my colleague, Adrian Pohl [9] will represent the hbz.
Adrian is working very hard to establish open data principles and
practices in our region.
 
[1]
http://www.intelligent-information.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Masterarbeit-Blog.pdf
[2] http://www.hbz-nrw.de
[3] http://swib.org
[4] http://swib.org/swib10/
[5] https://wiki1.hbz-nrw.de/display/SEM/Home
[6] https://wiki1.hbz-nrw.de/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1572888
[7] http://lobid.org/organisation/DE-605
[8]
https://wiki1.hbz-nrw.de/display/SEM/Using+dcat+for+Open+Bibliographic+Data
[9] pohl@hbz-nrw.de
 
 

Anette Seiler
Projektkoordination Catalogue Enrichment
Ansprechpartnerin für:
ScanToWeb hosted by hbz
ZVDD
hbz – Hochschulbibliothekszentrum NRW
Postfach 270451
50510 Köln
Tel.: (+49) (0) 221 400 75 - 196
Fax: (+49) (0) 221 400 75 - 169
e-mail : seiler@hbz-nrw.de
www.hbz-nrw.de