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Abstract
Library data has been designed to be read and interpreted by the librarians and users who are the end users of the catalog. Today's data, however, needs to be managed and interpreted by computers and integrated into myriad applications that are part of the growing web of services on the Internet. In particular, the Semantic Web technologies being developed put a new emphasis on linking data from disparate sources. To be part of the linked data network, the library world needs to transform its catalog records into true data.
In many respects, the most important question for the library world in examining semantic web technologies is whether librarians can successfully transform their expertise in working with metadata into expertise in working with ontologies or models of knowledge. Whereas traditional library metadata has always been focused on helping humans find and make use of information, semantic web ontologies are focused on helping machines find and make use of information. Traditional library metadata is meant to be seen and acted on by humans, and as such has always been an uncomfortable match with relational database technology. Semantic web ontologies, in contrast, are meant to make metadata meaningful and actionable for machines. An ontology is thus a sort of computer program, and the effort of making an RDF schema is the first step of telling a computer how to process a type of information.
-Eric Hellman1
As is always the case in a time of transition, it may be possible to see where we have come from, but it is very difficult perhaps impossible, to know where we are going. This report should thus be accepted as one moment in the path of moving target This is how it looks to me today, and tomorrow is a different story.
When I talk about library data and the semantic web, people ask me if I really think that the Semantic Web (note the case change) and RDF are "the answer." I don't In fact I have no more idea of what "the answer" is or could be than most people. I do think that the move toward an open declaration of vocabularies and the freeing of data from databases and even from records is key to expanding...