From RDA
to RDF
Joan Milligan
University of Dayton Libraries
RDA: Resource Description and Access
RDF: Resource Description Framework
RDA replaces AACR2
RDF replaces MARC
RDA-RDF Connection
“The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), as
the premier cataloging cooperative, is very
interested in paving the way for its institutional
membership to engage in linked data creation,
manipulation, and use. This pursuit is meaningful
for PCC because the full functionality of RDA—
Resource Description & Access — is dependent on
a framework that better accommodates linking
data elements and that has the potential to take
advantage of the Semantic Web”—PCC, June 2014
Today
•From MARC to LD
•URIs: from documents to data
•Linked Data tools
•BIBFRAME and BiblioGraph (RDF)
1
From MARC to LOD
What’s wrong with MARC?
Sculpture of Marc Antony,
Budapest Museum of Fine Art
Limitations of MARC
• MARC is focused on
describing
manifestations/items
• MARC records can only be
read by specific software
• Not discoverable by
internet search engines
How do we make our data into a form readable on
the web?
Vip-effect.com
Europeana: Linked Open Data
Boticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1486, Uffici
2
URIs: from documents to data
Documents vs. data
HTML displays “strings of letters”
<h1></h1>
<p></p>
Strings of characters: A computer doesn’t know what these mean
Sometimes we don’t know what characters
mean either. Example: What does this mean?
• 农
• крестьянин
• αγρότες
• ‫فالح‬
• peasants
Relationship tags
change random strings of
characters to readable data.
LC’s URI for
peasants
<li rel="madsrdf:hasBroaderAuthority skos:broader"><div about=
"http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85115926" typeof="madsrdf:Topic
skos:Concept madsrdf:Authority"><img src= "/static/images/flags/png
/us.png“ alt="us: "/> <a href= "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/
sh85115926" property= "madsrdf:authoritativeLabel skos:prefLabel"
xml:lang="en">Rural population</a></div></li>
<li rel="madsrdf:hasNarrowerAuthority skos:narrower"><div about=
"http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh91003252" typeof="madsrdf:Topic
skos:Concept madsrdf:Authority"><img src="/static/images/flags/png/
us.png" alt="us: "/> http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh91003252"
property=<a href="madsrdf:authoritativeLabel skos:prefLabel"
xml:lang="en">Women peasants</a></div></li>
The computer can “understand”
peasants
paysans
‫איכר‬
농부
ૂ
ખેડત
boeren
campesinos
Diego Rivera, Charger flores, 1935, San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
URI: Uniform Resource Identifier
Example: id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2012001552
What’s the difference between a
URI and a URL?
URI  represents a person (or concept, etc.)
URL  a document about that person, or a photo, etc.
Uniform / Universal / Unique
id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85099061
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975
Pieter the Younger Breughel, Peasant Wedding
Dance, 1607, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts,
Brussels
Artist unknown, Joan of Arc miniature, Archives
nationales, France
A famous peasant in the LC NAF
Different approaches
MARC
RDF
978-0312227302
3
Linked Data tools
How do you make URIs?
First, gather all the information you can about a subject.
photo_28768969_old-farmer-lady-collecting-potatoes-in-a-thatched-basket-in-her-garden.html
Reconciling vocabularies
Controlled vocabularies
A&AT
<people in science-related occupations>
... <people in agriculture or natural
resource occupations>
...... <people in agriculture>
..........herdsmen
.............. shepherds
LCSH
Shepherds
Broader Terms: Herders
Narrower Terms: Women shepherds
Related Terms: Sheep; Sheep ranchers
Closely Matching Concepts from Other
Schemes: Bergers; Schäfer
Shepherd and Shepherdess
Winslow Homer, 1836-1910
• Written by many people over many years, so
cannot have the rigor of a formal ontology
• Don’t match up well
Ontologies
• Very structured hierarchy – Rules (if, then) – Formal logic – Theory
• “After a few years the semantic web became synonymous with
complexity and adoption was slow…. Publishing data and writing
applications was too complex for non-experts, so only a few datasets
were available” – Linked Date for Libraries, Archives and Museums by Seth van
Hooland and Ruben Verborgh.
Controlled “vocabularies”
• VIAF – Virtual International Authority File
• LC NAF – Library of Congress Name Authority File
• ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier
• ORCiD – Researchers self-register for an ID
• DDC – Dewey Decimal
• AAT – Art & Architecture Thesaurus
Shepherd and Shepherdess
Winslow Homer, 1836-1910
How can we establish links between
objects belonging to different
collections, which have been indexed
and cataloged with the help of
different vocabularies?
The technique of vocabulary mapping
or alignment attempts to create
connections between existing
vocabularies.
—Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and
Museums by Seth van Hooland and Ruben
Verborgh
Sharing Vocabularies: SKOS
SKOS is a standard using RDF:
prefLabel
broader
narrower
related
closeMatch
exactMatch
sh85121349 a skos : Concept ;
skos : inScheme http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects;
skos : prefLabel “Shepherds”@en;
skos : broader :sh85001441, :sh85007461, :sh85007805
skos : narrower :sh85036235 :sh85039437
skos : closeMatch http://d-nb.info/gnd/41685855-3
skos : exactMatch http://stitch.cs.vu.nl/vocabularies/
Rameau/ark:/ 12148/cb119361753;
<li rel="madsrdf:hasBroaderAuthority skos:broader"><div about=
"http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85115926" typeof="madsrdf:Topic
skos:Concept madsrdf:Authority"><img src= "/static/images/flags/png
/us.png“ alt="us: "/> <a href= "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/
sh85115926" property= "madsrdf:authoritativeLabel skos:prefLabel"
xml:lang="en">Rural population</a></div></li>
<li rel="madsrdf:hasNarrowerAuthority skos:narrower"><div about=
"http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh91003252" typeof="madsrdf:Topic
skos:Concept madsrdf:Authority"><img src="/static/images/flags/png/
us.png" alt="us: "/> http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh91003252"
property=<a href="madsrdf:authoritativeLabel skos:prefLabel"
xml:lang="en">Women peasants</a></div></li>
lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov
505+ Linked Open Vocabularies
How do these URI’s get put together?
978-0312227302
With RDF.
What is RDF?
• Set of metadata specifications
• A metadata model
• A Framework
RDF Triplets
Subject – Predicate – Object
RDF Triples
4
Looking at BIBFRAME and BiblioGraph
Picnic, Mary Mendell, ca. 2010, private collection.
Two RDF models
• Library of Congress
OCLC
Multiple libraries involved in studies
Common Ground: Exploring Compatibilities
Between the Linked Data Models of the
Library of Congress and OCLC
by Carol Jean Godby (OCLC) and Ray Denenberg (Library of Congress),
January 2015.
BIBFRAME – Library of Congress
• “LC is developing BIBFRAME for data exchange in the linked data
environment, taking into account existing formats for resource
description, as well as interactions with search engines; it must be
designed as a persistent standard for library resource description”—
Common Ground by Carol Jean Godby (OCLC) and Ray Denenberg
(Library of Congress), January 2015.
• BIBFRAME is a framework created from scratch
Examples of BIBFRAME properties & classes
bf:isbn13
bf:title
bf:hasDerivative
bf:hasDescription
bf:genre
bf:place
bf:classificationLcc
bf:Monograph
bf:HeldItem
bf:Language
bf:Person
bf:Audio
bf:CoverArt
bf:Work
BiblioGraph - OCLC
• “By contrast, the linked data models being developed at OCLC
optimize descriptions of library resources for discovery on the Web
beyond libraries, using the vocabulary designed for consumption by
general-purpose search engines.”
• BiblioGraph uses the Schema.org framework, sponsored by Google,
Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Different approaches
• BIBFRAME
• Deep
• “[L]ong-term curation by libraries and other cultural heritage organizations”
• BiblioGraph
• Broad but shallow
• “[B]ibliographic resource description that [is] understandable and potentially
useful outside their narrow communities of practice”
—Common Ground, Godby and Denenberg
You are probably thinking:
Yes. Through the Libhub Initiative, many
libraries, including the Denver Public
Library, have had their records uploaded
to the internet in BIBFRAME form.
coloradocreates.com
Are there any examples online?
Libhub Initiative
This DPL bib record was
converted into BIBFRAME
and is now discoverable on
the web.
“ALCTS webinar: From
MARC to BIBFRAME: an
introduction”—Victoria
Miller, Zepheria, & Carolyn
Hansen, UCincinnati, May
13, 2015
(Part of) URI for Ireland:
id.loc.gov/vocabulary/geographicAreas/e-ie.html
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/geographicAreas/e-ie">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en" xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#">
Ireland</skos:prefLabel>
<skosxl:altLabel xmlns:skosxl="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos-xl#">
<rdf:Description><rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos-xl#Label"/>
<skosxl:literalFormxml:lang="en">Eire</skosxl:literalForm></rdf:Description>
</skosxl:altLabel>
<skosxl:altLabel xmlns:skosxl="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos-xl#">
<rdf:Description><rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skosxl#Label"/><skosxl:literalForm xml:lang="en">Irish Republic </skosxl:literalForm>
</rdf:Description> </skosxl:altLabel>
…etc.
(Part of)BIBFRAME for book about Ireland
<bf:Work xmlns:bf="http://bibframe.org/vocab/"
<bf:authorizedAccessPoint>McRedmond, Louis. Modern Irish lives
:dictionary of 20th-century Irish Biography </bf:authorizedAccessPoint>
<bf:workTitle rdf:resource="http://bibframe.org/resources/sample-lc2/1216208title31"/>
<bf:contributor rdf:resource="http://bibframe.org/resources/sample-lc2/1216208person32"/>
<bf:language rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/languages/eng"/>
<bf:subject rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/geographicAreas/eie"/>
Questions?
50 year old Rwagasole
Damascene holds his son
and some corn cobs from
his field... Dieter Telemans
Nyamagabe, Rwanda,
2010