In 2001, Tim Berners-Lee introduced the concept of the “Semantic Web”. This was a vision of the Web where structured data, rather than text or images, were made available for reuse by other organisations. More recently, the phrase “linked data” or “linked open data” has been used for the same concept. In Review of Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums: How to Clean, Link and Publish Your Metadata, van Hooland and Verborgh present a detailed handbook covering modelling-, cleaning-, reconciling-, enriching- and publishing-linked data in a library, archive or museum context.
The first important point the authors make is that the term “linked data” does not have a precise definition or represents a single technology. Instead, they use the term to mean a set of best practices for publishing structured data on the Web. The book then discusses best practices for the sequence of activities required to publish structured data on the Web. Chapters 2 through 6 each begin with learning outcomes that identify the main topics and finish with a case study and exercises. This structure is practical, and by making the data for the case studies available for downloading at: http://freeyourmetadata.org, the authors provide the book’s readers with an excellent opportunity to develop linked data skills while reading. One of the sections I read with considerable interest was “Enabling interconnection” in Chapter 4, Reconciling. This covered techniques used to map concepts in different controlled vocabularies, such as Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Getty Institute’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus. The next chapter, Enriching, discusses the potential of named entity recognition to extract names of people, organisations, places, events and concepts from unstructured text.
Overall, the book is a comprehensive guide to the issues that arise when publishing structured data on the Web. However, there is no discussion about licensing linked data, which is disappointing because this is a key decision for organisations wishing to make their structured data available for sharing and reuse. The associated website provides additional content to extend the book’s coverage, so perhaps the authors should consider adding a section on licensing to it. The book has a glossary and an index. The writing style is clear and easy to follow, and the use of case studies makes it easy for the reader to understand the practical aspects of the topics discussed. This book is recommended for anyone wishing to learn more about the basics of linked data, particularly in a library, archives or museum context.
