The Semantic Web is one of those concepts that most of us have heard of but few of us understand, let alone know how to use it to improve provision of information to our clients. In any case, it is something best left to the technical experts amongst us. This short book aims to dispel that idea.
It begins by outlining three main goals: to introduce readers to new ways of searching using a range of social media and hidden web content; to help them understand the concepts behind the Semantic Web and its importance in the development of new web resources; and to give practical experience with some simple techniques and tools that librarians can use now to expose their resources to the developing web.
The standardised structure of the series means that some of the chapters are very brief, which tends to give an unbalanced view of the structure of the work. In the three volumes I have seen, the chapters on Planning, Social Mechanics, Marketing, Best Practices, Metrics, and Developing Trends are often only four to five pages long while most of the content is in the Introduction, Types of Solutions Available, and Implementation.
The Introduction starts by outlining some of the limitations of current search engines in searching the web, limitations well known to most librarians. The key to a more “semantic” or meaningful web is improved metadata, and the role of the new cataloguing code, Resource Description and Access (RDA) in enabling this is explained clearly.
The next chapter describes some currently available solutions to these limitations including the use of location based searching, real-time searching, visualisation, multimedia searching, social searching and the increasing ability of standard searching tools to take advantage of semantic metadata.
The Implementation chapter, as with other volumes in this series, comprises about half the content and is where the reader is urged to start investigating and implementing some practical applications of the technology. Most of these tools require little technical knowledge. Some examples focus on new tools or more advanced ways of using well established search and social media tools to track and start trends using social media, to track reputation using social search, to locate “hidden” online content or to find content that can legally be reused. Tools covered here include Twitter, Google Scholar, Blogs, Google News and Timelines, WolframAlpha as well as a range of sources of Creative Commons licensed content.
The other side of the process is enriching metadata to make your own content more findable. Many libraries and individuals use Flickr to share images from their collections and the reader is guided through a range of options for adding and enhancing metadata on these images. Google's Rich Snippets provide a way of adding semantics to data on a web page. Unlike most other activities described, this requires some familiarity with HTML coding and access to a web server. The example shows how to use the hCard microformat to enhance the machine-readability of a simple staff directory by designating particular elements as “name”, “role”, “organisation”, “street address”, “email”, etc. This facilitates import of contact details directly to an address book, or allows a suitable search engine to identify, for example, the names and email addresses of people with a particular role in a range of organisations. The final example explores the use of linked data by encouraging librarians to contribute to the US Civil War Data 150 project. Although some steps such as exporting metadata from a suitable collection and submitting it to the CWD150 collection seem straightforward, the process of linking the data and making it available is more complex than can be easily explained in the few pages devoted to it. However it provides enough to get started. The explosion in interest in linked data in recent years means that many countries have linked data projects to which librarians could contribute.
The biggest problem with a book like this is that the speed of development of the Semantic Web is such that aspects of the book are inevitably out of date before it is published. For example, in late 2013 Google's preferred method for adding Rich Snippets is using Schema.org rather than microformats, so an organisation considering large scale semanticisation of their web site would be well-advised to investigate thoroughly the various markup formats. However working through the different examples is likely to give the reader a better understanding of the processes involved and hence of the potential of the Semantic Web.
Overall, this book gives an excellent introduction to the Semantic Web and some of the newer search tools. In particular the practical examples encourage librarians of all levels of technical ability to investigate new search tools and enhance their collections with improved metadata.
