Enhancing Library Discovery with
Linked Open Data

code{4}lib 2018

Steve Meyer, Data Strategist, UW-Madison Libraries

tinyurl.com/c4l18-smeyer

A Little Context

library.wisc.edu/experiments/linked-data

Sample URLs

Catalog Enhanced with Linked Data:
https://search-ld.library.wisc.edu/

• Gertrude Stein on Picasso
• Kind of Blue

Example In Context

Systems in Play

Bibliographic Identity Crawl

VIAF as an Entity Hub

Again. Again. Again.

1. <http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500009666-agent>
2. <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5593>
3. <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pablo_Picasso>

Crawl or Query?

Sample SPARQL

PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX dbo: <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/>

SELECT ?influenced ?influencedGivenName ?influencedSurname ?influencedSameAs
WHERE {
  {
    <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pablo_Picasso> dbo:influenced ?influenced .
  }
  UNION
  {
    ?influenced dbo:influencedBy <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pablo_Picasso> .
  }
  ?influenced foaf:givenName ?influencedGivenName .
  ?influenced foaf:surname ?influencedSurname .
  OPTIONAL {
    ?influenced owl:sameAs ?influencedSameAs .
    FILTER regex(STR(?influencedSameAs), "viaf.org").
  }
}

Crawl vs. Query Comparison

Picasso's influence according to DBpedia

• SPARQL query: 1 HTTP request
• HTTP Crawl: 54 HTTP requests
  • Initial HTTP request for primary subject
  • 1 HTTP request per influence related entity
    Picasso was an influence upon 53 other entities in DBpedia

BibCard

BibCard Core Responsibilities

1. Fetch data that can be cached
2. Instantiate Person object

1) Fetch Cacheable Data

# Given an LCNAF or VIAF URI,
# Resolve the related URIs,
# Query for relevant data points,
# Return a micrograph
data = BibCard.person_data("http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n78086005")

puts data

# <http://viaf.org/viaf/15873> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://schema.org/Person> .
# <http://viaf.org/viaf/15873> <http://schema.org/deathDate> "1973-04-09" .
# <http://viaf.org/viaf/15873> <http://schema.org/sameAs> <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n78086005> .
# ...

Micrograph

A small heterogeneous collection of RDF triples from multiple sources

<http://viaf.org/viaf/85312226> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://schema.org/Person> .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/85312226> <http://schema.org/name> "Tim Berners-Lee"@en .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/85312226> <http://schema.org/birthDate> "1955-06-08" .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/85312226> <http://schema.org/sameAs> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee> .
<http://viaf.org/viaf/85312226> <http://schema.org/sameAs> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee> <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/influencedBy> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Paul_Otlet> .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee> <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/influencedBy> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jon_Postel> .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee> <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/abstract> "Professor Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid-November of that same year.Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.  In 2011 he was named as a member the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation.In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work. In April 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was honoured as the \"Inventor of the World Wide Web\" during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in which he appeared in person, working with a vintage NeXT Computer at the London Olympic Stadium. He tweeted \"This is for everyone\", which instantly was spelled out in LCD lights attached to the chairs of the 80,000 people in the audience." .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Paul_Otlet> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName> "Paul" .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Paul_Otlet> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/surname> "Otlet" .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Paul_Otlet> <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#sameAs> "http://viaf.org/viaf/54277595" .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jon_Postel> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName> "Jon" .
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jon_Postel> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/surname> "Postel" .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/direct/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q73094> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/direct/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5369138> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/statement/q80-166977F2-448C-48BB-B4B1-C14A3714DE82> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/statement/Q80-E892C384-4E42-4E6E-9A3D-6E6FE3201954> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://schema.org/description> "Web developer" .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q80> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/direct/P937> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q42944> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q73094> <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> "The Queen's College" .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/statement/q80-166977F2-448C-48BB-B4B1-C14A3714DE82> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/statement/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q73094> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5369138> <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> "Emanuel School" .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/statement/Q80-E892C384-4E42-4E6E-9A3D-6E6FE3201954> <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/statement/P69> <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5369138> .
<http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q42944> <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> "European Organization for Nuclear Research" .

2) Instantiate Code Objects

Using Spira Objects in View Code

Spira Model Objects

Intended to look similar to Rails ActiveRecord associations

Contact Info

Image Credits