[open-bibliography] Fwd: FW: OCLC provides downloadable linked data file for the 1 million most widely held works in WorldCat

Wed Aug 15 14:43:32 UTC 2012

*From:*Murphy,Bob [mailto:murphyb at oclc.org]
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 14, 2012 12:34 PM
*To:* Murphy,Bob
*Subject:* OCLC provides downloadable linked data file for the 1 million
most widely held works in WorldCat

*_FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE_*

**

*FOR MORE INFORMATION:*

Bob Murphy +1-614-761-5136

murphyb at oclc.org <mailto:murphyb at oclc.org>

**

*
**OCLC provides downloadable linked data file for the
1 million most widely held works in WorldCat*

//

DUBLIN, Ohio, August 14, 2012—OCLC has published bibliographic linked
data for the most widely held works in WorldCat. This downloadable
file—representing nearly 1.2 million resources—contains approximately 80
million linked data “triples,” the term for the most granular
relationship possible between discrete pieces of information.

“This is an important step for libraries and linked data,” said Richard
Wallis, OCLC Technology Evangelist. “Organizations wishing to develop
linked data services can experiment with this data set before going into
full development. They’ll also be able to stress-test new services using
a very large and important set of up-to-date, linked library data. We
are really interested to see what people will do with this data.”

The linked data is provided as RDF serialization, and uses the
Schema.org ontology as well as library extensions to Schema.org that
OCLC has been working on with members and partners over the last year.
It is being made available, under an ODC-BY data license
<http://www.oclc.org/data/attribution.html>, in a single, 1-gigabyte,
compressed (GZip) file, which can be downloaded from here
<http://purl.oclc.org/dataset/WorldCat/datadumps/WorldCatMostHighlyHeld-2012-05-15.nt.gz>. 

While WorldCat contains bibliographic records for more than 275 million
items, the choice was made to select the most widely held materials for
this release in order to help keep the file at a manageable size. Jeff
Young, the OCLC Research software architect who did much of the modeling
necessary to generate the linked data file, explains, “To make the cut,
a resource had to be held by at least 250 libraries. This seemed to us
to be a good balance between providing widely useful data while making
it reasonably manageable for most uses.”

“OCLC expects that the file will be useful as a source of raw data.
Information about works, authors and publishers can be dissected and
recombined in this format much more easily,” Mr. Young said. “This
provides a great tool for researchers in library science, as well as
those who may want to do cultural, historical, sociological or other
research based on the rich data libraries have been contributing to
WorldCat for decades.”

Mike Teets, OCLC Vice President for Innovation, added, “This release
will make it easier for the wider linked data community—commercial
providers, retail organizations, researchers and scholars—to include
library information in their workflows. It will also make it easier for
libraries to do the same in reverse, connecting their materials back to
the Web through services that people use every day.”

In June 2012, OCLC added Schema.org tags to WorldCat.org records,
improving the way in which library information is represented to search
engines. OCLC has also developed linked data resources for the Dewey
Decimal Classification System <http://dewey.info/>, FAST
<http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/fast/default.htm> (Faceted
Application of Subject Terminology) and the VIAF <http://viaf.org/>
(Virtual International Authority File) service. The release of these 1.2
million records as linked data is the next step in OCLC’s linked data
strategy.

“We are focusing our efforts on getting WorldCat data into accessible
forms for local experimentation and development,” explained Mr. Teets,
“with the objective that this will promote libraries as a trusted hub
for linked data.”

“This really is an effort that requires input from many sources,”
continued Mr. Teets. “Designing and generating linked data in this way
requires many vocabulary and modeling choices, and we want to get as
much input and commentary from the library community as possible.”

To take part in the discussion about library linked data, sign up to
participate in the linked data discussion forum on the OCLC Developer
Network <http://www.oclc.org/developer/groups/linked-data> or send your
thoughts via e-mail to data at oclc.org <mailto:data at oclc.org>.

**

*About OCLC*

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library
service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of
furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs.
More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to
locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials.
Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and
other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic,
abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and
its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the
world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources.
Search WorldCat.org <http://www.worldcat.org/> on the Web. For more
information, visit the OCLC website <http://www.oclc.org/us/en/default.htm>.

Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification, FAST, OCLC, VIAF, WorldCat and
WorldCat.org are trademarks/service

marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service
marks of their respective owners.

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