[openbiblio-dev] challenge idea for open bibliography

Fri Jan 7 11:18:53 UTC 2011

Hi all,

Re-sending my previous email with the attachment content inline, as it
is probably easier to tell what it is! sorry. Any feedback appreciated
- I am working on the web page now.

previous explanation: The JISC open biblio project is planning to
announce a challenge at
the end of next week, to get people to submit ideas and prototypes for
ways to use open bibliographic data. I am currently putting together a
web page on our project blog ( http://openbiblio.net ) which will hold
or link to all the necessary information, and I am hoping for some
comments from list members about our ideas.

Mark

Open Knowledge Foundation
Open Bibliography Challenge ( #openbiblio-challenge )

what?
What can you do with unrestricted access to data? In particular, what
great ideas do
you have for utilising free access to large bibliographic catalogues?
Or even better,
what example prototypes can you come up with in a month? The OKF wants
to find out!
The following bounties are on offer NOW:
- 2 x £50 prizes for great ideas using bibliographic data
- 2 x £500 prizes for prototypes that realise these ideas

why?
The fun and useful things we can do with data are sometimes
constrained less by our technological
capabilities than by our capacity and freedom to work together putting
the data we have to good use.
Data is not always as open as we would like; but one good way to increase the
opportunities to work together successfully is to demonstrate just how
much we can do
with data that is openly available to us, providing proofs of concept
that inspire others.

The openbiblio project recently announced releases by IUCr and the
British Library
of large bibliographic datasets. In addition, the BL dataset
comprising the British
National Bibliography has been uploaded into a triple store with fully
functional search
and API. The local community has already come up with some good ideas
for what could be done
with these data and tools, and the project is working to develop some
of these. However, we
believe that much more could be done by getting other people involved
- after all, the wider
community that uses this material should be ideally placed to offer
new insights.

how?
Join in: Sign up to the OKF ideas incubator; you will then be able to
submit your own ideas and / or solutions,
as well as vote and comment on ideas submitted by others! NOTE you
must TAG your submissions with
the openbiblio-challenge tag so that we know they are relevant to the
competition. The ideas and solutions that generate the
most interest will be shortlisted by the judging panel at the end of
the challenge period, and winners will be chosen
and announced by the panel. We hope that this will generate a good
community interest and
provide opportunies for people to discuss and work together.

Ideas: you do not need to be a techie person to join in with this;
perhaps you use bibliographic data for
your work or other interests; that is not a problem. You can still
participate by submitting an
idea that describes how you think we could utilise either the BL or
IUCr datasets in a novel way.
Your idea could then generate further interest or inspire someone to
create a prototype - a potential
solution to your problem!

Prototypes: Should demonstrate ways in which either the BL or IUCr
datasets could be used in
a novel and beneficial way, either by using the data directly or via
bibliographica. Prototypes can
be ideas and solutions in their own right, or could be developed as
solutions to a separately
submitted idea.

What have others submitted: all submissions should be tagged with
openbiblio-challenge, so you can
search for all the challenge submissions by filtering on this tag at
http://ideas.okfn.org/tags/openbiblio-challenge

when and where?
- launch at PMR event in cambridge on 15th january 2011
- close at Dev8D event in London on 17/18th February 2011

who?
- OKF and biblio working group
- Cambridge University and IUCr
- BL

others
- obd.jisc.ac.uk
- open biblio principles
- open definition
- open cite

technical details
- blog posts
- repo links
- bibliographica and API
- SPARQL info
- ckan data packages
- working examples links

rules and restrictions
- any one individual or group can receive at most one prize. If you
submit both a prize winning
  idea and a prototype solution to that idea, you will receive only
the solution prize; the idea
  prize will cascade to the next best idea.
- ideas and solutions must make use of the BL or IUCr dataset, with or
without using the
  bibliographica interface. Other datasets and sources can be linked / combined.
- all submitted prototypes must be open source and use data in
accordance with the open definition
- ideas or prototypes can be submitted to ideas.okfn.org with links to
external information - for example
  you can make a diagram to support your idea and put it on the web
elsewhere then link to it, or if you
  have other relevant links about your idea, you can include them too.
for prototypes, links to repos or
  prototypes hosted elsewhere are excellent. just remember to include
enough info on your submission to
  allow other people to get a good enough understanding to be able to
comment and vote
- a description of an example use case must be provide with a
prototype - we want to see how the proposed
  solution would benefit someone using the data. Even better - find
someone in your organisation that
  can give a real use case for you to solve, and include them in your
development!
- the commenting and voting mechanisms should not be abused. we hope
that by providing such mechanisms we
  can support a growing community; sabotage and strategic voting will
ruin this prospect, so use them
  responsibly
- the judging panel has final say on all submissions, without
restriction. members of the judging panel
  will be allowed to submit ideas and prototypes but will not be
allowed to claim prizes

outreach
- OKF lists
- dev8d / DevCSI lists
- Semantic web lists
- spacetimecamp lists
- university and public library contact addresses
- RLUK conference mailing list
- Put up web page - http://openbiblio.net/challenge
- hashtag like #openbiblio-challenge