In the previous post I gave an overview of the JiscEXPO project outputs available so far, and hinted at ones coming soon. In this post I focus more on the themes and issues that are starting to appear. It can be quite difficult to distill these out of the information available, but I have been able to see a few patterns emerging, even though it is still relatively early days.

Archives Hub Record for Sir Ernest Shackleton

Given that linked data is of course, about data, a number of issues have been appearing around this subject. Linked data will generally require some data modeling, and as the Locah project report, this may mean having to change your data model mindset:

“it took me quite a while to get away from the idea of modelling the EAD record, rather than the actual data.”

“I found actually getting a ’starting point’ a bit difficult. I think this is because everything can be a starting point”

There can also be inherent complexities in the existing data that can make the modeling difficult:

“perhaps one of the thorniest [questions] is that arising from one of the fundamental characteristics of the nature of archival description [which is] typically based on a “hierarchical”, “multi-level” approach”

“One consequence of the multi-level approach in archival description practice is a strong sense of the importance of “context” … the descriptions of the “lower level” units should be read and interpreted in the context of the higher levels of description”

“So, there is arguably a (perhaps unavoidable) element of tension between the strongly “contextual” emphasis of EAD and ISAD(G) and the “bounded descriptions” of “Linked Data”.”

The process of transforming and exposing linked data can also highlight ‘dirty’ data, and issues around disambiguation. The MusicNet project mentions problems arising from different naming conventions and input error when looking for records that represent the same musical composer in multiple data sets. They’ve been experimenting with a data alignment tool they developed to help solve these issues, and have put together this YouTube video demo:

Locah have also been finding numerous examples of inconsistencies, such as where the ‘creator’ is ‘Joe Bloggs and others’ rather than just a name for example.

Linkbrainz have noted some scalability challenges that can arise with some linked data:

“[the] problem becomes acute for classical composers like Bach who are credited with tens of thousands recordings … the complete RDF resource description for Bach would be immense. This would cause an unacceptable load on the database server and long wait times for dereferenced URIs.”

They suggest a solution that uses the pagination of the HTML pages for the RDF or RDFa, but note that this is not ideal from a modeling point of view. They also mention that including RDFa in the MusicBrainz HTML pages can increase the page by somewhere between 5% and 30%.

Linkbrainz have also had to contend with some licensing issues:

“… some content in the MusicBrainz database is licensed as by-nc-sa… JISC considers this license incompatible with completely open data. Therefore, this small subset of the MusicBrainz database will likely be omitted from our translation moving forward.”

However, the JiscOpenBib project appears to have sorted out data licensing without too many problems, having recently announced that the British Library is providing bibliographic data under CC0 Public Domain Dedication Licence.

MusicNet have drawn attention to the question of how to sustain the data from the JiscEXPO projects, and the HE sector in general in the longer term, suggesting that we need provision for UK academic data to be hosted on the JANET network under a suitable .ac.uk domain. A hosted data.ac.uk is proposed, possibly JISC funded, to lower the technical and financial barrier to entry to publish RDF. One suggestion is that this could be possible via the data.gov.uk education datastore.

Locah believe there is a significant skills and training gap in the linked data area, noting a lack of domain specific examples, and a lack of helpful information about how to create a data model. They suggest that at the moment, a certain level of expertise is needed to model data and output RDF, and that efforts to address this and make it easier would help the take up of linked data. They do however note that adopting the linked data approach is already paying dividends by making development more user focused:

“the very big plus with this different kind of thinking is that by definition it puts what the user is interested in at the forefront of your thinking”

So we can see the projects are meeting a range of challenges in exposing their linked data. It’s worth noting that many of the difficulties do not uniquely arise from outputting linked data, and in fact, the projects are in many cases simply ‘exposing’ existing problems that have thus far remained hidden behind data silos. It’s good to hear about the positive effects the linked data approach can have on helping to steer development in a more user focused direction. It will be interesting to see how the projects get on and what further themes arise when the demonstration prototypes start to appear this year.

Confidence, and the business of persistent identification

Paul Walk — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:48:10 +0000

The persistent identification of resources is a foundational element of the JISC Information Environment. There are several schemes and technologies available to support this, with one of the most prominently used in the JISC IE being the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Built on the Handle technology, the DOI, under the stewardship of the not-for-profit International DOI Foundation (IDF), adds the important element of collective commitment and management, based on straightforward business interests. DOIs are allocated and managed through Registration Agencies (RAs).

DOI has become somewhat synonymous with scholarly publishing, with most people working in the JISC IE having encountered them in citations for papers in online journals and repositories. However, while publishers continue to play an important role in minting and using DOIs, the use of DOIs to persistently identify datasets produced in research is growing in significance. Last year saw the creation of a new RA - DataCite, which deals with this relatively new and growing area.

There has been much debate over the years about the persistent identification of resources - especially at the technical level. Yet all technical solutions are bound, eventually, to come up against the issue of the persistence, or lack thereof, of organisations of people. In the JISC IE space we can see that publishers come and go, and that journal titles, for example, merge or change ownership from time to time. Universities, seen by many as very persistent organisations (a pre-conception which might, sadly, be tested in the next few years) do, nonetheless, merge and change.

The creation of a body which has as its primary goal the management of the persistence of identifiers - essentially the role of the Registration Agency in DOI - is an approach to addressing this lack of permanence. Within the 'ecosystem' of the RAs, each participant has a vested interest not only in maintaing their own identifiers, but in ensuring that the system as a whole continues to function well. From this point of view, it is in the interests of all participants that the commitment from others is strong which means that the addition of new RAs, such as DataCite, can only be a good thing.

Over the last year or so, IDF has been working with MovieLabs as part of a project to establish the not-for-profit Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR). This initiative includes the establishment of a new Registration Agency for DOIs for all digital resources created for TV and film by a consortium of many of the major producers in the entertainment industry. EIDR is actively seeking more participants, and offers a variety of types of membership.

While the engagement of this new industry may not be directly relevant to many people working in the scope of the JISC IE, the confidence and investment which this industry has placed in the DOI system is significant. This development increases the viability of DOI in general and, as such, should make it a more attractive prospect to those working in the JISC IE and in HE in the UK generally.

Essentially, confidence is an important aspect of persistence - and significant buy-in to DOI from such different sectors, commercial and public, should increase confidence in this solution.

A whitepaper about EIDR is available on request.

An introduction to DOI in a higher education context (set of presentation slides)

jisc: relevant content on this site

JiscEXPO Emerging Themes

Confidence, and the business of persistent identification