LD4L (Linked Data for Libraries)

To follow up on Emily’s post on the Linked Data Exploratorium, the Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L) project is a joint endeavor between Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford University libraries that seeks to dramatically improve the experience of users in information/data discovery. These three institutions have developed unique, local projects that work with linked data and saw the power of employing linked open data (in this case, library data) within the semantic web. This collaborative project has enabled them to work toward the ultimate goal of public access to a collection of software, ontologies, and user-facing services that are “capable of representing, discovering, and integrating human knowledge currently outside the confines of traditional library catalogs, web pages, and online information services.” As we look towards a replacement for MARC, be it BIBFRAME or otherwise, having a toolkit that can manipulate current descriptive formats to make resources more accessible should allow us to sleep a little better.

LD4L was funded in 2014 on a two year grant from the Mellon Foundation. Recently, two additional related projects have received funding: LD4L Labs project (headed by Cornell) and the LD4P project (headed by Stanford). It will be exciting to watch these projects and see where they can take linked data libraries over the next two years.