This is an experimental service that makes the Library of Congress Subject Headings available as linked-data using the SKOS vocabulary. The goal of lcsh.info is to encourage experimentation and use of LCSH on the web with the hopes of informing a similar effort at the Library of Congress to make a continually updated version available. More information about the Linked Data effort can be found on the W3C Wiki.
Following the principles laid out in Cool URIs for the Semantic Web you can reference LCSH concepts using a URI that contains the Library of Congress Control Number for the authority record: http://lcsh.info/{lccn}#concept. The server uses content negotiation to determine what representation of the concept to send: application/rdf+xml, text/n3, application/json, and otherwise application/xhtml+xml.
You can download the entire dataset (2,441,494 triples), search across the concept scheme, or try out the SPARQL endpoint. Otherwise, here are a couple high level concepts, a couple fun concepts, and links to some linked data viewers to get you (or your bot) started on your travels:
| Concept | Concept URI | Linked Data Viewers |
|---|---|---|
| Science | http://lcsh.info/sh85118553#concept | OpenLink Disco Zitgist |
| Humanities | http://lcsh.info/sh85062913#concept | OpenLink Disco Zitgist |
| Mathematics | http://lcsh.info/sh85082139#concept | OpenLink Disco Zitgist |
| Cataloging | http://lcsh.info/sh85020816#concept | OpenLink Disco Zitgist |
| World Wide Web | http://lcsh.info/sh95000541#concept | OpenLink Disco Zitgist |
The code used to convert MARCXML authority data to RDF, and provide this web service is available at http://inkdroid.org/bzr/lcsh using Bazaar. Questions, comments, criticisms to ehs at pobox dot com