baby steps at linking library data
Alistair wanted to have some data to demonstrate the potential of linked library data, so I quickly converted 10K MARC records (using a slightly modified version of MARC21slim2RDFDC.xsl and rewrote the subjects as lcsh.info URIs using a few lines of pythonā¦all a bit hackish, but it got this particular job done quickly.
The rewriting of subjects is basically a transformation of:
<http://lccn.loc.gov/00009010#manifestation> dc:creator "Rollo, David."; dc:date "c2000." ; dc:description "Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-223) and index." ; dc:identifier "URN:ISBN:0816635463 (alk. paper)", "URN:ISBN:0816635471 (pbk. : alk. paper)", "http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy032/00009010.html" ; dc:language "eng" ; dc:publisher "Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press," ; dc:subject "Anglo-Norman literature", "Benoi?t, de Sainte-More, 12th cent.", "Latin prose literature, Medieval and modern", "Literacy", "Literature and history", "Magic in literature." ; dc:title "Glamorous sorcery : magic and literacy in the High Middle Ages /" ; dc:type "text" .
to:
<http://lccn.loc.gov/00009010#manifestation> dc:creator "Rollo, David." ; dc:date "c2000." ; dc:description "Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-223) and index." ; dc:identifier "URN:ISBN:0816635463 (alk. paper)", "URN:ISBN:0816635471 (pbk. : alk. paper)", "http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy032/00009010.html" ; dc:language "eng" ; dc:publisher "Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press," ; dc:subject <http://lcsh.info/sh85005082#concept>, <http://lcsh.info/sh85077482#concept>, <http://lcsh.info/sh85077565#concept>, <http://lcsh.info/sh85079624#concept>, <http://lcsh.info/sh86008161#concept>, "Benoi?t, de Sainte-More, 12th cent." ; dc:title "Glamorous sorcery : magic and literacy in the High Middle Ages /" ; dc:type "text" .
Clearly there are lots of ways to improve even this simplified description: URIs for entries in the Name Authority File, referencing identifiers as resources rather than string literals (an artifact of the XSLT transform), removing ISBD punctuation, unicode normalization (&cough;), etc.
You may notice I kind of fudged the URI for the book itself using the LCCN service at LC: http://lccn.loc.gov/00009010#manifestation (which does resolve, but doesnāt serve up RDF yet). Iām no FRBR expert so Iām not sure if the use of āmanifestationā in this hash URI makes sense. I just wanted to distinguish between the URI for the description, and the URI for the thing being described. I think itās high time for me to understand FRBR a lot more.
If you prefer diagrams to turtle here is a graph visualization from the w3c rdf validator for the record.