Details, links and interface

ELAG 2014
The LIBRIS upgrade
Niklas Lindström, Lina Westerling, Swedish National Libraray

Abstract: Starting in earnest in 2012, The Swedish National Library (Kungliga Biblioteket – KB) begun the development of a new infrastructure and system, based at its core on Linked Data. It directly employs the linked entity description model represented by RDF, and has the capacity to mesh with other linked data on the web, through minimal engineering efforts.

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Need for a modern produce, a platform for data for making is searchable and describing, a method for mapping exisitng data to contemporary models of description and a user interface for editing (cataloguing, curating, linking). Web-based cataloguing tool.

The platform is Open Source and works with all data formats, including RDF etc. Limits of MARC, especially hard to find things and to define things. RDF is not a solution but a means to help solve this problem, because of how it describes data. The tool is a simple expression independent of formats, terms etc. Transform of MARC in JSON-LD. Use of prefixes and uri's.

The Utter Denormalisation of turning JSON-LD back into MARC. This is a temporary measure, because needs to integrate with union catalogues, extract data etc. But the idea is that there's a new interface and new formats.

The design is intiuitve, simple, inspiring, user centered. See beta at devkat.libris.kb.se (test/test) It is quite similar to an end-user search tool. It is based on linked data. Needs to handle all data. Normalising the catalogue will not be able to cover everything.

Doing the mapping is challenging, the data expressed in MARC isn't always normalised so it's not clear if the description is an expression or a manifestation. MARC is very structured but sometimes meaningless, there's lots of convolusion in the specificity, the perspective of different domaines are not well coordinated etc. But there are possibilities of capturing the specificity, better coordinating the vocabularies and so on. Then by linking to external resources we add more value to our resources. Use of SPARQL to help in the linking of sources. Value can also be added to link to internal data.

Another of the main challenges is convincing people, especially cataloguers, so we need to be open.