Fictional data

The phrase "fictional data" popped into my head recently, largely because of odd connections between a couple of projects I've been working on. It's stuck with me because, if you set aside the literal meaning of "data that doesn't actually exist", there are some interesting aspects to it. For example the phrase could apply to: … Continue reading Fictional data →

Creating an Application Using the British National Bibliography

This is the fourth and final post in a series (1, 2, 3, 4) of providing background and tutorial material about the British National Bibliography. The tutorials were written as part of some freelance work I did for the British Library at the end of 2012. The material was used as input to creating the … Continue reading Creating an Application Using the British National Bibliography →

Accessing the British National Bibliography Using SPARQL

This is the third in a series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) providing background and tutorial material about the British National Bibliography. The tutorials were written as part of some freelance work I did for the British Library at the end of 2012. The material was used as input to creating the new documentation … Continue reading Accessing the British National Bibliography Using SPARQL →

Loading the British National Bibliography into an RDF Database

This is the second in a series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) providing background and tutorial material about the British National Bibliography. The tutorials were written as part of some freelance work I did for the British Library at the end of 2012. The material was used as input to creating the new documentation … Continue reading Loading the British National Bibliography into an RDF Database →

An Introduction to the British National Bibliography

This is the first of a series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) providing background and tutorial material about the British National Bibliography. The tutorials were written as part of some freelance work I did for the British Library at the end of 2012. The material was used as input to creating the new documentation … Continue reading An Introduction to the British National Bibliography →

Building the new Ordnance Survey Linked Data platform

Disclaimer: the following is my own perspective on the build & design of the Ordnance Survey Linked Data platform. I don't presume to speak for the OS and don't have any inside knowledge of their long term plans. Having said that I wanted to share some of the goals we (Julian Higman, Benjamin Nowack and … Continue reading Building the new Ordnance Survey Linked Data platform →

How Do We Attribute Data?

This post is another in my ongoing series of "basic questions about open data", which includes "What is a Dataset?" and "What does a dataset contain?". In this post I want to focus on dataset attribution and in particular questions such as: Why should we attribute data? How are data publishers asking to be attributed? … Continue reading How Do We Attribute Data? →

What Does Your Dataset Contain?

Having explored some ways that we might find related data and services, as well as different definitions of "dataset", I wanted to look at the topic of dataset description and analysis. Specifically, how can we answer the following questions: what kinds of information does this dataset contain? what types of entity are described in this … Continue reading What Does Your Dataset Contain? →

What is a Dataset?

As my last post highlighted, I've been thinking about how we can find and discover datasets and their related APIs and services. I'm thinking of putting together some simple tools to help explore and encourage the kind of linking that my diagram illustrated. There's some related work going on in a few areas which is … Continue reading What is a Dataset? →

Dataset and API Discovery in Linked Data

I've been recently thinking about how applications can discover additional data and relevant APIs in Linked Data. While there's been lots of research done on finding and using (semantic) web services I'm initially interested in supporting the kind of bootstrapping use cases covered by Autodiscovery. We can characterise that use case as helping to answer … Continue reading Dataset and API Discovery in Linked Data →