The LOCAH Linked Data Project

The JISC-funded LOCAH (Linked Open Copac and Archives Hub) Project recently announced the release of http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk, its first Linked Data set. The project is making records from the Mimas-based Archives Hub and Copac services available as Linked Data. The Archives Hub is an aggregation of archival metadata from repositories across the UK; Copac provides access to the merged library catalogues of libraries throughout the UK, including all national libraries. The team has been working hard since the beginning of the project on modelling the complex archival data and transforming it into RDF Linked Data. This is now available in a variety of forms via the data.archiveshub.ac.uk home page. The data and content are licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 licence.

The team is also working on a visualisation prototype that provides an example of how it links the Hub Data with other Linked Data sources on the Web using its enhanced data set to provide a useful graphical resource for researchers.

The project encourages feedback on the data, the model and any other aspect of data.archiveshub.ac.uk. Please leave a comment on our blog or please make direct contact with us, as you prefer.

UKOLN and Mimas are working together on LOCAH in partnership with Eduserv, Talis and OCLC, all leading experts within their fields. Members of the team are giving a number of presentations and talks at various events in the coming weeks, including European Library Automation Group Conference 2011, Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit and Open Repositories 2011. More information is available on the blog.