MADS/RDF Ontology for Review

The Library of Congress is looking for feedback on the MADS/RDF ontology.

A MADS/RDF ontology developed at the Library of Congress is available for a public review period until Jan. 14, 2011. The MADS/RDF (Metadata Authority Description Schema in RDF) vocabulary is a data model for authority and vocabulary data used within the library and information science (LIS) community, which is inclusive of museums, archives, and other cultural institutions. It is presented as an OWL ontology.

Documentation and the ontology are available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/

Based on the MADS/XML schema, MADS/RDF provides a means to record data from the Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) Authorities format in RDF for use in semantic applications and Linked Data projects. MADS/RDF is a knowledge organization system designed for use with controlled values for names (personal, corporate, geographic, etc.), thesauri, taxonomies, subject heading systems, and other controlled value lists. It is closely related to SKOS, the Simple Knowledge Organization System and a widely supported and adopted RDF vocabulary. Unlike SKOS, however, which is very broad in its application, MADS/RDF is designed specifically to support authority data as used by and needed in the LIS community and its technology systems. Given the close relationship between the aim of MADS/RDF and the aim of SKOS, the MADS ontology has been fully mapped to SKOS.

Google Refine

Anyone played with or used Google Refine on their data yet? Since it is part of Google, it is likely to get more use than the MARC tools we use in the library community. Might be good to be aware of what the rest of the world is doing with their data. The description sounds interesting "Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase." I'm going to have to find some time to explore this tool.

Related articles

• Strata Week: Keeping it clean (radar.oreilly.com)
• Announcing Google Refine 2.0, a power tool for data wranglers (google-opensource.blogspot.com)

New NACO Node

Very exciting news SkyRiver is now a NACO node.

The PCC welcomes a new NACO Node* member, SkyRiver Technology Solutions. Name authority records contributed through SkyRiver will carry the prefix "ns." The Library of Congress has been working with all NACO nodes to prepare for the new prefix in LC NACO Authority File (LCNAF) records. The first NACO records from SkyRiver will enter the shared database on November 17, 2010.

SkyRiver will use MARC organization codes as identifiers for PCC partners who contribute through their service. SkyRiver's own records will appear under the MARC code CaEvSKY.

I'll have to investigate pricing. If inexpensive enough this could widen NACO participation. We, and I'd guess some other small research libraries, just can't afford OCLC start-up fees. Yet, we have close contact with authors in our subject areas. Our connections and expertise could be valuable to the community. I'm hoping this new NACO node will be priced so we can share without too much pain.