Month: April 2012

Melbourne LODLAM event

On April 17th apx 35 people from a range of sectors, including memory organisations, tertiary institutions and government departments gathered at the Melbourne Museum. It was a lively session and in keeping with the focus on “practical and pragmatic applications and opportunities for sectors to work together” concluded with agreement to continue discussions, working on two LODLAM projects: Victorian place names and World War 1.

Lightning talks by Mia Ridge, Peter Neish (Victorian parliamentary Library), Conal Tuohy (HuNI), Helen Morgan (eResearch, University of Melbourne) and Adam Bell (Australian War Memorial) got the ball rolling. A spontaneous Melbourne-San Francisco-Skype-in with Jon Voss and Simon Sherrin started the general discussion.

A detailed write-up from notes taken by myself and Ely Wallis is now up at Culture Victoria.

Big thanks go to Mia Ridge, Ely Wallis and Ingrid Mason for their insights and planning for what will continue to be an active space…  With, we anticipate, more muffins…

Muffin remnants
Melbourne LODLAM muffin remnants

Linked Open Data at Museums and the Web

I’m excited to say that this year’s Museums and the Web features four published papers on Linked Open Data as well as a workshop for getting your hands dirty with data.

My paper, Radically Open Cultural Heritage Data on the Web is kind of a wrap-up of the year’s work promoting LODLAM, examining our goals (which included making Linked Open Data a topic of conversation at global conferences–win!) and methodologies, as well as the road ahead.

Sharing cultural heritage the linked open data way – everyone’s invited
Johan Oomen, Marieke van Erp, Lotte Belice Baltussen, The Netherlands

Using an RDF Data Pipeline to Implement Cross Collection Search
David Henry, USA

Linking European Television Heritage
Nikolaos Simou, Vassilis Tzouvaras, Nasos Drosopoulos, Jean-Pierre EVAIN, Johan Oomen, Marco Rendina, Italy

Carlos Arroyo, Australia (with hat tip to Seth van Hooland and www.freeyourmetadata.org)

Radically Open Cultural Heritage Data at SXSW Interactive 2012

SXSW logoI had the privilege of attending the annual South by South-west Interactive, Film and Music conference (SXSW) a few weeks ago in Austin, Texas.    I was there as part of the ‘Radically Open Cultural Heritage Data on the Web’ Interactive panel session, along with our fellow LODLAMers, Jon Voss, Julie Allinson from the University of York digital library, and Rachel Frick from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). We were well chuffed that Mashable.com picked up on it as one of ’22 SXSW Panels You Can’t Up This Year’.

I’ve written about our session and a few of the other sessions over the UK Discovery blog for those who wanting the full lowdown.

GLAM Rocks! – Libraries, Media & The Semantic Web hosted by the BBC

Lotico BusA few weeks ago, myself and Jon Voss had the pleasure of speaking at the ‘Libraries, Media & The Semantic Web’ event hosted by the BBC Academy, along with folks from the New York Times, the BBC, Google in the guise of Schema.org, and KONA. The event was organised by the Lotico London Semantic Web Group. I’ve written a fairly comprehensive post about the event over on the Linking Lives blog, including videos of all the talks, for those who want to read/hear more.

Melbourne LODLAM event, lightning talks and more

The Melbourne LODLAM event is shaping up. Put a slot in your diary for Tuesday 17th April!

The day will start with a series of lightning talks (5-10 mins) from people active in the field (including Mia Ridge @mia_out) and move to a structured discussion around practical applications in the Victorian and National context (including collaboration around WWI/ANZAC material). More details to come closer to the date.

Lightning talks are being arranged. For those that have projects being worked on, please get in touch with Eleanor Whitworth @elewhitworth – the more the merrier!

Hyro graffiti
Hyro graffiti

Session details are: 9.30am – 1.00pm (lunch provided)
Date: Tuesday 17th April
Place: Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens

RSVP: 10th April: Eleanor Whitworth, Senior Arts Officer/Content Curator, Culture Victoria (Monday – Wednesday)
Email: eleanor[dot]whitworth[at]dpc[dot]vic[dot]gov[dot]au or @elewhitworth