What are the objectives of linked open data for libraries, archives and museums? From the perspective of libraries, the objectives of providing metadata have traditionally been “finding, identifying, selecting and obtaining”; within other domains, I am sure that the same kinds of principles apply, however, there seems to be something lacking in these objectives seen from the context of the semantic web. What are the new objectives when creating semantic metadata? At NTNU, we think that contextualizing (what contexts surround the item, its facets), comparing, sharing are important, but there is surely more. (Hats off to Knut Hegna of the University of Oslo for the spark for these thoughts.)
What are the opportunities that arise from moving the technological and conceptual platform away from domain-specific to generic RDF; the move away from “understandable by an expert” to “useful and usable by everyone”? This is particularly relevant when we’ve got content (documents, images, experiences, information) (freely) available online, but also in the cases where we have metadata about other things that aren’t available online.
On a broader note: what does openness actually mean for an organization? It is something that potentially affects everything from staff attitudes to strategy…I don’t think that there is a roadmap for institutions taking the leap into openness.