At Talis we’re huge fans of Linked Data, especially when it’s freely available for reuse too. However, we also realise that not everyone has been smitten by the Linked Data bug yet so we’re always thinking about new ways to help others use, publish and discover the benefits of connecting their data together.

Recently we were wondering how we could help organise the skill and expertise of people who love Linked Data to show data publishers how their data could be even more useful and effective. As the Linking Open Data project has shown, actions speak louder than words so we wanted to do something with practical and visible results.

One problem we face is that until it is available in open and reusable formats it’s not possible to show data owners the power locked up in their own data. Conversely it is hard for the data owner to justify investment in opening up their data without concrete demonstrations of that power. A classic deadlock situation! The goal of our new project is to break this deadlock. We plan to do this by organising people around popular datasets to create mappings to RDF, write conversion code and openly publish the resulting data. The result will be a huge reduction in the investment needed by the data owner: they can simply adapt the work and emit the Linked Data themselves.

We call our new project the Data Incubator and if you love Linked Data then we encourage you to join in and help grow the web of data. Although this project is entirely independent of Talis, we are supporting it through the Talis Connected Commons scheme, providing free hosting and services for public domain data.

Already we have started projects to convert the Open Library dataset including much-loved books such as The Hobbit and to convert journal metadata provided by CrossRef, Highwire and the National Library of Medicine. Many more projects are being incubated and we are discussing how we create a repeatable process for contacting and encouraging data owners to take part.

Join the Data Incubator mailing list and get involved.