Allan Cho in his posting Web 3.0 Librarian highlights the article he has collaborated in writing with his colleague Dean Giustini, The Semantic Web as a large, searchable catalogue: a librarian’s perspective.

In this interesting read, they compare the web today with the library before Melvil Dewey, where the Semantic Web will end up relating data from all over the planet in the same way that the card catalogue related data from all over the library. 

They also credit OCLC with bringing order to the messiness of the Web through its Dublin Core Project. 

In broad terms, computer science has led to the creation of Web 1.0 and 2.0 whereas library and information science can lead knowledge organization in Web 3.0.

The developments in/on the web so far are building blocks towards the Semantic future.

In some ways, RDF technologies are building upon the current principles of cataloging and classification of a former print-dominated culture. However, the Semantic Web is focused on the digital - collecting, organizing and disseminating digital information and organizing it using metadata (data about data). This idea is similar to the creation of the MARC record (machine readable-catalogue record) that revolutionized the description of items in a library’s inventory. MARC changed the way libraries provide access to intellectual works by using the much-venerated principles of cataloguing - enshrined in the bible of library cataloguing, AACR (Anglo American Cataloguing Rules) – in a machine-readable context.  We argue that the Semantic Web could very be like a large card catalog, trying libraries of the world together into one large universal database, much like the one envisioned by our profession’s major thinkers.

The Semantic Web, a large card catalogue - that conjures up a great image for my next presentation!

Via a few concerns about data privacy, they work their way to the following conclusion:

Although still conceptual, the Semantic Web is in many ways a counterweight to Web 2.0 – best described as a disjointed place where everything-is-miscellaneous and governed by the dichotomy of the global-local dynamic. In contrast, Web 3.0 is about bringing the miscellaneous back together meaningfully after it’s been fragmented into a billion pieces.

I get the perception from the piece that there is no real engagement yet in the Semantic Web from the library world.  There may not be many, but there is serious engagement W3C in this area.  A look at the W3C members list will identify OCLC, The Library of Congress, and Talis. 

I obviously cannot speak for the others, but we at Talis have three very active members of the W3C working groups and are at the core of activity around RDF and the Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group.  As Allan and Dean indicate, Semantic Web technologies will be at the core of the next wave to hit the web, Web 3.0 if you like.  The Talis Platform is one of the first robust scalable, easy to interact with, examples of a platform built on these technologies and principles.

As discussed through the pages of the Talis Library Platform News, the Talis Library Platform is a ‘library aware’ specialization of the generic Platform.  Through experimentation with the Library Platform, an activity which is free, many libraries will start to understand the semantic relationships already hiding in their data and the relationships with other data and therefore concepts out side of the library walls.

If anyone wants to experiment with the possibilities of using the Talis Library Platform - contact me richard.wallis@talis.com.

Picture by curiousyellow, Creative Commons-licensed on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: Semantic Web, Web 3.0, Library, OCLC, LC, Library of Congress, Talis Base, Talis Platform

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