Linked Data for Production (LD4P): a Multi-Institutional Approach to Technical Services Transformation

Linked Data for Production (LD4P) is a collaboration between six institutions (Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Library of Congress, Princeton, and Stanford) to begin the transition of technical services production workflows from a series of library-centric data formats (MARC) to ones based in Linked Open Data (LOD). This first phase of the transition focuses on the development of the ability to produce metadata as LOD communally, the enhancement of the BIBFRAME ontology to encompass the multiple resource formats that academic libraries must process, and the engagement of the broader academic library community to ensure a sustainable and extensible environment. As its name implies, LD4P focuses on the immediate needs of metadata production such as ontology coverage and workflow transition. The LD4P partners' work will be based, in part, on a collection of tools that currently exist, such as those developed by the Library of Congress. The cyclical feedback of use and enhancement request to the developers of these tools will allow for their enhancement based on use in an actual production environment. The six institutions involved will focus on materials ranging from art to rare books, from cartographic materials to music, from annotations to workflows. Tool development and enhancement will also be a key aspect of the project. By the end of the first phase of this project (Spring 2018), the partners will have the minimal tooling, workflows, and standards developed to begin the transformation from MARC to LOD in Phase 2 of the project.