lots of discussion on this on NGC4LIB, and since folks on this DC-SAM list
are interested in linked data, thought i'd send the initial post here,
too. there's a link to a nice youtube clip too, at the bottom.
j
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Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 13:33:00 +0100
From: Adrian Pohl <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The CERN Library publishes its book catalog as Open Data
Good news. The CERN library has published its data under a public domain =
license and works on migrating it into linked data. Hopefully lots of =
libraries (and at best OCLC with its forthcoming metadata policy) will =
follow this example.
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Adrian
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The CERN Library publishes its book catalog as Open Data
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Librarians are in general very favourable to the principles of Open =
Access, but surprisingly few libraries have so far set free the data they =
produce themselves. As one of the first scientific libraries in the world, =
the CERN Library offers now the bibliographic book records, held in its =
library catalog, to be freely downloaded by any third party. The records =
are provided under the Public Domain Data License, a license that permits =
colleagues around the world to reuse and upgrade the data for any =
purpose.=20
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Jens Vigen, Head of the CERN Library, says: "Books should only be =
catalogued once. Currently the public purse pays for having the same book =
catalogued over and over again. Librarians should act as they preach: data =
sets created through public funding should be made freely available to =
anyone interested. Open Access is natural for us, here at CERN we believe =
in openness and reuse. There is a tremendous potential. By getting =
academic libraries worldwide involved in this movement, it will lead to a =
natural atmosphere of sharing and reusing bibliographic data in a rich =
landscape of so-called mash-up services, where most of the actors who will =
be involved, both among the users and the providers, will not even be =
library users or librarians. Our action is made in the spirit of the =
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and =
Humanities; bibliographic data belongs to the cultural heritage.All other =
signatories should align their policy accordingly."=20
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The data of CERN Library will be used by the Open Library Project to =
provide a webpage for every book and allow users to add content like table =
of contents, classifications and summaries.=20
=20
For massive reuse of data, the data will be provided soon by an open =
Z39.50, SRU and OAI interface via biblios.net, a repository of open =
bibliographic data.=20
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The whole dataset can be downloaded from
http://cern.ch/bookdata=20
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The press announcement is accompanied by a YouTube Video that can be found =
at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CSmieTXbsk
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Adrian Pohl
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