On 18 June 2012 14:47, Ruth Harper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> There isn't a standard way to collect and distribute events data
Oh yes there is: the iCalendar standard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iCalendar
If each institution marks up its events, on its own website, with the
hCalendar microformat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hCalendar
then they can be parsed as iCalendar events by freely available tools,
and read into databases/ calendar apps, for reuse elsewhere.
Events can also be published in RDFa/ microdata/ as Linked Data, using
iCalendar parameters, or as separate iCalendar files, but hCalendar
offers a low barrier-of-entry. It used by, for example, Upcoming, and
is also recognised by Google for their search indexes.
I'm happy to expand on this here, or to offer assistance to
organisations wishing to implement it.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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