In the context of the project Building a workforce of information professionals for 21st century global information access, the College of Computing and Informatics of Drexel University offers with the help of funding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services a Linked Data for Librarians course with two learning units. The content of both units can be reproduced, published, or otherwise used freely.
Part 1: Introduction to Semantic Web and Linked Data provides a global introduction to the topic. With the help of an overview of different data models, the possibilities and limits of RDF are explained. Toward the end, a specific focus on data quality helps to underline some of the fundamental challenges to implementing Linked Data in libraries.
Part 2: Advanced course on applications, projects, and skills related to Linked Data explores more advanced aspects of Linked Data. Through a mix of theory and practice, you’ll learn all about metadata cleaning, reconciliation and enriching. The final modules focus on more conceptual aspects surrounding data architecture with REST and why decentralisation and federation are important for the future.
Navigation guide
The learning materials are embedded in HTML in order to bring you an intuitive approach across browsers and devices. When clicking on the link to Part 1 or Part 2, you’ll be directed to the first module. In the right hand side, you’ll see a navigation bar allowing you to jump from one module to another. By clicking on an individual slide, you enter the slide mode. By using the left and right arrows or your trackpad, you can navigate then from one slide to the other. Each slide offers the opportunity to send feedback to the trainers and the community of users by sending a tweet containing a link to the specific slide. By pressing Esc you can go back to the overview mode.
You can cite this course as follows: van Hooland, S. and Verborgh, R. (2017) “Linked Data for Librarians.” Available at http://course.freeyourmetadata.org/.