Linked Data in a University Context: Publication, Applications and Beyond

Mathieu d’Aquin - @mdaquin

Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University

data.open.ac.uk

Linked Data

• As set of principles and technologies for a Web of Data– Putting the “raw” data online in a

standard, web enabled representation (RDF)

– Make the data Web addressable (URIs)

– Link with other data

Graph (up to date)

The Open University• The biggest university in the UK (200,000

students)• One of the youngest (40 years)• Most teaching done at a distance• 1 campus, 13 regional centers• Committed to “Open”:

– Open educational material available as podcasts (iTunes U), units of course material (OpenLearn), etc.

• Tradition of investing in new technology for teaching, learning, knowledge sharing, etc.– Role of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)

So Linked Data for the OU?

ORO

Archive of Course Material

Library’sCatalogueOf Digital Content

OpenLearnContent

A/V MaterialPodcastsiTunesU

Data from Research Outputs

BBC

DBPedia

DBLP

RAE

geonames

data.gov.uk

Currently: OU public data sit in different systems – hard to discover, obtain, integrate by users.

Exposed as linked data, our data interlink with each other and the external world: become part of the “global data space” on the Web

Why is it important?• The OU has been the first University to expose its data

as linked data: http://data.open.ac.uk• Now widely recognized as a critical step forward for the

HE sector in the UK (and worldwide)– Favor transparency and reuse of data, both externally and

internally– Reduces cost of dealing with our own public data: integration

and reuse by design– Enable both new kinds of applications, and to make the

ones that are already feasible more cost effective

• Several other UK universities have now followed our example: – http://data.online.lincoln.ac.uk/, http://data.ox.ac.uk/,

http://data.southampton.ac.uk/– And others in other countries are setting up similar initiatives

The data.open.ac.uk Stack

Technical infrastructure

Organizational infrastructure

Institutional repository data

Research Data (Arts)

Applications

data.open.ac.uk

Planning + Logging

Collect Extract Link Store Expose

OntologiesScheduler

RSS Updater Triple Store

Delete (1)Add (2)

Index Search

SPARQLendpoint

Web Server

RSS Extractor

XML Updater

RDF Extractor

RDF Cleaner

Cleaning rules

Each datasets

Lib, courses, loc

ORO, podcast

URL redirection rules

RSS feed

New itemsObsolete items

RDF file (add) RDF file (delete)

RDF file (add) RDF file (delete)

Generic process Dataset specific process

Entity Name

SystemURI creation rules

Method for a exposing a dataset

Initial Meeting with Data Owner

- Identify data- Get sample data- Identify Copyright Issues- Identify possible links- Identify users and usage

Data Modeling sessions

Lucero Core Team

Data Owner

Lucero KMi Team

Lucero members

- Find reusable ontologies- Map onto the data- Identify uncovered parts- Define URI Scheme

Data Modeling Validation

Lucero Core Team

Data Owner

Development of Extractor

URI Creation Rules

DefinitionDeploymentLucero KMi

Team

Screenshot of the dataset page

Applications

Resource Discovery

Mobile and Personal Semantics

ResearchExploration

Social

Example application: Link OpenLearn to relevant course/podcasts

See also: Zablith et al, LinkedLearning 2011

ROLE widget

Integrating Open Educational Material

in course descriptions

See also: Zablith et al., COLD 2011

Explore

Explore the courses, qualifications and open educational resources available on a particular topic in one place.

See also: Zablith et al., COLD 2011

se

Lean-back podcast viewer

See also: Zablith et al., COLD 2011

See also: Zablith et al., COLD 2011

se

See also: http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/mathieu/about/discobro-discovering-linked-data-

resources-while-browsing/http://discovery.ac.uk/developers/competition/

Add DiscoBro

Example Application: keep track of location, meetings, tutorials, at the OU

Radar

Supporting Researchers: The Reading Experience Database

• http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/• 40,000 accounts of somebody

reading something at some time in some place

• Used by researchers in literature and history to explore research hypothesis

Experience

Person

Document

EventLocation

City Countrydate: Date

subClassOf

subClassOf

locatedIn

readerInvolved

textInvolved givesBackgroundTo

title: Stringdescription: Stringpublished: Date

creator/editor

providesExcerptFor

occupation

religion

originCountry

gender

LinkedEvent Ontology

CITO Citation Ontology

Dublin Core

FOAF

DBPedia

Lessons Learnt• The major part of the work is not technical

– Linked data is simple!– Identifying available data, obtaining access to them, re-

modeling them is hard

• A lot of people’s jobs (administrators, managers, researchers) are all about collecting and managing data– A lot of this effort is lost because of closed systems, lack

of integration and exposure of the data– Linked data is also a way to maximize the exploitation of

otherwise inefficient data management approaches

• There is no killer app– Benefit = many small things that are made easier/were

not possible before.

What’s Next?

Cross-Institution Linked Data/Resource Discovery/ExchangesWhy should

educational resources be in University Silos? Who cares where they come from?

LinkedUniversities.org

See also: Fernandez et al., ISWC 2011 (in use)

What’s Next? (2)

• Understanding, Analyzing, Interpreting the data – Data is useless, there is no intelligence in

the data, only in the application– And current applications are no so

intelligent, interpretation is still left to the user

– Reasoning, pattern recognition, data analytics and data mining with the all sort of new challenges in linked data

– Create something new: the Semantic Web

See also:d’Aquin et al. ISWC 2011 demod’Aquin et al. SSN 2011

Deploy SPARQL endpoints on Android and Use Sensor Data

See also:http://lucero-project.info/lb/2011/06/what-to-ask-linked-data/d’Aquin and Motta, K-CAP 2011

See also:uciad.infod’Aquin et al – SDoW 2011

Thank you!

Carlo Allocca

Mathieu d’Aquin

Salman Elahi

Enrico MottAndriy Nikolov

Jane Whild Fouad Zablith

Library Specialists

Owen Stephens(PM)

Richard Nurse((ex-)PM)

Non ScantleburyArts Specialists

Suzanne Duncanson-HunterJohn Wolfe

Paul Lawrence

Stuart Brown

Data Owners

KMi

OU Library

Com./StudentComp.Services

Arts

Liam Green Hughes