Archives Hub foray into Linked Data

[Jane Stevenson]

Group members may be interested in an initiative to output the UK
Archives Hub EAD descriptions as Linked Data. This is part of the
LOCAH JISC-funded project (Linked Open Copac and Archives Hub). More
information can be found on our blog: http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/locah/

Our approach has been to create a data model and work from there
towards a stylesheet to output Linked Data using common vocabularies
as far as we can. It is still very much work in progress but we are
pleased with our progress so far. Our intention is not to create
something that will 'work' for all EAD descriptions - but if we can do
something useful for Archives Hub EAD then we hope that it will be
useful for others. We have to limit the scope of the work, so some of
the challenges of EAD will probably remain as challenges! But we are
looking at what we might be able to do with inconsistent data, such as
<extent> and we are intending to produce at least one visualisation
that illustrates the benefits of Linked Data.