Announcement: New Vocabularies Added to LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service 

The Library of Congress is pleased to make available new vocabularies from its Authorities and Vocabularies web service (ID.LOC.GOV), which provides access to Library of Congress standards and vocabularies as Linked Data.  The new additions include :

MARC Code List for Countries
MARC Code List for Geographic Areas
MARC Code List for Languages

The MARC Countries entries include references to their equivalent ISO 3166 codes.  The MARC Languages have been cross referenced with ISOs 639-1, 639-2, and 639-5, where appropriate.  Additional vocabularies will be added in the future, including additional PREMIS controlled vocabularies.

The vocabulary data are published in RDF using the SKOS/RDF Vocabulary.  Individual concepts are accessible via the ID.LOC.GOV web service via a web browser interface or programmatically via content-negotiation.  The vocabulary data are also available for bulk download.  A new bulk download of LCSH will be available tomorrow, 5 January 2011.

As always, your feedback is important and welcomed.  Though we are interested in all forms of constructive commentary on all topics related to ID, we're particularly interested in how the data available from ID.LOC.GOV is used.  Your contributions directly inform service enhancements.  

The Authorities and Vocabularies web service was first made available in May 2009 and offered the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the Library's initial entry into the Linked Data movement.  In part by assigning each vocabulary and each data value within it a unique resource identifier (URI), the service provides a means for machines to semantically access, use, and harvest authority and vocabulary data that adheres to W3C recommendations, such as Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS).  In this way, the Authorities and Vocabularies web service also makes government data publicly and freely available in the spirit of the Open Government directive.  Although the primary goal of the service is to enable machine access to Library of Congress data, a web interface serves human users searching and browsing the vocabularies.

Please explore it for yourself at http://id.loc.gov.


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Kevin M. Ford
Digital Project Coordinator
Network Development & MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20540-4402