The Library of Congress is pleased to make the Cultural Heritage Organizations vocabulary available as linked data from LC's Linked Data Service, ID.LOC.GOV.  The Cultural Heritage Organizations vocabulary is a linked data representation of the MARC Organizations code list, which, among other uses, is an essential reference tool for those dealing with MARC records, for systems reporting library holdings, for many interlibrary loan systems, and for those who may be organizing cooperative projects on a regional, national, or international scale. 

While the Cultural Heritage Organizations vocabulary focuses on US institutions, with over 30,000 defined, it also includes codes for institutions in other countries that have requested them.  However, MARC codes are not assigned for institutions for Canada, Germany, or the United Kingdom unless the institution is a branch of a US institution.  Overall, the vocabulary contains over 36,000 entries.

Bulk downloads of the Cultural Heritage Organizations vocabulary are also available from the downloads page.

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Please explore the Cultural Heritage Organizations yourself at

http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/organizations

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Contact Us about ID:
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.

You can send comments or report any problems to us via the ID feedback form or ID listserv (see the web site).

Background:
The LC Linked Data 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 environment. 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), and the more detailed vocabulary MADS/RDF.  In this way, the LC Linked Data 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.  The new datasets join the term and code lists already available through the service:

* Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
* Library of Congress Children's Subject Headings
* Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
* Library of Congress / NACO Name Authority File
* Library of Congress / LCC (select schedules)
* Thesaurus of Graphic Materials
* MARC Code List for Relators
* MARC Code List for Countries (which reference their equivalent ISO 3166 codes)
* MARC Code List for Geographic Areas
* MARC Code List for Languages (which have been cross referenced with ISO 639-1, 639-2, and 639-5, where appropriate)
* PREMIS vocabularies

The above code lists also contain links with appropriate LCSH and LC/NAF headings.

LC's Linked Data Service is managed by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress.


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Kevin Ford
Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress
Washington, DC