This is the tiniest of introductions as a person who will be writing a text called Linked Archival Metadata: A Guidebook. The Guidebook will be the product of LiAM [0], and from the prospectus [1], the purpose of the Guidebook is to:

  provide archivists with an overview of the current linked data
  landscape, define basic concepts, identify practical strategies
  for adoption, and emphasize the tangible payoffs for archives
  implementing linked data. It will focus on clarifying why
  archives and archival users can benefit from linked data and will
  identify a graduated approach to applying linked data methods to
  archival description.

To these ends I plan to write towards three audiences: 1) the layman who knows nothing about linked data, 2) the archivist who wants to make their content available as linked data but does not know how, and 3) the computer technologist who knows how to make linked data accessible but does not know about archival practices.

Personally, I have been dabbling on and off with linked data and the Semantic Web for a number of years. I have also been deeply involved with a project called the Catholic Research Resources Alliance [2] whose content mostly comes from archives. I hope to marry these two sets of experiences into something that will be useful to cultural heritage institutions, especially archives.

The Guidebook is intended to be manifested in both book (PDF) and wiki forms. The work begins now and is expected to be completed by March 2014. On my mark. Get set. Go. Wish me luck, and let’s see if we can build some community.

[0] LiAM - http://sites.tufts.edu/liam/
[1] prospectus - http://bit.ly/15TX0rs
[2] Catholic Research Resources Alliance - http://www.catholicresearch.net/

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Eric Lease Morgan