I don't know of any best practices *yet* but for various reasons it 
seems to me that a network of mirrors that push updates out would be a 
good thing. Even not considering major government disfunctionality, 
there are fires and floods and earthquakes and ... etc. It's never 
sufficient to rely on one copy.[1]

Although I'm glad the torrent is there, the API functionality is 
probably the most used.

kc
[1] cf. University of California keeps two physical storage sites for 
last(2) copies of books - one in the North, one in the South - both 
prone to earthquakes, but very very unlikely at the same time because 
they are on different major fault lines, and about 400 miles apart.

On 9/30/13 4:15 AM, Uldis Bojars wrote:
> What are best practices for preventing problems in cases like this when an
> important Linked Data service may go offline?
>
> --- originally this was a reply to Jodi which she suggested to post on the
> list too ---
>
> A safe [pessimistic?] approach would be to say "we don't trust [reliability
> of] linked data on the Web as services can and will go down" and to cache
> everything.
>
> In that case you'd want to create a caching service that would keep updated
> copies of all important Linked Data sources and a fall-back strategy for
> switching to this caching service when needed. Like archive.org for Linked
> Data.
>
> Some semantic web search engines might already have subsets of Linked Data
> web cached, but not sure how much they cover (e.g., if they have all of LoC
> data, up-to-date).
>
> If one were to create such a service how to best update it, considering
> you'd be requesting *all* Linked Data URIs from each source? An efficient
> approach would be to regularly load RDF dumps for every major source if
> available (e.g., LoC says - here's a full dump of all our RDF data ... and
> a .torrent too).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Uldis
>
>
> On 29 September 2013 12:33, Jodi Schneider <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Any best practices for caching authorities/vocabs to suggest for this
>> thread on the Code4Lib list?
>>
>> Linked Data authorities & vocabularies at Library of Congress (id.loc.gov)
>> are going to be affected by the website shutdown -- because of lack of
>> government funds.
>>
>> -Jodi
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: David Riordan <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 3:08 PM
>> Subject: [CODE4LIB] HEADS UP - Government shutdown will mean *.loc.gov is
>> going offline October 1
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/library-of-congress-says-it-will-take-its-site-offline-if-govt-shuts-down/
>>
>> This morning's latest terrifying news on the government shutdown front is
>> that unless Congress decides to (ahahahahahah) oh who am I kidding.
>>
>> Broadcast message from root October 1, 2013 00:00
>> The system is going down for system halt NOW!
>>
>> Since the Library of Congress' web services are you know, won't have money,
>> they'll be taken offline along with the rest of LC. Compared to most of the
>> things that'll happen, this won't be so bad. However it could make a lot of
>> people on this list's lives a living hell on Tuesday morning when we start
>> getting system failures because an API relied on a lookup to id.loc.gov or
>> any other LC service.
>>
>> So brace your bosses and patrons. Because without loc.gov, things could
>> get
>> weird.
>>
>> Seriously, if anyone knows more, please share.
>>
>> David Riordan | Product Manager, NYPL Labs |
>> @NYPL_Labs<http://twitter.com/nypl_labs>
>> [log in to unmask] | m 203.521.1222 | @riordan<
>> http://twitter.com/riordan>
>>
>>

-- 
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet