Jonathan, I think we can point to some interesting benefits. If you take 
a look at what the BBC has done with their Wildlife site [1] and then 
look at the new FAO catalog [2] you can see how a page can be enhanced 
with useful data based on URIs in the bibliographic records. Imagine 
being able to add the short author bio from Wikipedia to a record 
display. etc. etc. [3] Or linking from a person as subject to the New 
York times data page for that person. [4]

Now, I know that your reply will be: but only if the vendors do it. 
Well, godammnit, we sure as hell can't wait for them - they are 
followers, not leaders. (And maybe this will give a boost to OS catalogs 
that don't have to wait for the unwieldy barge of library systems to 
make its change of direction.)

Note also that linked data is already happening in libraries in Europe, 
and the entire Europeana and DPLA are being developed as LD databases. 
This isn't some far out future nuttiness. We're actually running behind.

kc

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/BBC/
[2] Info: http://aims.fao.org/agris; search interface: 
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/index.do
[3] try this out in: https://apps.facebook.com/WorldCat/
[4] http://data.nytimes.com/N20483401082089183163 (R. Nixon) which links 
to page with a huge list of articles 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/richard_milhous_nixon/index.html

On 4/30/14, 11:13 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> If you want libraries to spend money on adding URI's to their data, 
> there is going to need to be some clear benefit they get from doing it 
> -- and it needs to be a pretty near-term benefit, not "Well, some day 
> all these awesome things might happen, because linked data."
>
>
> On 4/30/14 1:34 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
>> Thanks, Richard. I ask because it's one of the most common questions
>> that I get -- often about WorldCat, but in general about any source of
>> URIs -- "How do I connect my data (text forms) to their URIs?" And these
>> questions usually come from library or archive projects with little or
>> no programming staff. So it seems like we need to be able to answer that
>> question so that people can get linked up. In fact, it seems to me that
>> the most pressing need right now is an easy way (or one that someone
>> else can do for you at a reasonable cost) to connect the text string
>> "identifiers" that we have to URIs. I envision something like what we
>> went through when we moved from AACR name forms to AACR2 name forms, and
>> libraries were able to send their MARC records to a service that
>> returned the records with the new name form. In this case, though, such
>> a service would return the data with the appropriate URIs added. (In the
>> case of MARC, in the $0 subfield.)
>>
>> It's great that the "big guys" like LC and OCLC are providing URIs for
>> resources. But at the moment I feel like it's grapes dangling just
>> beyond the reach of the folks we want to connect to. Any ideas on how to
>> make this easy are welcome. And I do think that there's great potential
>> for an enterprising start-up to provide an affordable service for
>> libraries and archives. Of course, an open source "pass in your data in
>> x or y format and we'll return it with URIs embedded" would be great,
>> but I think it would be reasonable to charge for such a service.
>>
>> kc
>>
>>
>> On 4/30/14, 9:59 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
>>> To unpack the several questions lurking in Karen’s question.
>>>
>>> As to being able to use the WorldCat Works data/identifiers there is no
>>> difference between a or b - it is ODC-BY licensed data.
>>>
>>> Getting a Work URI may be easier for a) as they should be able to
>>> identify
>>> the OCLC Number and hence use the linked data from it’s URI <
>>> http://worldcat.org/oclc/{ocn}> to pick up the link to it’s work.
>>>
>>> Tools such as xISBN <http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm>
>>> can
>>> step you towards identifier lookups and are openly available for low
>>> volume
>>> usage.
>>>
>>> Citation lookup is more a bib lookup feature, that you could get an 
>>> OCLC
>>> Number from. One of colleagues may be helpful on the particulars of 
>>> this.
>>>
>>> Apologies for being WorldCat specific, but Karen did ask.
>>>
>>> ~Richard.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 30 April 2014 17:15, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> My question has to do with discoverability. Let's say that I have a
>>>> bibliographic database and I want to add the OCLC work identifiers to
>>>> it.
>>>> Obviously I don't want to do it by hand. I might have ISBNs, but in 
>>>> some
>>>> cases I will have a regular author/title-type citation.
>>>>
>>>> and let's say that I am asking this for two different institutions:
>>>> a) is an OCLC member institution
>>>> b) is not
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> kc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 4/30/14, 8:47 AM, Dan Scott wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Roy Tennant <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> This has now instead become a reasonable recommendation
>>>>>>> concerning ODC-BY licensing [3] but the confusion and uncertainty
>>>>>>> about which records an OCLC member may redistribute remains.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [3] http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2012/201248.en.html
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Allow me to try to put this confusion and uncertainty to rest 
>>>>>> once and
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> all:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ALL THE THINGS. ALL.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At least as far as we are concerned. I think it's well past time to
>>>>>> put
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> past in the past.
>>>>>>
>>>>> That's great, Roy. That's a *lot* simpler than parsing the
>>>>> recommendations, WCRR, community norms, and such at [A, B] :)
>>>>>
>>>>>   Meanwhile, we have just put nearly 200 million works records up as
>>>>> linked
>>>>>> open data. [1], [2], [3]. If that doesn't rock the library open 
>>>>>> linked
>>>>>> data
>>>>>> world, then no one is paying attention.
>>>>>> Roy
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1] http://oclc.org/en-US/news/releases/2014/201414dublin.html
>>>>>> [2]
>>>>>> http://dataliberate.com/2014/04/worldcat-works-197-million-
>>>>>> nuggets-of-linked-data/
>>>>>> [3] http://hangingtogether.org/?p=3811
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, that is really awesome. But Laura was asking about barriers to
>>>>> open metadata, so damn you for going off-topic with PR around a lack
>>>>> of barriers to some metadata (which, for those who have not looked
>>>>> yet, have a nice ODC-BY licensing statement at the bottom of a given
>>>>> Works page) :)
>>>>>
>>>>> A. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use.en.html
>>>>> B. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/data-
>>>>> licensing/questions.en.html
>>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Karen Coyle
>>>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>>>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>>>> skype: kcoylenet
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>

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