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I believe participating in the Semantic Web and providing content via the principles of linked data is not "rocket surgery", especially for cultural heritage institutions -- libraries, archives, and museums. Here is a simple recipe for their participation:

  1. use existing metadata standards (MARC, EAD, etc.) to describe
     collections

  2. use any number of existing tools to convert the metadata to
     HTML, and save the HTML on a Web server

  3. use any number of existing tools to convert the metadata to
     RDF/XML (or some other "serialization" of RDF), and save the
     RDF/XML on a Web server

  4. rest, congratulate yourself, and share your experience with
     others in your domain

  5. after the first time though, go back to Step #1, but this time
     work with other people inside your domain making sure you use as
     many of the same URIs as possible

  6. after the second time through, go back to Step #1, but this
     time supplement access to your linked data with a triple store,
     thus supporting search

  7. after the third time through, go back to Step #1, but this
     time use any number of existing tools to expose the content in
     your other information systems (relational databases, OAI-PMH
     data repositories, etc.)

  8. for dessert, cogitate ways to exploit the linked data in your
     domain to discover new and additional relationships between URIs,
     and thus make the Semantic Web more of a reality 

What do you think?

I am in the process of writing a guidebook on the topic of linked data and archives. In the guidebook I will elaborate on this recipe and provide instructions for its implementation. [1]

[1] guidebook - http://sites.tufts.edu/liam/

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Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame