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With apologies to Eric & to others from the LiAM project, I feel like I want to jump in here with a little more context. Eric, or Aaron, or Anne, please feel free to correct any of what I say below. I agree with the points made and concerns raised by both Ross & Mark -- most significantly, that a sustainable infrastructure for linked archival metadata is not going to come from an XSLT stylesheet. However, I also see tremendous value in what Eric is putting together here. The prospectus for the LiAM project, which is the context for Eric's questions, is about developing guiding principles and educational tools for the archival community to better understand, prepare for, and contribute to the kind of infrastructure both Ross & Mark are talking about: http://sites.tufts.edu/liam/deliverables/prospectus-for-linked-archival-metadata-a-guidebook/ While I agree that converting legacy data in EAD & MARC formats to RDF is not the approach this work will take in the future, I also believe that these are formats that the archival community is very familiar with, and XSLT is a tool that many archivists work with regularly. A workflow for that community to experiment is a laudable goal. In short, I think we need approaches that illustrate the potential of linked data in archives, to highlight some of the shortcomings in our current metadata management frameworks, to help archivists be in a position to get their metadata ready for what Mark is describing in the context of ArchivesSpace (e.g. please use id attributes in c tags!!), and to have a more complete picture of why doing so is of some value. Sorry for the long message, and I hope that the context is helpful. Regards, -Corey On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Mark A. Matienzo <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > > > Good question! At the very least, these applications (ArchivesSpace, > > Archivists’ Toolkit, etc.) can regularly and systematically export their > > data as EAD, and the EAD can be made available as linked data. It would > be > > ideal if the applications where to natively make their metadata available > > as linked data, but exporting their content as EAD is a functional > stopgap > > solution. —Eric Morgan > > > > Wouldn't it make more sense, especially with a system like ArchivesSpace, > which provides a backend HTTP API and a public UI, to publish linked data > directly instead of adding yet another stopgap? > > Mark > > -- > Mark A. Matienzo <[log in to unmask]> > Director of Technology, Digital Public Library of America > -- Corey A Harper Metadata Services Librarian New York University Libraries 20 Cooper Square, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003-7112 212.998.2479 [log in to unmask]