Digital Archiving 3.0

“My data open on the Web, ok but how ?”

Christophe Guéret (@cgueret)

Open Data on the Web, 23 - 24 April 2013

Data Archiving and Networked Services

DANS is een instituut van KNAW en NWO

A bit of context

http://cedar-project.nl

http://easy.dans.knaw.nl

Put your data open on the Web!

“Sharing knowledge: EC-funded projects on scientific information in the digital age”

“E-Data & Research”, October 2011

Where is your research data ?

It is available as an RDF/XML dump on my test server

Just get it from the web site of the research project

I think I have have it somewhere on a stick, let me check...

All bad answers, really.

● We need research data to be

– Accessible/readable/usable by anyone– Available in many (>1) years from now– With traceable provenance and usages

● Dumping the data on a web site somewhere is not enough

Solution: use a repository

● Data repositories will take over serving the data and have a page for it!

● Repository hold two type of data– The data stored

– The meta-data about this data

“Sharing knowledge: EC-funded projects on scientific information in the digital age”

Which format for meta-data ?

● LOD is a perfect fit for describing data

– Use to refer to and link data items– Facilitates discovery, easy to crawl/index– One description per data item stored– Redirects to actual location of the data

● Remaining question: how much meta-data is needed?

Which format for the data?

● Many formats around : PDF, SDF, DSPL, XLS, RDF, CSV, SHP, JSON-LD, ...

● Translation will imply some extra work for the data owner and not please everyone

Which format for the data?

● Many formats around : PDF, SDF, DSPL, XLS, RDF, CSV, SHP, JSON-LD, ...

● Translation will imply some extra work for the data owner and not please everyone

Select vocabularies to describe your resources

Buy a DN, decide on a URI scheme for your data

Express your data as described resources

Solution: use a repository

● Data repositories will take over serving your data

● Just get the data in the repository

● Repositories will take care of everything

● PS: forget about HTTP URIs for data

Format evolution

● Use Content-negotiation to translate and serve different data formats

● Ensure everyone gets the format he wants

Format evolution

● Use Content-negotiation to translate and serve different data formats

● Ensure everyone gets the format he wants

??

Next generation archives

● Provide long term access to data in several formats

● Publish Linked Open Meta-Data about the data stored (DCAT, ...)

● Facilitate moving data around archives (LDP, ...)