Smithsonian Libraries & Archives: BIBFRAME linked data experiment with the Share Family technology

The semantic web promises interlinks of cultural heritage objects, both original and digital, of which the Smithsonian Institution (SI) holds plenty in artifacts, books, audio/video, etc. At the core, structured data in RDF is likely the one member of data infrastructure that carries the major lifting for interlinking. Parsing millions of bibliographic data mainly locked in MARC21 into the BIBFRAME/RDF syntax is not an insignificant endeavour for the library community. The Smithsonian Libraries & Archives, a network of specialized libraries (including art and design), is not an exception. It became part of the Share Family to utilize its technology so as to increase user resource discovery and the library staff’s ability to resource curations. Working collaboratively with scores of research, academic and national libraries, and the Share Family team, the Smithsonian Libraries & Archives experimented with BIBFRAME, a Library of Congress RDF-based ontology, which has benefited greatly from the Share-VDE semantic technology and its system design. From such efforts, the Smithsonian Libraries & Archives looks to move away from the web of documents into a web of data. Fulfilling SI’s strategic vision of availing collections through digital solutions for the increase and diffusion of human knowledge.