Zepheira - The Art of Data

Zepheira to speak at “Leadership Through Collaboration” workshop at Smithsonian

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:59:40 +0000

OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership planning committee have sponsored a two-day event Yours, Mine, Ours: Leadership Through Collaboration focused on strategies for effective collaboration. This event will be at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C, on September 20-21, 2010. Eric Miller from Zepheira will be speaking on the power of global collaborations providing a critical take on the creation and maintenance of standards. The focus of this talk with be the sphere of common values collaboration including standards and policies for copyright and data aggregation, the commons and open data movements, and the practical application of these values in accelerating a web of Linked Data.

Recollection Workshop held at Library of Congress’ Digital Preservation Partners Meeting

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:20:14 +0000

On 20 July 2010 in Arlington VA, Library of Congress held a Recollection workshop at the Digital Preservation Partners Meeting. The well-attended workshop featured an introduction to the digital preservation and access platform and a session where attendees could build Web applications with their own data within 30 minutes, and could showcase these to other workshop participants. Zepheira was in attendance as the developer of the Recollection platform and supporter of NDIIPP.

The mission of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) is to develop a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available significant digital content, especially information that is created in digital form only, for current and future generations. In 2008, the NDIIPP partners shared content through a simple web page. In order to explore more useful tools and processes for sharing diverse content across partners’ collections, the Library began the Project Recollection Pilot in 2009 with Zepheira to develop a proof of concept that can be used to collect and explore information about digital collections.

On 20 July 2010 in Arlington VA, Library of Congress held a Recollectionworkshop at the Digital Preservation Partners Meeting. Thewell-attended workshop featured an introduction to the digitalpreservation and access platform and a session where attendees couldbuild Web applications with their own data within 30 minutes, and couldshowcase these to other workshop participants. Zepheira was inattendance as the developer of the Recollection platform and supporter of NDIIPP.

The mission of the National Digital Information Infrastructure andPreservation Program (NDIIPP) is to develop a national strategy tocollect, preserve and make available significant digital content,especially information that is created in digital form only, for currentand future generations. In 2008, the NDIIPP partners shared contentthrough a simple web page. In order to explore more useful tools andprocesses for sharing diverse content across partners? collections, the Library began the Project Recollection Pilot in 2009 with Zepheira todevelop a proof of concept that can be used to collect and exploreinformation about digital collections.

Migration of purlz.org

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:50:30 +0000

The PURL Open Source Software community site at purlz.org has been migrated from Zepheira’s servers to Google Code. Accordingly, the mailing lists hosted at purlz.org are also migrating to a Google Group.

The purlz.org DNS domain will redirect to the Google Code site. The new Google Group that replaces the mailing lists is: http://groups.google.com/group/persistenturls. Please subscribe!

Thanks for your patience and support as we transition the community infrastructure. We look forward to continuing to serve you and the PURL community.

Library of Congress holds Digital Preservation Partners Meeting

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:20:06 +0000

The Library of Congress will hold the annual Digital Preservation Partners Meeting July 20 – 22, 2010 in Arlington, VA. Themes include “Collaboratives”, “Information Environment” and “Expanding the Archive”. A half day workshop will be held on Recollection, a project with the U.S. Library of Congress and the National Digital Information Infrastructure Partner Program (NDIIPP) designed to enhance discoverable access for NDIIPP collections, making them easier to find, access, and share, and especially to integrate with other digital information sources. Zepheira has worked in partnership with the Library since 2009 to design and build the Recollection platform.

RDF Next Step Workshop 2010

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:33:34 +0000

Zepheira will be presenting two papers at the W3C RDF Next Step Workshop on the future of RDF on June 26-27, 2010. The goal of the workshop is to gather feedback from the Semantic Web community on whether and in which direction RDF should evolve.

Zepheira will present a new RESTful RDF Store API supporting named queries and change isolation. Zepheira will also propose alternative handling of rdf:List in SPARQL. For more information on the workshop and to review the papers look here.

Callimachus Launch

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:30:33 +0000

Callimachus is a Semantic Web framework for easily building hyperlinked Web applications. Callimachus allows Web authors to quickly and easily create Semantically-enabled Web applications with a minimal knowledge of Semantic Web principles or experience building other Web applications. Callimachus uses RDFa as both a query language and display template to make it quick and easy to create your own metadata management tools.

For more information about Callimachus visit the project page at http://callimachusproject.org

Eric Miller to give Vision Session on Linked Data and Libraries at NASIG 25th annual conference

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:19:17 +0000

The North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) 25th Annual Conference will be held on June 3-6, 2010 in Palm Springs, California. The NASIG Vision Sessions are designed to speak to some of the important issues facing the serials community: how can we leverage the data we have? What changes are facing publishing? And what are the systems libraries need to manage serials in this environment? Eric Miller from Zepheira will be providing the Vision Session on Linked Data and Libraries with the goal of addressing these concerns. The following abstract provides an overview of this presentation.

“The Web is the most successful commerce and communication platform ever conceived. With the development of recent events, the Web is quickly evolving into one of the most pervasive data management, integration and knowledge sharing platforms ever imagined. Linked Data is an emerging set of concepts and technologies for combining and integrating data. Linked Data leverages the Web as an architecture for connecting data, lowering social and technical barriers sharing these connections and accelerating collaboration and social computing. The presentation will provide an overview of Linked Data and highlight several relevant, practical examples of this work. A historical perspective as well as personal observations of the evolving social, policy, government and industry trends that support this effort will also be provided. This presentation will additionally highlight related efforts libraries are currently involved in that leverage Linked Data. This presentation will conclude by suggesting strategic and symbiotic areas of work that will help libraries leverage the potential of the Web and highlight how the Web will benefit from library science principles and practice.”

Zepheira presents on Linked Data at Semantic Technology Conference 2010

Mon, 17 May 2010 17:50:23 +0000

SemTech 2010 is the premier semantic technologies event held in San Francisco CA June 21-25, 2010.SemTech 2010 is where the industry comes together for four days of tutorials, workshops and talks on the future of the Web. Sessions at SemTech 2010 will explain Linked Data (and Linked open Data) technologies, and how you can start to use them yourself. Please join Zepheira where David Wood and Bernadette Hyland will be leading a half day tutorial on Linked Enterprise Data on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.

Linked Data (or Linked Open Data) is an emerging set of concepts and technologies for combining and integrating data. This exciting branch of the semantic web is finding applications across government and industry and for a variety of applications from new web-based mashups and visualizations, to the pragmatic enterprise requirements for data extraction, integration and management. Linked data is a key component of both the UK and US government initiatives for greater transparency and citizen accountability.

Please also join us on “RDF Day” to learn more about “Extending and Querying RDF” on Friday, June 25, 2010. This presentation will be given by David Booth from Cleveland Clinic, David Wood and James Leigh from Zepheira.

For details on the speakers and talks, please see the SemTech2010 Agenda here.

Zepheira to Upgrade and Host US GPO PURLs

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:56:55 +0000

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has announced the development and hosting of new Persistent URL (PURL) architecture by Zepheira. GPO’s PURL service provides persistent Web addresses for critical government documents and is primarily used by the more than 1,200 Federal Depository Libraries. GPO PURLs are open to members of the public.

GPO’s public announcement listed several benefits of the contract to Zepheira, including upgrading the GPO PURL server to the PURLz software developed by Zepheira in conjunction with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in 2008. PURLz is Open Source Software and managed by Zepheira in an open community environment.

The upgraded PURL infrastructure is expected to move into production use during Summer 2010.

March 2010 Akara project package releases

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:23:25 +0000

Building on activity undertaken during the recent Akara project sprint, developers pushed an update to the two main packages which the project comprises, in particular:

Amara XML and data toolkit 2.0a4

Akara 2.0a1, a framework for RESTful data services

These releases focus on quality and performance.