The Library of Congress, in partnership with Zepheira, launched Viewshare.org in November 2011. Viewshare is a free platform for National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) partners to generate and customize views, (interactive maps, timelines, facets, tag clouds) that allow users to experience their digital collections.

The Library of Congress, in partnership with Zepheira, launched Viewshare.org in November 2011. Viewshare is a free platform for NDIIPP partners to generate and customize views, (interactive maps, timelines, facets, tag clouds) that allow users to experience their digital collections.

The transition to the new domain name represents a more significant commitment by the Library to this project. The Library and Zepheira continue to actively evolve the project and improve the software and putting it on its own domain name makes it easier to find, use, and share.

Read the Library’s announcement or watch the screencast to learn more.

Our best known contribution to the community is the open source Recollection project, developed in conjunction with the Library of Congress and NDIIPP. Recollection picks up where most digital archiving software leaves off, importing curated collections from an archive where they can be augmented, visually enhanced, republished, and ultimately shared.

Recollection makes use of the popular publishing framework, Exhibit, developed by MIT’s Simile project a few years ago, but currently being updated as part of the Exhibit3 project in conjunction with MIT.  Exhibit3′s primary added value over the original Exhibit project is scalability up to one million triples, making it not only suitable for publishing large collections, but of some archives too! We’ve posted some sample large exhibits as part of our recent beta release.

Here are two exhibits that demonstrate many of the features of both Recollection and the original Exhibit project;

• Virginia Postcards
• Einstein Memorial Documents

View the Library’s release announcement or to access the code visit the Library’s project page on Sourceforge.

• Managing existing collections
• Maintaining the Library of Congress’s role as a leader in the distribution of canonical information
• Fulfilling the mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to a more digital collection

The keynote covered several of the key linked data initiatives underway at the Library including project Recollection, a joint project with Zepheira. The keynote in its entirety, is presented below.

To read more about Recollection and the Library of Congress, check out this recent series about the Recollections Project.

A new service from the Library of Congress lets you build maps, graphs, timelines, and trees from the collective digital and digitized history of an entire nation.

Carmody discusses the usefulness of Recollection for digital preservation, archiving and education, summarizing its benefits.

The idea behind Recollection is simple: it allows the LoC and its cultural heritage partner institutions to easily pool and visualize their collections. What was a giant, unwieldy database can be easily transformed into an interactive timeline, map, tag cloud, or a range of other highly readable interfaces. Then you can embed the tool back into your own organization’s site. Think of it as a kind of YouTube for museums (or amateur historians).

Details and registration information

Talks will highlight practical applications of linked data technologies in collaboration with the Library of Congress and MIT:

Closing Keynote: Semantic Technology at the Library of Congress: Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives and Chief Information Officer for the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is utilizing linked data and semantic technologies in several current projects including Project Recollection and it’s Digital Preservation Initiative. Laura Campbell, CIO of the LoC, will describe these efforts and the reasons for choosing to enable them with semantics.

Presentation: Exhibit3: Publishing Framework for Large Scale Data-Rich Interactive Web Pages: MacKenzie Smith, Research Director at MIT Libraries and Eric Miller, President of Zepheira

In January 2011, MIT and Zepheira began work on Exhibit 3.0, a new project funded by the Library of Congress to redevelop the popular Exhibit tool from the MIT Simile Project. Exhibit was originally developed as an ambitious collaboration of the MIT Libraries, the MIT CSAIL, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to explore applications of the Semantic Web to problems of information management across both large-scale digital libraries and small-scale personal collections. This presentation will discuss the new architecture and features, highlight work done to date, demonstrate some of Exhibit 3.0 capabilities and gather input from the audience on how to build interest and involvement from the community in this work.

Presentation: Recollection: A Linked Data Platform of America’s Memory Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist at the Library of Congress and Eric Miller, President of Zepheira

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. This presentation will discuss the architecture and features of the Recollection platform, highlight work done to date, discuss future directions of this work and gather input from the audience on how to build interest and involvement from the community.

For more information on times and locations of these sessions visit the 2011 Semantic Technology Conference Agenda at a Glance