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.

Presented by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, this symposium introduces the Semantic Web and the basics of linked data. Eric will describe state of the art tools in current use by libraries and share some practical experience in linking library data to the greater linked data cloud.

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.

In August, 2011 Zepheira and OCLC presented the results of this effort, delivered well ahead of schedule and under budget, to The MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Zepheira presented tools used to analyze the metrics of URLs from OCLC’s QuestionPoint collaborative virtual reference service, in which librarians answer patron requests for credible information on particular topics through an interactive interface. The presentation also included a demonstration of the Reference Extract prototype in action, which is also available as a screencast.

Zepheira, OCLC and the participating universities will continue to investigate how best to evolve the prototype into a sustainable service long-term.

The MIT Simile project, a joint project between MIT Libraries, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the World Wide Web Consortium, has spent the last decade developing and experimenting with new open source software tools for Web-based data publishing. This led to the release of Exhibit, a JavaScript browser widget for searching, browsing, navigating and visualizing data. Exhibit lets Web site authors create dynamic publications of their data collections without resorting to complex programming, database or server technologies.

In the article, Eric and MacKenzie discuss the next phase of the project which provides a new architecture for Exhibit that increases scalability and addresses other limitations identified by its users. This Exhibit 3.0 project is made possible by generous support from the Library of Congress. It is a partnership among MIT Libraries, MIT CSAIL and Zepheira, including personnel who are SIMILE project alumnus.

Part 2 of this article will be released in late September/early October.

The release includes both the new client and the server component of Exhibit 3, so you can see how going from a client only collection to a client/server collection will work. The new client is less functional than the current Exhibit 2 client, but will improve over the next few months. We will be posting a timeline for the rest of the year to the Web page soon, so those of you who need to wait for a more stable version or one with a particular feature will have some idea of when to expect that. Over the next few months we’ll also create a lot of new documentation, but for now we just have what’s in the code and some basic instructions for building the system.

So for those of you who’ve been waiting, we hope you’ll try it out and give us your thoughts! Bugs and feature requests are welcome via GitHub and discussions welcome on the SIMILE Widgets mailing list.

For those interested in seeing some of this work in action check out the early demonstrations of both the new client and the server component of Exhibit 3.

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

In addition, presentations from the conference program entitled “Make It Work: Improvisations on the stewardship of digital information” have now been posted and are available for those who were not able to attend the meeting in person. Zepheira was in attendance and co-presented “Exhibit3@MIT: Lessons learned from 10 years of the Simile Project for building library open source software”.

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