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Harnessing the Geospatial SemanticWeb: Toward Place-Based InformationOrganization and AccessMarcy Bidney a b & Kevin Clair ca American Geographical Society Library , Milwaukee , Wisconsin ,USAb University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries , Milwaukee ,Wisconsin , USAc University Libraries , University of Denver , Denver , Colorado ,USAPublished online: 18 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Marcy Bidney & Kevin Clair (2014) Harnessing the Geospatial Semantic Web:Toward Place-Based Information Organization and Access, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 52:1,69-76, DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2013.852038

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Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 52:69–76, 2014Published with license by Taylor & FrancisISSN: 0163-9374 print / 1544-4554 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01639374.2013.852038

Harnessing the Geospatial Semantic Web:Toward Place-Based Information Organization

and Access

MARCY BIDNEYAmerican Geographical Society Library, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA and University

of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

KEVIN CLAIRUniversity Libraries, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

The geospatial Semantic Web’s primary use to date has been the cre-ation of map mashups, collaborative mapping projects, and otherresearch functions. The power of the geospatial Semantic Web canalso be harnessed for the development of place-based access pointsto further the use of information collections—digital and print.Creating a geographic search interface for information collectionsallows users to search by location. The basic principles of linkeddata, describing entities using unique identifiers and providinglinks between related objects, tie into the desire for libraries to linktheir own digital resources with related materials held by other cul-tural institutions that publish content on the Web. This article willprovide an overview of linked data principles, discuss the benefitsand challenges of providing geographic information in metadatarecords, and provide examples of how location-based searches arevaluable to users, and offer opportunities for future research.

KEYWORDS linked data, geospatial Semantic Web, libraries,access, location-based searching

INTRODUCTION

As understanding and development of Web technology deepens, a vari-ety of useful means for information organization and access emerge. The

© Marcy Bidney and Kevin ClairReceived August 2013; revised October 2013; accepted October 2013.Address correspondence to Marcy Bidney, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries,

2311 E. Hartford Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA. E-mail: bidney@uwm.edu

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development of a geospatial Semantic Web utilizing linked data has beenmost promising in changing how information is organized, displayed, andaccessed. While the geospatial Semantic Web’s primary use to date has beenthe creation of map mashups, collaborative mapping projects, and other re-search functions, the power of the geospatial Semantic Web can also beharnessed for the development of place-based access points to further theuse of information collections—digital and print.

Organizing information based on location is a powerful idea—it has thecapacity to bring together information from diverse communities of practicethat a researcher may never have considered. While this is certainly not a newidea, the technology is now just getting to a point where this idea can be-come a reality. “Place” is interdisciplinary. The creation of geographic searchinterfaces utilizing linked data principles enables access across a variety ofinformation collections in powerful and innovative ways. The developers ofnew generation library catalogs should be thinking outside of traditional textdisplay methods and create more visual displays of search results. Devel-opers have much to learn from the rapid increase in the use of geospatialinformation to generate mashups of data and information on the Web and thedisplay of this data on maps. The creation of a geographic search interfacefor information collections allows users to search for an item according to itslocation; simply by clicking on a given location on a map users can explorelibrary collections of all kinds of materials related by place. The geospatialSemantic Web makes this idea more realistic through the use of linked datato expose connections between bits of information that otherwise may nothave been revealed through a text search in a traditional library catalog. Thismethod also exposes relationships in a visual context that is inherently moremeaningful than textual connotations.

Tim Berners-Lee and his co-authors wrote in Scientific American aboutthe Semantic Web, describing it not as “a separate Web but an extension ofthe current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, bet-ter enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”1 In the samearticle the authors say in order “. . . for the Semantic Web to function, com-puters must have access to structured collections of information and sets ofinference rules that they can use to conduct automated reasoning.” It wouldstand to reason then, that one of the most useful places for Semantic Webtechnologies, such as linked data, to take root would be in libraries wherestructured collections of information have existed for centuries. Ten yearslater, Gillian Byrne and Lisa Goddard refer to the promise of Semantic Webcapabilities as “dazzling.”2 In making the case for linked data, they provideexamples of how to implement it successfully in the library environment.Writing about the uses of linked data for libraries they state that technologyis “no longer the major obstacle to linked data implementation.”

Linked data provides a powerful tool for enhancing access to library cat-alog records. The purpose of linked data is to provide connections between

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Harnessing the Geospatial Semantic Web 71

related, but unconnected, data on the Web, in much the same way that Webpages are currently linked together. In recent years librarians have seizedupon this method as a means of sharing metadata about library collectionsand repurposing that content for new audiences and applications. The basicprinciples of linked data—describing entities using unique identifiers, andproviding links between related objects using these identifiers in order toenrich them both—tie into the desire for libraries to link their own digitalresources with related materials held by other libraries, cultural institutions,or other entities publishing content on the Web.

This article will provide an overview of linked data principles, discussthe benefits and challenges of providing geographic information in metadatarecords, the development of standards for interface design, provide examplesof how location based searches are valuable to users, and offer opportunitiesfor future research.

LINKED DATA IN PRACTICE

Linked data is built on two foundations. First is the “technology stack” oftransmission protocols (such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol [HTTP]) and datamarkup and serialization standards (such as Resource Description Frame-work [RDF] and Web Ontology Language [OWL]) that encode the data. Sec-ond are the controlled vocabularies governing the terms that may be linked,provided through linked data hubs such as DBpedia. These provide not onlythe terms for describing objects, but also their associated Uniform ResourceIdentifiers (URIs), so that links to additional resources may be made. Muchof the early work done by cultural institutions to integrate themselves intothe linked data space has been focused on publishing subject headings andauthority data in a form that may be linked by themselves and by other do-mains. Examples of this work include the Library of Congress authority files,3

the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF),4 and the Repertoire d’autorite-matiere encyclopedique et alphabetique unifie (RAMEAU) subject headingspublished by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.5

For geospatial applications, the key linked data hub is the GeoNamesservice, which provides persistent URIs and metadata about a variety ofgeographic locations.6 One of the key features of GeoNames is that eachentity described in its database includes an RDF serialization, allowing fordirect links from other linked data-enabled services. In this way GeoNameshas positioned itself as an essential data source for any developer workingon a linked data application with a geospatial component.

There are many benefits to being able to ingest geospatial metadatafrom linked data vocabularies using existing metadata in library catalogrecords. By integrating links to widely used linked data vocabularies intothe catalog, libraries can take advantage of the rich metadata encoded in

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those vocabularies and enrich their own metadata substantially. By usingthis two-way relationship, they may build additional interfaces and improvethe coverage of their records, including support for temporal and spatialinterfaces. From this they may be able to provide map-based access to libraryresources of all kinds, or allow users to create their own research guides toresources of interest, or a variety of other new services or applications.

Allowing for encoding of coordinate points in catalog records wouldnot necessarily require manual revisiting of all of the records in everycatalog. Many linked data services, including DBpedia and GeoNames,deliver data through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that al-low users to ingest substantial amounts of new metadata with simple in-puts of data they already have on hand. By knowing the name of thelocation for which one requires coordinate points, the GeoNames APIwill return a variety of data, including the latitude and longitude points;from here it is a matter of transforming the data from the Web ser-vice’s native export format into one more suitable for ingest into a librarycatalog.

Sustained collaboration among cultural institutions will greatly assistefforts to include coordinate metadata in library catalogs. Collaborative cata-loging initiatives already exist in North America, through efforts such as theLibrary of Congress’ Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) and its asso-ciated programs. These can provide a framework for developing linked dataprograms in libraries, and for communicating the work in this space to otherlibraries. Just as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) serves as acentral hub for library metadata that may be linked to other linked data vo-cabularies to download coordinate points, the Library of Congress may alsoplay a key role in coordinating the development of linked data initiativesand training of library cataloging staff in these efforts, as well as continuingto connect LCSH to other linked data vocabularies such as GeoNames.

Working within the linked data network will allow library metadatato connect with metadata created by other domains. This will enhancediscovery layers, especially geospatial ones, by allowing users to click ona location or point of interest and view external metadata drawn from alinked data hub that goes well beyond what libraries have created (andvice-versa; other domains may take advantage of our data by the same turn).Taking advantage of linked data allows our metadata to be more broadlyaccessed by a wider community of users. Additionally, because linked dataoperates at the network level by design, cataloging work may be sharedwith other metadata specialists in other communities. This network-levelcooperative cataloging will allow libraries to focus on “hidden collections”(i.e., those special collections and unique local holdings that are currentlyunder-exposed). Connecting library metadata describing these resources tothe linked data cloud, whether through producing our own linked data or

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consuming that produced by others, will improve access to library collectionsand discovery layers and further enrich the linked data cloud on the Web.7

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Because most of the early work on building a linked data ecosystem hasbeen focused on publishing and exposing vocabularies, end-user servicesare not as mature. Recently however, a handful of examples of user-facingservices using linked data have emerged. One of these is DBpedia Mobile,a mobile device application developed by Becker and Bizer at the FreieUniversitat Berlin, which is an example of an innovative user interface drivenby linked data, from which users may discover digital resources of whichthey were previously unaware.8 This application takes as input the locationof a mobile device as communicated through its global positioning system(GPS) coordinates, and returns a map with links to nearby points of interestencoded within the DBpedia database, based on the latitude and longitudepoints contained in the corresponding RDF-encoded metadata. From thisinterface, users may follow these links and discover additional informationabout those points of interest.

In an article in Computers in Libraries, Anne-Lena Westrum describedthe challenges in developing an open library catalog for the Oslo PublicLibrary (OPL), and how they utilized linked data concepts to address thesechallenges in a way that made sense to end users.9 By connecting the datain their local catalog to linked open data vocabularies, they were able toenhance access to the items in their collection by providing contextual in-formation about authors derived from DBpedia and VIAF. Using linked dataimproved the OPL’s discovery services in two ways. By consuming linkeddata, they were able to allow for additional access points and advancedqueries of their catalog data; by producing it (i.e., by publishing it usingRDF and machine-readable identifiers), they allowed third-party access totheir metadata, providing visualizations of their metadata beyond what wereconsidered during the project’s implementation.

These examples demonstrate the power of using linked data to improveaccess to library catalogs, and the power of publishing that linked librarydata using open licenses such as Creative Commons Zero10 so that end userscan develop applications to re-use it and enhance access further. By applyingthese principles to geospatial access, libraries can provide vastly improvedservice through their catalogs and discovery layers to users whose querieshave a geographic focus, whether they know it or not. Vocabularies suchas GeoNames and DBpedia, which provide coordinate metadata for placenames, historical events, and so forth, provide the back-end support for theseservices. Many popular Web sites, well known to most users of online librarycatalogs, provide guideposts for the front-end services. Included in these

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services is Google Maps itself, as well as sites such as Flickr11 that use freeonline map services to provide geospatial access points to cultural heritageresources. They allow for contributors to place photographs submitted to thesites on a map, and for users to browse or search for resources that interestthem based on geographic entry points. The benefits of connecting thesetwo threads of cultural institutional practice to increase coordinate accessto library metadata and utilizing linked data as a means to this end areapparent. The challenge, then, becomes getting there through a method thatscales upward.

THE FUTURE OF GEOGRAPHIC SEARCH INTERFACE

The current state of search and discovery in libraries is bland at best, evenwith the integration of second-generation discovery systems. Libraries havenot worked to find dynamic, creative, interactive means for accessing theircollections and we are stuck with the same old, text driven search and resultsscreen when searching in an online catalog. While providing a geographicsearch interface for cartographic collections makes sense, one can argue thatit also makes sense to do so for all library collections, and to provide analternate version of the traditional online public access catalog (OPAC) aswell. Integrating geographic linked data vocabularies into existing librarymetadata would allow libraries to create such search interfaces, not onlyfor their digital collections but also possibly more importantly for their printcollections. Users would be able to explore entire library collections basedon where an item was written, or where a story takes place, or from wherean author lived. Based on this idea, the user would then be able to exploreother material from that same area, as these would also appear in the searchresults.

In 2010 Marcy Bidney made the case for inclusion of geographic co-ordinates in the catalog records of cartographic material to enhance thecapabilities of providing alternate access points for print and digital mapcollections, and called for continued research on how the Semantic Weband linked data could further efforts to provide visual geographic interfaceaccess points for library collections.12 Almost simultaneously Klokan Tech-nologies, based in Switzerland, was hard at work developing a new rankingalgorithm, which they named MapRank.13 The development of this algorithmresulted in a successful geographic search interface for digital cartographiccollections. Implementation of this interface can be seen at the David Rum-sey Map Collection site14 and also at the Bibliotheque electronique suisse,the Swiss Electronic Library.15 In both cases the user is exploring the digitalcollections by zooming in and out of the map interface and seeing relevantsearch results appear on the right-hand side of the screen. The searchingfunction of these sites is along the more traditional lines as it utilizes existing

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metadata records for digital objects that include bounding box coordinatedata, allowing the computer to search within a boxed area on the map. Al-though it serves to search a specific set of metadata records and does notutilize linked data technologies, it is the first successful implementation ofthis type of search interface for digital cartographic collections and providesmuch promise for the future of geospatial search interface development.

The Finnish Culture Sampo site is a rare example of how cultural in-stitutions such as museums, historical societies, and libraries can begin toharness Semantic Web technologies to create dynamic, interactive, visualsearch interfaces based on geography.16 This project pulled information to-gether from approximately twenty Finnish cultural institutions and, amongother means of access, provides access via geography using a Google Mapsinterface. The Culture Sampo site brings together a variety of digital objectssuch as maps, poems, books, and folk songs, along with tagged images fromPanoramio and Wikipedia, allowing a user to analyze Finnish culture in away that creates a more complete picture by combining information objectsspread across the Web.

Both of these projects provide a glimpse at what is technologically pos-sible in the development of alternate search interface design. While neitheris optimal, a combination of the two—the clean, smooth functioning inter-face of MapRank search along with the Semantic Web technology used byFinnish Culture Sampo, would result in an amazing geographic search anddiscovery experience as represented in the Finnish Culture Sampo site.

CONCLUSION

There are many challenges to the creation of these interfaces, but as notedearlier, it is no longer technology that stands in the way. According to God-dard and Byrne one of the biggest challenges is the change that will have tooccur in libraries to bring these projects to reality.17 Utilizing linked data vo-cabularies and integrating these into the traditional controlled vocabularies towhich librarians are accustomed, represents a major shift in thinking for manycataloging librarians and would represent a major shift in cataloging policiesacross the board. Another challenge mentioned by Westrum is the need for“a modern metadata format that is open and flexible.” MARC does not fitthis description, and while Resource Description and Access (RDA) allowsmore flexibility and openness to library metadata records, library metadatarecords have a long way to go before they can be considered truly openand flexible. Some other challenges exist in dissemination of the knowledgeabout linked data and the Semantic Web. Goddard and Byrne note this byreviewing library conference proceedings and commenting on the lack ofpublished articles on linked data but with a sense that the seas are startingto shift toward an increased awareness. Despite these and other challenges,

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libraries should begin to shift their thinking toward utilizing linked data andthe Semantic Web as these technologies are proving to be a powerful toolfor the future of information search and discovery.

The future of alternate user interface design for accessing library col-lections is bright. There is a lot of work still ahead to bring features suchas a geographic search interface to our users but we are finally in a timewhere the technology exists for this to happen, now we just need to beginto change the way we think about, create, and work with metadata.

NOTES

1. Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” Scientific American284, no. 5 (2001): 34–43.

2. Gillian Byrne and Lisa Goddard, “The Strongest Link: Libraries and Linked Data,” D-Lib. 16,no. 11 (2010), http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november10/byrne/11byrne.html

3. LC Linked Data Service—Authorities & Vocabularies (Library of Congress), http://id.loc.gov/(accessed February 6, 2012).

4. VIAF: Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), http://viaf.org/ (accessed February 6, 2012).5. Bibliotheque nationale de France, RAMEAU: Accueil, http://rameau.bnf.fr/ (accessed February

6, 2012).6. GeoNames. http://www.geonames.org/ (accessed February 6, 2012).7. Jan Hannemann and Jurgen Kett, “Linked Data for Libraries” (paper presented at the

76th IFLA World Library and Information Congress, Gothenburg, Sweden, August 10–15, 2010),http://conference.ifla.org/past/2010/149-hannemann-en.pdf

8. Christian Becker and Christian Bizer, “DBpedia Mobile: A Location-Enabled Linked DataBrowser” (paper presented at Linked Data on the Web [LDOW2008], Beijing, China, April 22, 2008),http://mes-semantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/beckerBizer-DBpediaMobile-ldow2008.pdf (ac-cessed November 17, 2012).

9. Anne-Lena Westrum, “The Key to the Future of the Library Catalog is Openness,” Computersin Libraries 31, no. 3 (2011): 10–14.

10. CC0—Creative Commons Zero, http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/ (accessed Novem-ber 27, 2012).

11. Flickr, Welcome to Flickr—Photo Sharing, http://www.flickr.com/ (accessed February 6, 2012).12. Marcy M. Bidney, “Can Geographic Coordinates in the Catalog Record Be Useful?” Journal of

Map & Geography Libraries 6, no. 2 (2010): 140–150, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15420353.2010.49230413. Markus Oehrli et al., “MapRank: Geographical Search for Cartographic Materials in Libraries,”

D-Lib 17, no. 9/10(2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/september2011-oehrli14. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection | The Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com/

(accessed February 6, 2012).15. Bibliotheque electronique suisse, Kartenportal.CH: Geographical Search (beta), http://

kartenportal.mapranksearch.com/en/ (accessed February 6, 2012).16. CultureSampo, Kulttuurisampo—suomalainen kulttuuri semanttisessa web 2.0:ssa,

http://www.kulttuurisampo.fi/index.shtml (accessed February 6, 2012).17. Lisa Goddard and Gillian Byrne, “Linked Data Tools: Semantic Web for the

Masses,” First Monday 15, no. 11 (2010), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3120/2633

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