Library of Congress Linked Data Service

Library of Congress Linked Data Service
Owner	Library of Congress
URL	id.loc.gov
Commercial	No
Content license	Public domain
Written in	Python

The LC Linked Data Service is an initiative of the Library of Congress that publishes authority data as linked data.^[1] It is commonly referred to by its URI: id.loc.gov.^[2]

The first offering of the LC Linked Data Service was the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) dataset, which was released in April 2009.^[3]

Datasets

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF)
Library of Congress Classification—because LC Classification uses a different MARC format than LC Authorities, mapping LC Classification to MADS/RDF was more difficult than mapping LCSH or LCNAF.^[2]
Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials
Various MARC codes
Various preservation vocabularies

Formats

The service presents data in MADS/RDF and SKOS where appropriate, but also uses its own ontology to describe classification resources and relationships more accurately.^[2] All records are available individually via content negotiation as XHTML/RDFa, RDF/XML, N-Triples, and JSON.^[4]

Each vocabulary is also available to download in its entirety. Id.loc.gov does not currently provide a SPARQL endpoint.^[5]^[6]

Uses

All of LCSH are crosslinked with RAMEAU [d] (Répertoire d’autorité-matière encyclopédique et alphabétique unifié), an authority file from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.^[4]

Technical aspects

The id.loc.gov site initially used a fairly lightweight Python program to serve linked data.^[5]

References

^ "About". LC Linked Data Service. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
^ ^a ^b ^c Ford, Kevin (January 2013). "Library of Congress Classification as linked data". JLIS.it. 4 (1). doi:10.4403/jlis.it-5465. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
^ Guenther, Rebecca (2011-01-09). LC's Authorities and Vocabularies Web Service: experimenting with Linked Data (PDF). American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference. San Diego, California, US. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
^ ^a ^b Ford, Kevin (2010-11-02). ID.LOC.GOV, 1 ½ Years: Review, Changes, Future Plans, MADS/RDF (PDF). Digital Library Federation Fall Forum. Palo Alto, California, US. Retrieved 2014-06-01.
^ ^a ^b Summers, Ed; Isaac, Antoine; Redding, Clay; Krech, Dan; Schreiber, Guus; Summers, Ed (2008). "LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data". Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web. 20 (May 2013): 35–49. arXiv:0805.2855. doi:10.1016/j.websem.2013.05.001. S2CID 2266021. (NB. This appears to be two sources mixed up.)
^ "Technical Center". LC Linked Data Service. Retrieved 2014-06-01.