March 29, 2011 – In its purest form, linked data can be found at the research desk in any library. Access to sources and pertinent information connected to, but beyond, your initial inquiry can make your results more inclusive and dynamic.

The article, “Linked Data: Uniting Scotland’s Past,” that we found on Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative inspired this topic. Linked data, as we know it today, consists of any information that has been connected and integrated with other information within the semantic web. The selling point of the semantic web is the way it can build relationships between items that are often easily connected in the human mind but not in computers. Linked data’s role in this is creating the relationships and defining the properties of things that make up the semantic web.

Without linked data, what does the semantic web have to offer?

Melody K. Smith