Challenges arising
While the possible benefits for NBAs wishing to offer linked open data services are significant, the challenges should not be underestimated. These include:
- The financial impact on revenue from more traditional metadata services
- Complex copyright & licensing frameworks impacting on the ability to offer consistent
- Confusion arising from differing interpretations of the terms ‘free’ & ‘open’ by user communities
- The requirement to remodel traditional library data in a new linked data environment
- The need for sustainability and persistence of linked data resources
- The steep learning curve for library staff used to more traditional formats
- Choice of sites to link data to
- Creation of persistent identifiers for data elements
Fortunately the use of linked data in libraries is beginning to become more common and evolve from an experimental to a standard operational activity and an increasing amount of libraries are gaining expertise in the area. The IFLA 2014 satellite meeting included a range of presentations on different aspects of linked data activity from library organisations.