Panlibus » Blog Archive » Library of Congress launch Linked Data Subject Headings

Agree with this summary from Richard

On the surface, to those not yet bought in to the potential of Linked Data, and especially Linked Open Data, this may seem like an interesting but not necessarily massive leap forward. I believe that what underpins the fairly simple functional user interface they provide will gradually become core to bibliographic data becoming a first-class citizen in the web of data.

Overnight this uri ‘http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85042531’ has now become the globally available, machine and human readable, reliable source for the description for the subject heading of ‘Elephants’ containing links to its related terms (in a way that both machines and humans can navigate). This means that system developers and integrators can rely upon that link to represent a concept, not necessarily the way they want to [locally] describe it. This should facilitate the ability for disparate systems and services to simply share concepts and therefore understanding – one of the basic principles behind the Semantic Web. from Panlibus » Blog Archive » Library of Congress launch Linked Data Subject Headings.

Great to see LoC doing this stuff and getting it out there.