Interlinking books with the world Using the Semantic Web to create books as reliable, machine-understandable information service providers

Ben De MeesterTom De Nies, Wesley De Neve, Erik Mannens, Rik Van De WalleUniversity Ghent – iMinds – Multimedia Lab

http://booksinbrowsers.org/2014-abstracts/#BenDeMeester

Books in Browsers | October 23-24 2014 | San Francisco

On the menu:

Digital books are valuable databases… That are closed.

Once opened…

… they can be (inter)linked.

Once interlinked…

What advantages does a digitized version provide, information-wise?

vs.

<?

LINKS

SEARCHES

You get the info you want…If you know what to look for.

There can be more in a book than what meets the eye…

+

From a book with textto a book with information

+

informationthat can be interlinked

http://lod-cloud.net/

Digital books asan API to information

API?

Querying!

Lets SPARQL books!

Lets SPARQL books!PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>

SELECT DISTINCT ?personWHERE { ?book a schema:book . ?book schema:name “Les Misérables” . ?book schema:actor ?person }

Returns all characters of the book Les Misérables.

Lets SPARQL books!PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>

SELECT DISTINCT ?personWHERE { ?book a schema:book . ?book schema:name “Les Misérables” . ?book schema:actor ?person }

Returns all characters of the book Les Misérables.

Go from

ToPREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>

SELECT DISTINCT ?personWHERE { ?book a schema:book . ?book schema:name “Les Misérables” . ?book schema:actor ?person }

?personJean ValjeanCosette…

Interlink information inside a book…

Where is character Aat time B?

http://neoformix.com/2013/NovelViews.html

http://xkcd.com/657/

… interlink books with each other…

Paris New YorkMarseilleSan Francisco Paris

What books are about Paris?

… interlink books with each other…

Paris New YorkMarseilleSan Francisco Paris

What books are about Paris?

… interlink books with each other…

Paris New YorkMarseilleSan Francisco Paris

What books are about France?

http://www.jinni.com/

… and interlink books with the world!

http://smalldemons.com/

http://www.lookagain.me.uk/draculadissected/

To take away

By enabling queries for the Semantic information in-side digital books, we can interlink the information inside books…

And get all this for free:

Our project

Our pilot project partners:

The Publisher of the Future