Navigating the Semantic Web

George LossiusCEO Publishing Technology

Overview

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•What is linked data or the semantic web?•Definitions •Why do we need it?•Who is using it now? •Business benefits for the trade

Overview

AudienceDevelopment

ContentDelivery

What do we do, our qualifications?

Our consultative approach is to tailor our suite of products and services to create the most robust solution for the management, promotion and delivery of our clients’ content.

ContentForward

ContentSystems

What is the Semantic Web and linked data?

Web 2.0

What is the web?

Document or information retrieval

Search engines

HTML to understand the syntax of the document

Data is mostly stored as metadata

You search and you retrieve which is fine if you know

exactly what you are looking for

Rigid and the information is held in silos

Web 3.0

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of

analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions

between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this

possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms

of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines

talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages

will finally materialize.”

— Tim Berners-Lee, 1999

What is the Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web takes the web solution further

Web of linked data ‘v’ web of documents

Framework of emerging standards (W3C)

Structured content – standard way of describing “things”

Ontology

Inference / relationships

Interoperable

Combination of data from diverse sources

Semantic Web Terminology

Definitions

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Web Ontology Language (OWL)

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Databases

Extensible HTML (XHTML)

Semantic websites

Religion

Taxonomy

Religion

Biblical Studies

Buddhism

Christianity

Comparative Religion

Hinduism

Islam

Judaism

Mystical and Esoteric

Anabaptist, Mennonite

Catholic Studies

Christian Theology

Church History

Quaker Studies

Taxonomy Development

For example, the GSE taxonomy contains

Climate change, pollution & environmental impacts

- Water pollution

- Air pollution

After enhancing with Library of Congress classification

Climate change, pollution & environmental impacts

- Water pollution – variants: aquatic pollution, water contamination

Marine pollution – variants: ocean pollution, sea pollution

Oil pollution of water – variants: petroleum pollution of water

Estuarine pollution – variants: estuary pollution

- Air pollution

Improved search - Enhancing auto-suggest

Using taxonomy information for “did you mean”

Guiding the user through facets

Guiding the user through suggestions

Boosting relevant results / concepts

Concept homepages

Concept homepages

Showing concepts on item homepages

Engineering technology to deliver the revolution 23

Suggest related items

Who else is using it?

Profile information provided as part of Research Exchange

Find researchers by location

View co-authors

Professional Networks

Who else is using it?

Online giants

Who else is using it?

Online giants

But why do we need it?

Time poor users, information rich environment

Information overload

Content existing in various sites and silos

Low tolerance, users want to find information quickly and easily

Increased reliance on search engines (but tertiary)

In the context of publishing…

Solid foundation for content storage & delivery

Income - Flexibility to repackage content, create new products, drive new features

User can find relevant information – discoverability

Semantically enrich content – gives meaning to the searches so the search engines deliver relevant results

Improving usage of content

User centric digital strategy

Ability to break down content silos & enrich products

Interoperability

Providing external context to content

george.lossius@publishingtechnology.com

blog.publishingtechnology.com

@publishingtech