Opening Up The British Library’s Metadata

Neil Wilson

Head of Metadata Services

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The British Library?

Receives a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland

The collection includes well over 150 million items, in most languages with 3 million new items added each year

We hold 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings

Operates the world's largest document delivery service providing millions of items a year to customers all over the world

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The British Library - St Pancras

Houses the British Library’s reference collections, exhibition galleries and conference centre

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The British Library – Boston Spa

Designed for document delivery services & housing a collection devoted to interlibrary loan

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British Library Metadata ServicesOrigins

Operated prior to the BL’s foundation as ‘The British National Bibliography’ (BNB) since 1950

Originally a service to the national and international library communities

Has evolved through many changes in technology: Print, CD-ROM, Online, Data file etc

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The Value of Bibliographic Metadata

Libraries source bibliographic metadata to reduce cataloguing, increase usage & efficiently acquire & manage stock

Publishers promote details of new works & availability of existing inventory to generate sales

Library users value the availability of ‘shortcut’ summary descriptions enabling efficient identification & selection of relevant material

Standardised free descriptive metadata is increasingly important to consumers acting as a product ‘label’ identifying key properties & summarising content

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The Evolving Information Landscape

Traditional library metadata derives from static & self contained library catalogue cards

The ‘Semantic Web’ uses a more dynamic model using linking to establish relationships between data elements & enabling users to navigate from one resource to related data within others

Traditional Metadata Semantic Metadata

PassiveSelf containedLinear text‘Read’ by users as result of database queryEnd resultDomain specific format

Dynamic/ReactiveLinked to external resourcesMicro PortalInteracts with users & external systems in response to queries Offers options for further inquiryOpen Structure

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Public Sector Data - Changing Expectations

The advent of the Web accelerated the development of a collaboration culture & fostered an expectation that information, metadata & content should be as freely available as the Internet itself

Many wider benefit arguments have been advanced for public bodies to make their data freely available

2009 saw an increasing Government commitment to the principle of opening up public data for wider re-use. The Putting the Frontline First: smarter government report requires “the majority of government-published information to be reusable, linked data by June 2011”

Benefit for state Benefit for public body

Stimulation of knowledge economy will generate tax revenue, business opportunities & jobs via innovation Public sector information is an underexploited resource & governments should maximise state benefits from their initial investment Encourages diversity of resources – no single supplier can create all services or contentTaxpayers have already paid once for data creation, why pay again?Minimal development required since the data is already created

Possible data cleanup for re-harvesting by organisationUser generated or added linked content may enhance internal data Offers free R&D & Management Information opportunitiesNew opportunities for collaboration to assist internal efficienciesIncreased reputation/relevance seen as inclusive community partnerOpportunities to offer new value added services on back of free offering

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Libraries - Changing Perceptions

“Librarians are book jailers locking knowledge away from users”

“I did my PhD with only 12 visits to the library. That was 5 years ago; things have improved since then, now you don’t need to use it at all!”

“The library world is far too insular; using formats that nobody outside understands, libraries must be more open and stop perpetuating unnecessary barriers”

“90% of users no longer use library catalogues. Instead they just use Google as a starting point for their research.”

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New Uses of Library Metadata

Library metadata has been given new value as formats & technologies for sharing it have arisen to assist re-use e.g.:

Research usage for efficient citation management (e.g. Pro-Cite)

Management of personal collections via bibliographic sharing services (e.g. LibraryThing, Open Library)

Mashups of data elements from multiple sources Mining of entire databases e.g. to identify publication trends Ebooks e.g. publishers re-use metadata to describe &

promote works republished in electronic form

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The British Library’s 2020 Vision

2020 Themes relevant to the metadata strategy:

Lead and collaborate in growing the world’s knowledge base

Enable access to everyone who wants to do research

Support research communities in key areas for social and economic benefit

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy

Developing an open metadata strategy presented us with some issues we needed to manage e.g. :

Financial and legal - loss of revenue from traditional bibliographic services, increasingly complex copyright and licensing frameworks

Reputational – perception that the BL is not keeping up with technology or meeting government & community expectations due to differing interpretations of ‘free’ & ‘open’

Free Open

Of cost?Of all licensing restrictions?To sell or re-use in commercial servicesTo copy & redistribute?

To access from anywhereTo modification/enhancementTo use with free software To linking from your data or system

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy

Free/Open Licensing Models

Currently many licensing models exist for putting material into the public domain & offering originators both credit & protection against liability

Because of this a range of collaborative licensing options has been developed by organisations such as Creative Commons & Open Knowledge Foundation

Few organisations give unconditional access to their metadata & parameterise their free offerings

Organisational Restrictions Free Offering

Scope Permissions

Ownership/Licensing agreements Legislation (e.g. Data Protection Act)Technical issues (e.g. data is non-standard format)Policy on sharing with for profit organisations etc

Data FormatCoverage/Inclusion PolicyDelivery routes (e.g. Web, FTP etc)Level of user support (if any)

To use for any purpose foreverTo study & adapt for local useTo redistribute copiesTo improve & release to the community

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy Choices

In opening our data we had the following objectives:

To try and break out of library specific formats (e.g. MARC) and use more cross domain XML based structures (DC, RDF etc)

To develop the formats with the communities using them

To adopt a multi track approach including traditional libraries, researchers and linked data

To try and get some form of attribution but to also use the form of licensing most appropriate to the wider use of our metadata

To come up with an affordable way of delivering the above

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy First Steps

During 2010 we:

Developed our capability to support non-library metadata standards used by the wider web community

Run free metadata trials with a range of partners including: LibraryThing community cataloguers, DCMS non-library developers, the UK Intellectual Property Office and UNESCO

Developed a free Z39.50 record download service for the library community to assist with derived cataloguing etc

Hosted a workshop on linked data with over 40 representatives from key international organisations involved in developing linked datasets and infrastructure

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy Current Status

Since our announcement in August we have:

Signed up over 200 organisations worldwide to our free MARC21 Z39.50 service

Begun working with other linked data implementers on technical challenges, standards and licensing issues

Created a new email enquiry point for BL metadata issues: metadata@bl.uk

Begun to offer our RDF/XML metadata under a CC0 license

Begun to supply 3 million record RDF/XML datasets to organisations including the Open Bibliography Project, the Open Library and Wikimedia

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Creating an Open Metadata Strategy Next Steps

During the next 6 months we intend to:

Create a prototype version of our catalogue with embedded URIs to linked data resources including DBpedia for experimental use in linked data initiatives

Extend coverage of our RDF/XML data to non-book materials (e.g. maps , printed music etc)

Co-operate with JISC to encourage wider experimentation with new BL RDF/XML bibliographic metadata

Examine collaborative options for creating and presenting linked data resources (e.g. with German National Library).

Find out more about how people are beginning to use our data

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The British Library

metadata@bl.uk