Crossing the boundaries of Arts and Sciences: Can Linked Data help Refactoring Natural Sciences?Gildas ILLIEN, Chief Librarian, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris

VIII Encounter of Documentation Centres of Contemporary ArtArtium, Vitora-Gasteiz, October 19-20 2016

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Who I am Many people believe I’m a digital expert. It’s a joke. I just like organizing things and people to make change

happen. 11 years at the National Library of France (BNF)

Implemented Web archiving and the legal deposit of the web Took part in mass digitization, digital library (Gallica) and digital preservation Pushed national library catalogues towards Linked Open Data (data.bnf.fr)

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: The short versionScope: connecting library catalogues (metadata), digital contents and other online resources spread in silos, from inside and outside (WorldCat, Wikipedia…) the National LibraryMotivations:

aligning and clustering data and contents about the same things, improve online exposure and ranking from Google and other engines, simplify and enrich end-user experience, encourage use and reuse of data = make most of years of human cataloguing!

Key words for making it happen: Quality of metadata, especially authority files (authors, works, things, places…), Combining old (MARC) and new (FRBR) bibliographic standards Using stable identifiers (URIs), RDF expression Implementing smart data computing/mining techniques from outside the library world Employing smart people with an open mind (open data licenses, CC-BY compliant)

Lessons learnt: it’s hard to explain, hard to do and to maintain, but it’s really exciting as when it works it really works!

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http://www.slideshare.net/bne/semantic-web-bnfgildasillien

http://data.bnf.fr/en/about

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Why I’m here? I received a kind invitation. I recently changed job, have provocative ideas and am looking for

compassion and inspiration. As the world is changing and as I’m getting older I think I/we might

need to think and work differently with machines and people. Digital overload? Data deluge? Sense of loss. In this digital and dangerous world, what we miss most, which cultural

& scientific institutions might never dare properly marketing because it seems against all trends and tools:

Emotions Direct mediation Physical experience Inspiration

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Where I am now The Natural History Museum Library: a Sleeping Beauty? Amazing heritage and collections (2 M) (Most) scientists have gone away (online) A lonely planet.

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Silos and silence (almost) everywhere 18 libraries, 72 people: an archipel Books, serials, archives, manuscripts, drawings, sculptures,

instruments… 2 distinct services in charge of collection management (but no service

dedicated to public services), 4 catalogues An invisible building A invisible digital library

Library entrance

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My new challenge: RE-CONNECTING the library

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BUT RECONNECTING WHOM WITH WHAT?

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ANIMALS ?

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GARDENS ?

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SCIENTISTS ?

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EXPEDITIONS ?

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TREASURES ?

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PEOPLE ?

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My secret plan for now: do linked Data without data, first

I started digital to get to the physical. I decided to do the other way around here.Connect the staff INSIDE the library (management, restructuration…)Connect library staff to library USERS, differently (events, changing space…)Connect the library to the rest of the Museum (politics, services, communications)From there, explore new possibilities to develop the library services, targeting new audiences other than the initial natural scientists

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Living plants, greenhouses & gardens

LIBRARY collections & services

NATURALIST collections

BOTANIC collections

Dead plants& herbarium

Living animals & zoos

ZOOLOGIC collections

Dead animals & specimen

MINERAL collections

GALLERIES

Maritime stations & marinarium

RESEARCH depts. & labs

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DESIGN A GARDEN LIBRARY?A LIBRARY GARDEN ?

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DESIGN A ZOO LIBRARY?A LIBRARY ZOO ?

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LIBRARY collections & services

Designed by and for scientists (and now mostly ignored by them)

Could serve other publics in search of•Emotions•Direct mediation•Inspiration

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My secret plan for tomorrow: data.museum Build a linked data project on top of the new links and communities created between peopleLibrary catalogues and digital holdings could be connected to :

Taxonomic databases Digital Specimen databases Participative sciences (crowdsourcing) databases …

Key words for making it happen (again) : Quality of authority files (authors, works, things, places…), Combining old (MARC) and new (FRBR) bibliographic standards stable identifiers (URIs), RDF expression smart data computing techniques from outside the library world smart people, open mind (open data licenses, CC-BY compliant)

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Conclusions What if LOD was just - or first- a way to envision and manage projects

(not just standards and tools)? Linked data is basically about connecting data on people, things, places

and events to other data (e.g. bibliographic records, digitized contents, born digital stuff…) and make it all visible on the web, so that users actually get a chance to use the data your staff spent hours producing.

If you can’t afford working hard with data and machines, you might just as well start connecting people, things, places and events to people’s lives.

It is not possible to connect every data to every data, so the idea is to test the best connections and alignements in real life first.

This might give you the right inspiration and directions to play creatively with your data afterwards. In the meantime, keep focused on the quality of your data production, otherwise it will never work. Sorry, there’s no magic

gildas.illien@mnhn.fr

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