The Semantic Web, Libraries, and Visual Resources - Organizer and Moderator: Steve Tatum, Art and Architecture Library, Virginia Tech University
Speakers: Christine Cavalier, Department of Art and Art History, Tufts University; Amy Lucker, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Greg Reser, Arts Library, University of California San Diego
Abstract: The World Wide Web was conceived as a network of resources, where machines could discover data from diverse sources and assemble them into useful information, as if the web were an unbounded database assembled by infinite contributors. This is the semantic web. At its heart are well constructed metadata presented in machine readable form. Since the inception of the semantic web, tools and techniques have been developing to enable its purposes. Familiar examples are XML as a machine readable structure for metadata, Dublin Core, and VRA Core 4. Less familiar to many is RDF (Resource Description Framework), which links metadata from different sources and schemas, a function that is central to the semantic web. Although the semantic web is at an early stage in it growth, library and visual resource projects are already using its tools and concepts. One presentation in our group explores concatenating information which uses varieties of vocabularies as access points, that is, linking images and books and articles, all of which use different schema and have different content. A second describes how concept mapping in teaching art history is similar to visualizing linked data on the semantic web. A third describes writing metadata into digital images as a part of the visual resources workflow, using Adobe panels that incorporate XML and RDF. These presentations help to illumine diverse facets of the semantic web and also describe projects that are interesting in their own right. They indicate where we are headed as the semantic web gathers momentum.