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Toward sustainable publishing and querying of distributed Linked Data archives

Miel Vander Sande (Department of Electronics and Information Systems, Ghent University – IMEC, Ghent, Belgium)
Ruben Verborgh (Department of Electronics and Information Systems, Ghent University – IMEC, Ghent, Belgium)
Patrick Hochstenbach (Ghent University Library, Ghent, Belgium)
Herbert Van de Sompel (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA)

Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Article publication date: 8 January 2018

1020

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to detail a low-cost, low-maintenance publishing strategy aimed at unlocking the value of Linked Data collections held by libraries, archives and museums (LAMs).

Design/methodology/approach

The shortcomings of commonly used Linked Data publishing approaches are identified, and the current lack of substantial collections of Linked Data exposed by LAMs is considered. To improve on the discussed status quo, a novel approach for publishing Linked Data is proposed and demonstrated by means of an archive of DBpedia versions, which is queried in combination with other Linked Data sources.

Findings

The authors show that the approach makes publishing Linked Data archives easy and affordable, and supports distributed querying without causing untenable load on the Linked Data sources.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed approach significantly lowers the barrier for publishing, maintaining, and making Linked Data collections queryable. As such, it offers the potential to substantially grow the distributed network of queryable Linked Data sources. Because the approach supports querying without causing unacceptable load on the sources, the queryable interfaces are expected to be more reliable, allowing them to become integral building blocks of robust applications that leverage distributed Linked Data sources.

Originality/value

The novel publishing strategy significantly lowers the technical and financial barriers that LAMs face when attempting to publish Linked Data collections. The proposed approach yields Linked Data sources that can reliably be queried, paving the way for applications that leverage distributed Linked Data sources through federated querying.

Keywords

Citation

Vander Sande, M., Verborgh, R., Hochstenbach, P. and Van de Sompel, H. (2018), "Toward sustainable publishing and querying of distributed Linked Data archives", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 74 No. 1, pp. 195-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2017-0040

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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