JISC OpenBibliography: British Library data release

The JISC OpenBibliography project is excited to announce that the British Library is providing a set of bibliographic data under CC0 Public Domain Dedication Licence.

We have initially received a dataset consisting of approximately 3 million records, which is now available as a CKAN package. This dataset consists of the entire British National Bibliography, describing new books published in the UK since 1950; this represents about 20% of the total BL catalogue, and we are working to add further releases. In addition, we are developing sample access methods onto the data, which we will post about later this week.

Agreements such as these are crucial to our community, as developments in areas such as Linked Data are only beneficial when there is content on which to operate. We look forward to announcing further releases and developments, and to being part of a community dedicated to the future of open scholarship.

Usage guide from BL:

This usage guide is based on goodwill. It is not a legal contract. We ask that you respect it.

Use of Data: This data is being made available under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication licence. This means that the British Library Board makes no copyright, related or neighbouring rights claims to the data and does not apply any restrictions on subsequent use and reuse of the data. The British Library accepts no liability for damages from any use of the supplied data. For more detail please see the terms of the licence.

Support: The British Library is committed to providing high quality services and accurate data. If you have any queries or identify any problems with the data please contact metadata@bl.uk.

Share knowledge: We are also very interested to hear the ways in which you have used this data so we can understand more fully the benefits of sharing it and improve our services. Please contact metadata@bl.uk if you wish to share your experiences with us and those that are using this service.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due: The British Library has a responsibility to maintain its bibliographic data on the nation’s behalf. Please credit all use of this data to the British Library and link back to www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html in order that this information can be shared and developed with today’s Internet users as well as future generations.

Link to British Library announcement