Antoine Isaac recently sent an e-mail around the List to let us know that Europeana has published its first dataset, comprising 2.4 million objects, under CC0. Furthermore, the new Data Exchange Agreement, which data suppliers are required to sign in order to publish on Europeana (and already signed by national libraries, national museums and content providers for entire countries), comes into effect on 1 July 2012, after which all metadata in Europeana will be available as Open Data to the Public Domain!
This is brilliant news in itself, but what I found particularly enchanting was the animated video that Europeana created in support of this announcement:
Linked Open Data from europeana on Vimeo.
As mentioned before, I am not of a technical background, and sometimes terms and explanations are difficult for me to grasp; however – I understand this video! I think it’s a brilliant explanation of the detail of Linked Open Data (LOD): how metadata works together, why it’s important that it’s open, how the more open data is available the more can be done with it, etc. This provides great clarity on what it is we’re seeking to do, for those of us who can’t tell a gig from a meg. The Open Biblio readership is generally more savvy with the nitty-gritty workings of LOD than I – if not in fact doing this sort of stuff already – but how can you not love the simplicity of this video?! It’s engaging, interesting, mostly jargon-free and less than four minutes long… So, if you’re an advocate of LOD without really understanding the processes behind the philosophy, get yourself a cuppa, settle down to watch this, and be informed.
Thanks Europeana, keep up the good work!
Europeana’s press release provides more information about the above dataset release and video.
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