The Raven Has Landed: What do Edgar Allen Poe and Glenn Close know about Linked Open Data?

The raven has landed! And just in time for Halloween.

                 "The Raven" by Ivan Misic is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 via Creative Commons

Let me explain.

In our course at City, University London, we are exploring the phenomenon of creating a shared language on the web that computers can understand and speak. The idea is called Linked Open Data (LOD) and it is a component of what advocates call "The Semantic Web" (Floridi, for one, takes umbrage with this term and instead refers to it as the "Meta-Syntatic Web")(Floridi, 2009). One of the biggest advocates for establishing Linked-Open-Data is none other than Tim Berners-Lee, an English inventor who currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and the fellow who brought us the world wide web in the early 90s. In a much heralded 2009 TED talk, Berners-Lee explained some of the concepts of Linked Open Data (LOD). At one point, he even summoned his audience to scream out "Raw Data Now!"

                                                                Ted Talk Video, The Next Web, Ted2009

It was the battle cry of nerds everywhere.

To his credit though, LOD has the possibility of nudging the economy and scientific/aesthetic/humanitarian spheres into overdrive - that's because instead of data exchange having to rely on human-to-human contact on the web via HTML (think of all those hyperlinks you see in webpages and documents), the new method would be computer-generated automatic links that do the heavy lifting for us. 

As it stands now, much of the web's data is still couched in proprietary terms and trapped within the information silos of the earliest Web 2.0 pioneers like Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. These behemoths, unsurprisingly, are slow to get on board and share their data (Amazon is actually one notable exception and has been opening it up its data through its Amazon Web Services). With the other big players, we are left with the dusty tools of HTML and HTTP, relying on human beings to make the connections and not computers.

Glenn Close and Easter?

                                                                     photo by Alan Light

You may have noticed since 2012 that Google (another big player that is making strides in opening up data) created their "Google Knowledge Graph," an informative panel of the right-hand side of the page accompanying popular searches; it reads much like a Wikipedia entry. This creation is in line with linked open data; it is a graph mostly generated by computers rather than by human efforts.

For linked-open-data to work, it requires a triple:

OBJECT -------- PREDICATE -------- SUBJECT

The Predicate, or relationship, is the most important part.

Let us first go to "The Raven" example:

The following slides with the black background are from an excellent video by OCLC, the non-profit Online Computer Library Center, entitled "Linked Data for Libraries."

                     Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Slide of OCLC's Linked Data for Libraries Video

                     Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Slide of OCLC's Linked Data for Libraries Video

In linked-open-data, it is important to remember that one of the prerequisites is that each person, item, or concept has a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). This is distinct from the more familiar URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Think of a URI similar to a book's ISBN, the 13-digit International Standard Book Number that is unique to each book in print. Thus, "The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe, has a different URI than the common, squawking, blackbird "raven" (although each are equally spooky). The LOD programming schemes are able to disambiguate between them. With a separate URI, linked-open-data initiatives do not have to think closely about context (OCLC, 2012).

                     Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Slide of OCLC's Linked Data for Libraries Video

So just for fun, I wondered if for experiment's sake I could see if linked-open-data would find a connection between Glenn Close and Easter, a sort of parlor game of "Two Degrees of Separation." If Glenn Close had played an unstable femme fatale in the 1987 hit thriller "Fatal Attraction" and her character had done something unspeakable to a pet bunny rabbit, would she be connected to the Christian holiday of Easter since that is popularly represented (at least in the U.S.) by the famous Easter Bunny? 

                                         Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Still of Google search "Glenn Close Bunny"

                                      Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Still of Duck-Duck-Go search "Glenn Close Bunny"

Here you see that Google includes a Knowledge Graph when the search items of "Glenn Close and bunny" are paired but Duck-Duck-Go does not (although Duck-Duck-Go does include a knowledge graph when "Glenn Close" is searched alone). Neither  search engine provides a Knowledge Graph with the exotic pairing of "Glenn Close and Easter." Coincidentally, it looks like Glenn Close (whom I adore for the record) wore a periwinkle, tin foil-like dress to a premiere in Australia last April, so a critic from the Sydney Morning Herald wondered if it heralded a trend (Singer, 2019).

                            Photo Credit: Thomas Kilduff, Google Search "Glenn Close Easter"

                                                     Photo Credit: Jordan Strauss, AP

So why is all of this important?

Many hardworking individuals and organizations have been making LOD a reality at places called Schema.org and the VIAF (Virtual International Authority File). Librarians, especially, have been on the front lines as we specialize in taxonomies and ontologies. In fact, libraries of all kinds (medical, public, academic, legal) are already using linked data in order for our institutions to operate. 

Beyond that, the principle is about treating the internet and the world wide web as a shared resource, a utility rather than as a capitalist playground. Cooperation would flourish and those who want to cordon off their proprietary data would be banished from the marketplace and the conversation.

Personal Reservations

The idea of LOD is full of earnestness and idealism and is one in which hardworking individuals work across borders and languages. Participants include the national libraries of some three dozen different countries in places as diverse as New Zealand, Chile, Iceland, Lebanon, and Singapore (VIAF). If we can do that with coding languages, think of how we can share brainpower on other big-ticket agenda items like tackling inequality, poverty, disease, and climate change. 

But it must be said: Are we giving the VIAF too much power as a centralising force? Are triples subject to hacking and grafitti? What if a spurned ex-lover was somehow able to hack into the system and claim that YOU (Subject) ----- ROBBED (predicate) ---- BANKS (OBJECT). Would that action be tedious if not impossible to clean up?

Additionally, is there a place for humour and irreverence, and poetry (excepting Poe) in the world of linked data? Would our on-line society become too literal? Would it become a place of less creativity and become a breeding ground for what JK Rowling calls "Muggles?"

And if everything is limited by the predicate (or relationship) within the triple, does this limit the dynamism of the human experience? Like Walt Whitman once said, "I contain multitudes." Were he alive today, would he find LOD too stifling?

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Resources

Floridi, L. (2009) 'Web 2.0 vs. the Semantic Web: A Philosophical Assessment' Episteme. Available at: https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/handle/2299/3629 (Accessed: 30 October 2019).

OCLC (2012) Linked Data for Libraries [YouTube Video]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWfEYcnk8Z8 (Accessed: 30 October 2019).

VIAF: Virtual International Authority File. Available at https://www.viaf.org/ (Accessed: 30 October 2019)

Links (Chronologically) 

City, University London https://www.city.ac.uk/study/courses/postgraduate/library-science
Linked Open Data (LOD) https://www.w3.org/standards/
Tim Berners-Lee https://internethalloffame.org/inductees/tim-berners-lee
2009 Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web
HTML https://html.com/
Information Silo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_silo

Amazon Web Services https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/news/amazon-launches-its-sustainability-data-initiative
Google Knowledge Graph https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-a-knowledge-graph-a16603a1a25f
Linked Data for Libraries https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-a-knowledge-graph-a16603a1a25f
ISBN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

Schema.org https://schema.org/
VIAF https://www.viaf.org/
Muggles https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Non-magic_people

Resourceful and Ethical: The Critical Traits of the Modern Librarian

Specialists may make the big money but it is generalists who will inherit the Earth. This is especially true in the field of Library & Information Science (LIS). An LIS practitioner needs to have strong foundational knowledge of how all of the components fit together in what Dr. Lyn Robinson refers to as "the communication chain of recorded information" 

- or the -

 ⛓creation,
 ⛓dissemination,
 ⛓collection,
 ⛓storage,
 ⛓organization,
 ⛓indexing and classification,
 ⛓processing,
 ⛓retrieval,
 ⛓communication,
 ⛓use,
 ⛓and preservation of information. 

While some specialists like a journalist will focus solely on, say, communicating information, an LIS practitioner (or for brevity's sake, a librarian) is concerned with ALL aspects of the communication chain and is essentially in charge of keeping each component well-oiled. This is the takeaway from my first two weeks at library school.

Sam Tarly in Game of Thrones

Being intimate with ALL aspects of the communication chain of recorded information is not the only way that a librarian can prove her generalist credentials. LIS is not a discipline but a meta-discipline. It has its fingers in nearly every pot and is more akin to something like philosophy (for proof, see the beautiful artwork below). In a day's work, a librarian can go from working on safety evacuation documents (Management and Policy Area) to advertising a book club for retirees (Social Area and Communications Area) to updating an Excel spread sheet of patron information (Technological Area).

LIS overlaps constantly with other disciplines

This is why, for all intents and purposes, the first skill, even the first trait, that a librarian-in-training should bring to the table is that of resourcefulness. Without resourcefulness, you have nothing. You must be nimble on your feet and quick in your mind. Go wide or go home.

In a way, it's almost as if a librarian is multi-lingual. She need not be fluent in any particular tongue but should know enough of each of the major "languages" in order to respond swiftly and accurately to any of her patrons' requests. 

Let us consider an example. And for this example's argument, please make believe we are not living in fraught political times. Say you have a Syrian immigrant who wants to get hooked up with residency resources within the borough of Haringey. So he heads into one of the borough's branches and approaches his first librarian whom he sees. How should she proceed in helping him?

Parker Posey as Mary, a clubkid-turned-librarian, in Party Girl (1995)

1.) The first thing she would do is have a translator service like Bing Translator active on her desktop should there be any gaps in communication.
2.) Next she should provide more formal and legal residency resources such as the contact info, webpages and phone numbers of the UK Home Office and the Haringey council services.
3.) The next thing to do is to check her own library's resources about residency workshops and English language classes.
4.) Finally, with any sort of big move, finding a flat and a community are paramount. Based on her own street experience, the librarian would point the patron to housing search services like RightMove and/or SpareRoom as well as to Meet-Ups to find resources for new arrivals for language-learning, employment, and socializing. If the new arrival wants more face-to-face contact, the librarian should suggest popping into cafes and stores in Wood Green where there is a large Turkish and Arabic community - what we call "shoe-leather" research.

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A librarian does not live on resourcefulness alone, however. She needs to be driven by a sense of duty and ethics, for the field is littered with ethical landmines. 

The L or Library side of the equation, seemingly, has fewer ethical concerns (although one could make a parlor game coming up with all the current issues that plague public libraries). The known ethical issues in library may seem prosaic but they are quite entrenched; remedies depend more on a community response rather than the good conscience of a librarian. Examples follow:

- How to deal with funding cuts or austerity measures in a world that needs information literacy more than ever?

- Should libraries double-up as homeless shelters and daycare centers since that is how patrons are using them? Or would such an explicit move dilute their mission?

- Which books to retire or weed, which books to keep, which books to showcase, and which books to purchase?

- How to make sure that services are available to people with disabilities when budgets are incredibly tight?

The ethical quandaries in the 'I' part of LIS are more cumbersome and urgent and continue to grow in force and number like strains of Medusa's hair. Read my notes below:

Just a few ethical issues raised in LIS

To which, any sane LIS student reverts to a bit of Edvard Munch:

                                                            By Edvard Munch - National Gallery of Norway

Or, better yet, Janet Leigh:

Famous Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho

After the obligatory panic attack, it's important to remember that a good librarian will be on the side of integrity, transparency, and civic-mindedness. Should she do her job well she'll need a strong sense of ethics (or at least a solid understanding what the ethical issues in LIS are) as well as the trait of resourcefulness, either natural or learned. Her patrons are depending on this.