In Collaboration with In Concert: Reflecting a Digital Library as Linked Data for Performance Ephemera

Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller¹, Alan Dix^2,3, David M. Weigl¹, and Kevin R. Page¹

¹ Oxford e-Research Centre University of Oxford, UK
² School of Computer Science, Universty of Birmingham, UK
³ Talis, Birmingham, UK

Abstract

Diverse datasets in the area of Digital Musicology expose complementary information describing works, composers, performers, and wider historical and cultural contexts. Interlinking across such datasets enables new digital methods of scholarly investigation. Such bridging presents challenges when working with legacy tabular or relational datasets that do not natively facilitate linking and referencing to and from external sources. Here, we present pragmatic approaches in turning such legacy datasets into linked data.

InConcert is a research collaboration exemplifying these approaches. In this paper, we describe and build on this resource, which is comprised of distinct digital libraries focusing on performance data and on concert ephemera. These datasets were merged with each other and opened up for enrichment from other sources on the Web via conversion to RDF. We outline the main features of the constituent datasets, describe conversion workflows, and perform a comparative analysis. Our findings provide practical recommendations for future efforts focused on exposing legacy datasets as linked data.

Keywords: linked data, RDF, concert ephemera, performance metadata,
workflows, batch and live processing.

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Alan Dix 17/9/2016