Erik T. Mitchell

You've heard about the promise of Linked Data. But what s happening now? In the past few years, the library, archive, and museum (LAM) communities have developed new tools and standards, published new vocabularies, and explored new use cases and applications all with an eye toward sharing more data and increasing the visibility of their data across the web. As some early projects enter production, some institutions are shedding old systems and historic metadata practices. More fully formed models are emerging, and with them, standards, use cases, and conversion tools that will help your library experiment without starting from scratch. This issue of Library Technology Reports looks at large-scale projects such as BIBFRAME, DPLA, and WorldCat. Describing a trajectory of adoption, Mitchell examines the policies and practices influencing the community.

Computers increasingly collect, manage, and analyse data for scholarly research. Linked data gives libraries the ability to support this e-research, making it a powerful tool. Libraries are at a tipping point in adoption of linked data, and this issue of Library Technology Reports explores current research in linked open data, explaining concepts and pioneering services, such asFive building blocks of metadata data model, content rules, metadata schema, data serialisation, and data exchangeThree case studies Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, and BIBFRAMEHow libraries, archives and museums are currently addressing such issues as metadata quality, open data and business models, cross community engagement, and implementation