CanLink: Linked Open Theses

CanaLien : un projet de données liées pour les thèses Canadiennes - CanLink : a linked data project for Canadian theses is now online!

CanLink is a collection of thesis data from collaborating institutions part of the Canadian Linked Data Initiative. It features over 5,000 theses from participating Canadian universities[1] on a broad range of topics, from "post-humans" to "mechano-electric feedback" with new theses being added on an ongoing basis. The project is an initiative of the Digital Projects committee of the Canadian Linked Data Initiative with the development work done by Sharon Farnel, Rob Warren and Maharsh Patel[2].

The data set is described in void / dcat format and is also registered in the Data Hub. The virtual machine is provided by West Grid and the domain name is provided by the University of Alberta.

Getting the data

The data is made available through a Linked Open Data interface and a website permits the simple querying of the data. A download page is available for bulk retrieval of the raw data itself, as well as the full Canadian Subject Headings dataset as re-hosted by canlink. The retrieval of individual records can be done through URL identifiers. Let's look at the thesis titled "Isolation and identification of the flavouring principle in maple syrup" (in 1925!) by Robinson. The thesis record itself can be retrieved in multiple different formats including rdf/xml, turtle, json-ld, ntriples, bibtex and ris by simply adding the extension to the URL or going through HTTP content negotiation.

¹. University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Library and Archives Canada/Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, Queens University, University of Toronto, McGill University, Université de Montréal and Memorial University of Newfoundland.

². Maharsh was supported by Young Canada Works and the University of Alberta Library.