Reactivating the ADHO Linked Open Data SIG

After a hiatus of some years, the ADHO Linked Open Data Special Interest Group is being reactivated under the joint leadership of trouble makers Molly Hardy and Rob Warren. 

The original mission of the ADHO Linked Open Data (LOD) SIG was "to bridge between the DH community and the semantic web community of practice, encouraging and facilitating the interconnection and interoperability of open online Humanities resources, by raising awareness of new developments (both content and technology) and discussing and developing best practices".

So far the adoption of Linked Open Data (LOD) has been modest in the DH community. It still shows promise as a means of publishing and exchanging data between projects and the creation of ontologies using semantic web standards as a means of communicating complex abstractions and negotiating areas of consensus merits further study. 

Some of the obstacles that are ongoing include poor user and developer-oriented tools, lack of standardization within domains of study, concerns over the applicability of discrete ontologies to complex humanities discourse and limited 'clean' data sources with which to begin publication. 

This list is not exhaustive and additions are welcome.

Please join us on the LOD SIG mailing list for further discussions about moving things forward. Submissions can be made to lod@lists.digitalhumanities.org and list registration can be made at http://lists.lists.digitalhumanities.org/mailman/listinfo/lod.