LAWDI 2013 Things to read

Linked Data, Tim Berners-Lee

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

This document is important for defining the 5 Stars of Linked Data. You can be well prepared for LAWDI by thinking about those stars or by being ready to ask questions about what they mean. It also belongs in the "Fundational Documents" below.

The Semantic Web isn't just about putting data on the web. It is about making links, so that a person or machine can explore the web of data. With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other, related, data.

Linked Things, Tom Scott

http://derivadow.com/2010/07/01/linked-things/

“Now many people will tell you (indeed I probably will too) that you need to distinguish the statements you make about the thing in the real world from the statements about the document. For example, a URI for me might return a document with some information about me, but the creation date for that document and the creation date for me are two different things. And because you don’t want to get confused it’s better to have a URI for the thing and another one for the document making assertions about the thing. Make sense?”

Linking Things and Common Sense, Ed Summers

http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/07/07/linking-things-and-common-sense/

“I agree that the really interesting assertions in Linked Data are about things, and their relations...”

Using "Punning" to Answer httpRange-14, Jeni Tennison

http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/170

“Like the meaning of a word, the sense that a URI refers to is a social understanding which emerges from use of the URI across the web, and a given URI may be used to refer to different senses in different sources of information or over time. Consumers interpret the information that uses a URI and is made available to them on the web in order to draw conclusions and perform a task. Different consumers will have different levels of trust in the particular interpretation of the URI that a given publisher provides; in particular, the information published by the supplier of the URI might be given a higher weight than that from third-party publishers.”

Video: RDF Failures & Linked Data Letdowns

http://www.cni.org/news/video-rdf-failures-linked-data-letdowns/

This 40 minute plus video is for the more technically inclined. It is bracing by way of being frank about failures but is optimistic by way of pointing out where Linked Data is making progress.

Cool URIs for the Semantic Web, W3C - edited by Leo Sauermann and Richard Cyganiak

http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/

The state of the art, 2008.

Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space (1st edition), Tom Heath and Christian Bizer

http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/

The state of the art, 2011. Expands on the previous document with more discussion and examples.

A Short History of "Resource", Tim Berners-Lee

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TermResource.html

Anecdotes about the relationship of the term "Resource" to "Document" and "Thing" and a nice synopsis of the W3C TAG's HTTPrange-14 finding. HTTPrange-14 changed (or hijacked, depending on your POV) the HTTP spec to segregate non-information resources (things) from information resources (documents).