Opening Up Metadata: Challenges, Standards & Tools

13 June 2012, London

This event was collaboratively run by the Open Knowledge Foundation, UK Discovery, Dev CSI and DM2E and was aimed at non-technical staff from within the library and cultural heritage sectors who wanted to know more about what openness means for their sector and how to open up their data. Participants were introduced to some of the key technical concepts in the debates around openness, presented with how tos on opening up their data and given opportunities to discuss the unique technical challenges to openness they have faced within their institutions.

The day was arranged around a series of talks and presentations addressing:

• making "the best that has been thought and said" visible and available relevance to the democratisation of learning
• Key technical concepts in open metadata — APIs, Linked Data, Metadata standards
• How tos on getting your data ready for hackathons
• Case studies from cultural heritage instituions who have experience in opening up their metadata — The British Library, Cambridge University Library
• Group discussions concerning the obstacles faced by your institution in trying to open up your data

The event ran alongside the Bibliographic Hackathon, #BiblioHack, a two day long event for coders developing open source tools for working with bibliographic data.

Speakers
Adrian Stevenson (Mimas), Joy Palmer (UK Discovery), Harry Harrold (Neon Tribe), Owen Stephens (UK Discovery), Neil Wilson (British Library), Ed Chamberlain (Cambridge Unviersity Library) Steffen Hennicke (DM2E/Humboldt University)

You can read a report from the day on the Open GLAM blog.