Linked Data API Best Practices for Authoritative Data Working Group

Charter:

Scope & Objectives

This group will explore best practices for authorities that want to share their metadata through a linked data search API.  This work is specifically looking to provide recommendations that allow for the creation of a common toolset that works across authorities supported by different agencies.  The major outcome of this working group will be descriptions of the best practices in an easy to follow document empowering authority providers to create APIs and other deliverables that are compatible with supporting the development of a shared toolset.  Additional documentation may be created providing authority consumers with a consistent pattern for writing tools and consuming authority metadata.

This group should be comprised of a balance of members from multiple authority providers, authority consumers, and tool developers.  Members need to be able to commit to the following deliverables and timeframe.

Deliverables & Timeframe

Deliverables will include:

• Primary: Documentation of best practices for authority providers creation of linked data search APIs

• Secondary: Documentation of patterns for writing tools and consuming authority metadata

• Review by community of designs and solicitation of feedback

The group will begin meeting in late spring 2020 (approximately early May).  The group will meet for 1 hour every other week and its sunset date will be approximately 4 months after the start date.  If more time is required, a new working group charter will be created.

Meeting Times & Communication Channels

• The call for participation was sent by invitation to authority providers, authority data consumers, and applications that make authority data available to users

• A regular schedule for meetings will be set using Doodle once the membership is established. The plan is to hold one hour calls every other week at a time to be determined.

• Meetings, meeting minutes, deliverables, and milestones will be announced at: TBD

• We will set up a dedicated Slack channel for asynchronous communication. (TBD)

• Meetings will take place on Zoom: connection info TBD

• Meeting notes recording action items and provisional decisions will be in the LD4P3 wiki linked from this page

Slack channel:  TBD

Meeting Notes

Documents

Working Group Documents

Supporting Documents

• TBD

Membership and Interest

Roles are defined as:

• Provider - member of an authority provider organization
• Consumer - member of an organization consuming authority data
• Developer - technical staff interested in creating tools to work with linked data authorities

Expression of interest:

Send an email to elr37@cornell.edu to express interest in joining the working group or interest in the outcomes of this group.  This is not a commitment to participate.

Members

Facilitator : E. Lynette Rayle (Cornell - Developer)  

1. Nate Trail Kevin Ford  (Library of Congress - Provider)
2. Kirk Hess   (OCLC - Provider)
3. Nancy Fallgren (MeSH - Provider)
4. Tiziana Possemato (ShareVDE - Provider)
5. Rob Sanderson (Provider)
6. Lydia Pintscher, Jens Uhlig (Wikidata - Provider)
7. Hetty van Zutphen (ISNI - Provider)
8. Steven Folsom  (Cornell - Consumer)
9. Christine Fernsebner Eslao (Harvard - Consumer)
10. Jeremy Nelson Justin Littman  (Stanford - Developer)

Resources

• Making Authorities Accessible as Linked Data - A perspective based on experiences working with Questioning Authority and the QaServer Lookup application which accesses authorities linked data search APIs.