 I forgot that my Twitter bio was so, yeah, it's a bit of an all sorts bag there. Much like this, so I'm going to have to ask you to bear with me as I go on a bit of an extended metaphor with this particular talk. The L-Space, how many of you have actually read Terry Pratchett? How many of you know the L-Space? Oh, good. There are a few here. Think of the L-Space for the web, think of link data as the cotton reel, and to begin what the hell am I talking about? So let's start with our first foray into the L-Space with the Librarian, who if you haven't read Terry Pratchett, is a giant orange orangutan. In Terry Pratchett some guards guards a book is stolen and the Librarian has to basically search through the L-Space to find out what book it was and where to go. So I'm going to read you a little bit of when he actually starts getting into the L-Space. So in the silence of the sleeping library, he opened his desk and removed from its deepest recesses a small lantern carefully built to prevent any naked flames from being exposed. You couldn't be too careful with all this paper around. He also took a bag of peanuts and after some thought a large ball of string. He bit off a short length of string and used it to tie the badge around his neck like a talisman. Then he tied one end of the ball to the desk and after a moment's contemplation knuckled off between the bookshelves paying out the string behind him. Knowledge equals power. The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped, he concentrated all his powers of Librarianship. Power equals energy. People were stupid sometimes. They thought the library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what really made it one of the most dangerous places there ever could be was the simple fact that it was a library. Energy equals matter. He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked briskly along it for about half an hour. Matter equals mess. And mess to sport Lord-Space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-Space. So while the GUI system has its fine points, when you're sitting out to look for something in the multi-dimensional folds of the L-Space, what you really need is a ball of string. Polyfractal L-Space, the web, comprising deep web, semantic web, the web in general, and that primordial soup of data floating out there with nothing really attached to it. It's just information overload waiting to happen, really. So one way to navigate this is the semantic web. So let's refresh our memories quickly. What is the semantic web? Tim Berners-Lee, which is what's coming up to 25 years now, actually tried to create the semantic web right from the start, but it became a bit of a beast and grew into something that even he never imagined. He says that the semantic web is not a separate web, but an extension of the current one in which information is given well-defined meaning, beating, enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The primary point of the semantic web is to make data machine readable so that it can actually find information and work intelligently. The semantic web has got nothing to do with humans. Humans shouldn't see it. Humans should have nothing to do with it. It's all using language hierarchies and really confined structures so that computer programs and applications can read what we put out. We help it along with linked data. Now Kristin X Excellence Talks yesterday were brilliant. I actually sat there and went, oh goodness, what am I going to say to try and improve on it? So let's just do some recaps. Linked data catalogs via relationships. It's entity-based and attracts relationships between any entities. These relationships are called triples. One equals something else. One is attached to another thing. You can build up a giant web just from this. This is what actually makes the web semantic. It is the building blocks of creating a smart web. It's bigger than any metadata. You can use it across any metadata schema. You can use it in any way. It's open in the public domain by quite a few different groups, Library of Congress. British Library actually did a very big song and dance about opening these two years ago. The Smithsonian has these open. I think the Rakes Museum has theirs. So there is a lot of open linked data available for people to take and use and make their data better, basically. It supports GLAM and non-GLAM metadata standards. This whole idea of linked data, we talk about it in a knowledge repository sort of area, but it's outside that. It's quite political at the moment at the GCSP and things as well. But we have to remember, linked data is not easy to deal with. Making the web semantic is a pipe dream and that's something that Tim Berners-Lee said quite bluntly a couple of years ago, there is too much out there to actually be successful. You'd have to start from scratch and doing that, it's unthinkable. But fear not, for we can make information smarter as we go forward. In fact, we do it all the time. It's just we don't know that we're doing it. This is a sort of shout out to Paul Nielsen, who has had to deal with me and talking about Fervor and metadata and I don't know how many talks, but he's now in Australia, so he can't get away from it that easily. Fervor is one of my deepest loves and I couldn't talk about linked data without talking about it. It's been integrated into the new library catalog, the RDA, and this is probably the simplest version you will see of how triples actually work. This is group one and two entities of the functional requirements of bibliographic records. It's an elegant method of illustrating linked data, so we'll just give a quick review of the first four elements, which is work, expression, manifestation and item. The work is the intellectual creation or the concept. It's the idea. The expression is the realization of this concept. The manifestation are the different ways, the different physical formats in which this expression has been created and the item is the specific creation of the work. So I think, for example, my handle is the one, it's Elvish for my lady, so Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings was a work by Tolkien. It was an idea. The expression of the work came originally in three books or six books in three volumes manifested as a book. Every single edition is an item of that manifestation. And you can go forward with every manifestation in Spanish, in German, there are all different expressions of that particular work. So you can actually see how already just in the books it's growing, then you have all the artwork that Alan Lee and John Howell, amongst others, have done. They all become expressions of the Lord of the Rings as the work. Then you have the films, then you have the audiobooks. So you can just see how that linked data would start to spread out just from one simple idea. The same with the Vermeer and the Milkmaid yesterday, that was a work. It was then created as an expression in oil manifested. Then you have prints on canvas, you have magnets, you have stickers, you have other people interpreting it, and it just grows out in that sort of way. Most of you are looking slightly shell-shocked, I'm really sorry about that, I didn't want to get too technical to it quickly. But that's basically, it's something we do every day, we just don't think about it. If you add a hashtag to your tweet, if you add a keyword to a blog post that you're writing, you're actually creating some form of linked data that somewhere can search and get back to it. If you're putting links into your blog, you're linking to other people and it's something that's really encouraged now. You're creating a web, you're creating a communication with people who've gone before you and for people who are going to come and link to your stuff in the future. So it is an ongoing communication. And as Pratchett sees, the L-space is everywhere. Books being space and time. The very senior librarians however, once they've proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, love to know what that is, are accepted into a secret order and they are taught the raw arts of survival in beyond the shelves we know. The librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was really tempting now wouldn't just get him thrown out of the order, but probably out of life itself. All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries, everywhere. And the librarian, navigating by book sign carved on the shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whispers of nostalgia, was heading purposefully for one very special one. There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he'd never know. Now he's actually going back in time to his library the week before to find the book and read the book. And the librarian's order have three rules basically. Silence, return your books on time and do not disturb the causality of the existence. Nearly tries to do that and then remembers it could all end very, very horribly if he does so. So think of this reel of cotton that I've just talked about, the navigation through the library, through L-space. And basically, while it's not elegant or sophisticated, there are people out there doing that. It is still very much a work in progress. We can supplement like data in everyday work. It's just more working smarter rather than trying to reinvent the wheel all over again. It does sit behind a shiny interface. It is a semantic web. If it's done properly, we don't even know it exists. So when cataloging or working with providing information, always think about the end user. A lot of us fall into the trap of creating websites or programs and that for ourselves. What do we know, the language we use? We need to be thinking about the people who are actually going to be using this in the long run. Who are you trying to get to use it? Will they understand it? How are they going to find it? You need to think about their vernacular and their vocabulary, not your own. And how are we going to make this information retrieval easy for them to find it and for us to actually maintain it in the long run? And these are four. Actually, it's really three different ways of doing this. Analytics, the breadcrumb trails, fuzzy searching, which goes with the breadcrumb trails, and crowdsourcing cataloging. Now, to quickly real of some examples, some of the glam platforms and many companies are now actually using analytics to track user behavior. And this is terrifying. It's terrifying in a good and a bad way. I had the opportunity to implement Google Analytics with the library I managed for a year and just the breadth of data we were getting from six months of using it was astounding. So you can track user behavior, geographic location, method of connection, whether it's on a mobile phone, whether it's on a tablet, whether it's on public Wi-Fi, you name it. Entry and exit points. So where in the website did they start at? Where did they end? How long did they spend on each page? Which page did they look at? Which were the popular tags? What was their search history? You can go by IP address. You can go by city, you name it. And that's where it really gets scary and that's a lot of what people are really going up and arms about with the GCSP and that sort of stuff. But if you understand that it is a very powerful tool to use, that when you do go online, you are creating this sort of trail behind you and that the people who are interacting with you are leaving such a trail. It is one of those, you can use it for good or evil. It's not an evil thing itself, it's how you use the tool. So use it smartly, you can actually enhance service offerings for the clients that you are actually working with and make the digital ecosystem flourish. If you can look at the analytics and say, right, these are the popular pages, these are the things people want to know about, you can then build those up or if you see where there are gaps in neglect, you can add to them. And that's something that you won't get in conversation because this is a completely non-verbal communication with you. The bread-come-trails and fuzzy searching is utilizing linked data to enhance searching, both serendipitous and ordered. So it allows the user to actually move through the data and in the relationships, expanding or refining as they need. So those of you who've ever done a reference interview or had to sit down with someone and gone, well, what do you want? And you find out what they want and what they've told you they want are completely different things. This is that sort of thing. So they can start out and they're going, right, I want to know about ice cream, okay. But what they really want to know is history of people eating ice sweets somewhere in Italy and how it all came about. So it allows you to actually move through those sort of relationships and find information they didn't even know they were looking for. The third one, or the fourth one, is crowdsource cataloging. Now there's going to be a really interesting talk in this room, not this next session, but right afterwards on that. And if you can, I'd probably suggest going to that because that's really, really interesting. Now it's a lazy, but it's a very smart way of doing things. For example, Trove, has anyone actually looked at Trove or used Trove? It's fantastic, isn't it? It's good fun. It takes game theory basically to a new level and the idea of getting badges and stuff like that. There's been a lot of research done online about playing games where if you reward users with badges or points, they will actually do more for you than if you just say congratulations, you've done this. So it becomes a bit of a competition. Now you can see this I took last night just to update it. So yesterday there were 129,457 newspaper text corrections yesterday on Trove. That's by users using the site. That's just clicking on a digital file and transcribing, they're getting the people who are actually looking at the site to do this. 2,571 images from users this month, they're inviting people to upload to Flickr, to add to the content. And that's geotagging as well. That's another form of link data. You're actually getting people to have ownership in their particular collection. Now it was launched in 2009. I was in Australia when it was launched and we all had a little bit of trepidation working in the information fields there of how it would be so it's just gone from strength to strength and it's a way in which you can actually understand how link data can actually be used for good. It's a really, really fun site to use. It's become a bit of a model for quite a few libraries around the world to do this sort of thing. But I could go on for hours and hours and hours on Ferber and link data and all that sort of stuff but I won't. In fact, I'll maybe come and talk now. Instead, come have a chat to me afterwards. If I've missed out or elaborated on something that you're not entirely sure, come tap me on the shoulder and say explain and I will happily explain. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to present and thank you for listening. Any questions? No rotten tomatoes, please. Wearing white, I don't understand. Nothing. Favorite Pratchett book. I'm only halfway through the series. I'd have to say guards at the moment but I do rather like the Night Watch group and Mort is probably, it's my favorite. Yes, what is Ferber's theme? Ferber. Ferber is the functional requirements for bibliographic records. It's popped up around, it's been around for about a decade or so. Had a fantastic lecture when I started doing my aimless a wee while ago. I could show you the lurchee from New York and she was amazing and she talked a lot about it. But it's basically been ahead of its time quite a while there. Institutions are now figuring out that it actually is far more diverse and allows for greater cross-referencing across different media than what traditional and even things like double core allow. So you are able to have those relationships where other types of cataloging doesn't. Anything else? We'll record a few hands. I don't buy it, just comments. I'm always really impressed when I hear about the semantic web but I never really quite understand what to do with that and I think maybe that's a lot of us in that position. But I just worked out why you were talking why we don't have the semantic web yet. I want to check this hypothesis. The reason we don't have it is because it makes information we care about readable by machines. And so somebody is working to undermine the semantic web to prevent the rise of the machine. The date for Skyneq going live has passed so I think someone has achieved that particular goal. But it seems to have machines, it's scary. So it's confirmed here, you heard it. Thank you very much, Shelley, thank you.