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Archive for March, 2011

Progress Update

10 Mar

Its time for a short update on how the project is progressing. We’ve had an incrementally feature-full prototype of our Codex available on our project web since January and we’ve been working hard to improve it. If you haven’t already then head on over to http://musicnet.mspace.fm/codex and search for a composer.

What have we added since January?

Content Negotiation

One of the most important features we’ve added since January is content-negotiation. This enables our Codex to serve up the most appropriate content dependant on the ‘Accept’ header received in the HTTP request. For a more detailed writup see Dan’s blog post on the MusicNet URI Scheme.

A simple example would be:

Franz Schuberts URI is: http://musicnet.mspace.fm/person/7ca5e11353f11c7d625d9aabb27a6174

If we request this from a regular web browser we are dereferenced to the HTML content at: http://musicnet.mspace.fm/person/7ca5e11353f11c7d625d9aabb27a6174.html

However, if we request this URI from a semantic web browser we are dereferenced the RDF content at: http://musicnet.mspace.fm/person/7ca5e11353f11c7d625d9aabb27a6174.rdf

Data Enrichment

We have also been working hard to leverage the data we’ve aligned over the last year to enrich the information provided by our various data partners. Last year we met with the LinkedBrainz team and they provided us with a small set of composer data from MusicBrainz for us to align against. This has allowed us to draw additional information from other open data sources such as the BBC, Wikipedia/DBPedia, IMDB and even the New York Times to provide a more complete representation of the data available about a composer.

This data is available in both the RDF and the HTML representation of the Codex.

e.g. Schubert, Franz (HTML | RDF)

Alignment Progress

Alignment is moving on well and we’re currently at 89%.

What is left to do?

One of the discussions the MusicNet team has been involved in since the start of the project has been data.ac.uk and the need for in perpetuity hosting of URI’s minted by JISC projects.

We’re currently in discussions to be one of the first projects to be able to make use of this domain and hope that by the end of the project we’ll be able to move our Codex and URI’s over to a suitable domain such as musicnet.data.ac.uk. This will ensure that the data we’ve exposed will be available after the project’s end.

MusicNet Workshop

We’re also hosting a small workshop on the 12th May at JISC HQ to try and expose more people to the potential of the MusicNet URI’s. The workshop will also be looking more broadly at the current Music & Linked Data landscape & should cater to a broad audience. It’s filling up very quickly so if you’re interested and haven’t yet made contact please do so soon.

For more details see our announcement

 
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Strata 2011 – Big Data

07 Mar

The internet exerts an unprecedented equalizing force in bringing access to information to everyone on the planet. More information is available (and mainly for free) now than ever before, and yet it is becoming clear that access to information is not enough. The infrastructure to store and share data within sectors is a vital part of the ecosystem, and yet it is often treated as an afterthought. We need a radical change in the way we develop infrastructure in the higher education sector, to ensure that services consumed and funded by the public can do their job as efficiently as possible and at the best possible price.

http://cottagelabs.com/strata-2011-review/

This is key, we’ve found that having data isn’t enough (although its a great start!). Making that data available in some meaningful way is more of a challenge. With MusicNet we’re striving to make readily available Musicology information available in a single place under a single search. We’re leveraging Linked Data technologies to better allow others to integrate their own data with our project outputs.

 
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