The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) is pleased to announce the reactication of its third Special Interest Group, Linked Open Data (DH-LOD). Linked Open Data conveys the idea of the Web as platform for loosely-coupled, distributed services that offer data in an accessible, open way, following the Linked Data principles as described by Tim Berners-Lee.
A large number of digital humanities (DH) projects generate data. When this data is published as LOD, both scholars and machines are able to combine data from different projects, creating new datasets for research. DH is making extensive use of open source software and open access venues for publication. The same reasons for releasing research reporting and software products under open licenses — transparency, serendipity and social responsibility — should encourage us to release our research data as LOD as well.
The mission of the ADHO LOD SIG is to bridge between the DH community and the semantic web community, encouraging and facilitating the interconnection and interoperability of open online Humanities resources by raising awareness of new developments (both content and technology) and discussing and developing best practices. The SIG encourages membership from all fields and all regions of the globe. A website, Twitter account and listserv for the LOD SIG have been created to encourage and facilitate communication among members. If you are interested in linked open data, please join the SIG by signing up for the listserv.