A WORKSHOP under the theme of “From literature cataloguing to knowledge coding: the linked data and its application” was held on July 20–22 at Shanghai Library hosting more than 120 professionals from home and abroad in a series of coordinated talks and discussions.

Expected as a “close contact” between librarians, information scientists, archivists, web bloggers and semantic technology-goers, the event, as a part of the serial specials tailored for the Diamond Jubilee week in celebration of the 60th anniversary of Shanghai Library, has attracted participants from more than 50 information institutions including the National Library of China, the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Peking University Library, Xiamen University Library, the Beijing-based Infosoft and a local software supplier the Wonders Group.

Tutors included, among others, Professor Marcia Lei Zeng with the Kent State University, and Dr Liu Wei, the deputy director of Shanghai Library.

A simplest approach to publish semantic contents on the World Wide Web, the linked data is deemed as a next generation technology key to achieve open access to the bibliographic data, and is expected to pool the massive knowledge kept by the library into the vast expanse of the contents on the internet. Since its very beginning, the worldwide ILS community has devoted much attention to the study and practice. By now national libraries of the US, Sweden, Hungary, UK, Germany and Spain have all published their own datasets linked to various bibliographic assets.

The worksh0p & tutorial, the very first of its kind within China, touched upon the general know-how of the linked data and gave an overview of its practical application in certain regions and sectors, the application in the library and its technical implementation, its relations with the current digital library systems and solutions, the technical specifications and the legal & moral protocols.