OCLC, a US-based non-profit, membership, computer library service and research organisation, has published bibliographic linked data for the most widely held works in WorldCat. This downloadable file - representing nearly 1.2 million resources - contains about 80 million linked data 'triples,' the term for the most granular relationship possible between discrete pieces of information.
The linked data is provided as RDF serialisation, and uses the Schema.org ontology as well as library extensions to Schema.org that OCLC has been working on with members and partners over the last year. It is being made available, under an ODC-BY data license, in a single, 1-gigabyte, compressed (GZip) file, which can be downloaded from here.
While WorldCat contains bibliographic records for more than 275 million items, the choice was made to select the most widely held materials for this release in order to help keep the file at a manageable size.
In June 2012, OCLC added Schema.org tags to WorldCat.org records, improving the way in which library information is represented to search engines. OCLC has also developed linked data resources for the Dewey Decimal Classification System, FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) and the VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) service. The release of these 1.2 million records as linked data is the next step in OCLC's linked data strategy.
