Linked Data for Libraries

The Semantic Web in general and the Linking Open Data initiative in particular encourage institutions to publish, share and interlink their data. This has considerable potential for libraries, which can complement their data by linking it to other, external data sources. This paper details the first linked open data service of the German National Library. The focus is on the challenges met during the inception of this service. Extrapolating from our experiences, the paper further discusses the German National Library's perspective on the future of library data exchange and the potential for the creation of globally interlinked library data. We outline how this process can be facilitated and how new services can be offered based on these growing metadata collections.