Linked open data and aggregation infrastructure in the cultural heritage sector
Marcus Smith · 2021
Aggregation services are, for now, a necessary reality in the world of linked open data. This chapter looks at some of the benefits and tradeoffs that come with the aggregation of linked open data, before looking at the specific case of the Swedish Open Cultural Heritage (SOCH) national aggregator. By gathering disparate but thematically related data sets and republishing them in a common format, aggregators not only make data more accessible and discoverable, but also place it within a wider context. However, there are concomitant design compromises which must be made. SOCH is a national aggregator for heritage data in Sweden. Since 2010 it has harvested data from museums, archives and historic environment registers, and published them as linked open data mapped to a common data model and made them questionable via a web application programming interface (API). SOCH now aggregates more than 9 million records from more than 75 Swedish heritage institutions. Over its ten-year lifespan, SOCH has had significant success in opening up Swedish heritage data. However, as an early adopter of linked open data in Swedish heritage, there are nonetheless challenges to be addressed in future development.