Fedora4: The Open Linked Data Platform

<p>Presentation at Open Repositories 2015 (OR2015), the 10th International Conference on Open Repositories, Indianapolis, Indiana, in session P1A: Linked Open Data (LOD). Note that high quality video files for this talk were not obtainable, so some video quality problems may be noticed.</p> <p>Linked Open Data has moved from being a buzzword to a fundamental building block of modern repositories and information systems. Its explosion, taking in this domain the form of scholarly and scientific datasets, publications, annotations, cultural heritage descriptions and other repository-based content, offers unprecedented opportunity for scientific and societal advancement. It is the interconnections that integrate systems and resources, however, that turn disparate ideas into unanticipated solutions.</p> <p>The Open Repositories community largely understands the value of linked data. The trouble has been in answering the question of &ldquo;how?&rdquo; to do this together, rather than &quot;why?&quot; do it at all. In order to be effective, we need to have solid guidelines, common practices, and well specified toolsets and products. A confluence of developments has opened the door to exactly this.</p> <p>In October of 2012, the initial W3C working draft of the Linked Data Platform 1.0 (LDP) document was published[2]. In July of 2012, the demand for a next-generation Fedora platform was channeled into the Fedora 4 (F4) project, which at the time was termed Fedora Futures. The alignment of these two stars set in motion events that provided both requirements and solutions for the community.</p>