Creating and Publishing Metadata of Linked Data —Providing Shoes for the Cobbler’s Children

The number of open datasets available on the web is increasing rapidly with the rise of the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud and various governmental efforts for releasing public data. However, the metadata available for the datasets is often minimal, heterogeneous, and distributed, which makes finding a suitable dataset for a given need problematic. To address the problem, we present a distibuted content creation model and tools for annotating and publishing metadata about LOD and non-RDF datasets on the web. The system is based on a modified version of the voiD vocabulary for describing linked RDF datasets, and uses an online metadata editor SAHA connected to ONKI ontology services for annotating concepts. The content can be published instantly on an integrated faceted search and browsing engine HAKO for both human users and machines as a SPARQL end-point. As a proof of concept, the system has been applied to LOD and some Finnish governmental datasets.