Libraries' Metadata as Data in the Era of the Semantic Web: Modeling a Repository of Master Theses and PhD Dissertations for the Web of Data

This study argues that metadata of library catalogs can stand autonomously, providing valuable information detached from the resources they point to and, therefore, could be used as data in the context of the Semantic Web. We present an analysis of this perception followed by an implementation proposal for a Master’s thesis and PhD dissertation repository. The analysis builds on the flexibility of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and takes into account the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) in order to reveal the latent academic network by linking its entities to a meaningful and computationally processable set. Current library catalogs retrieve documents to find answers, whereas in our approach catalogs can provide answers that could not be found in any specific document.