In my last post, I took a quick look at the idea of the Semantic Web, as well as some impressions I've gained from readings as to what the concept truly represents. In this second post on Semantic Web, I will be gathering some definitions and descriptions of the topic--some helpful, some perhaps not--that will hopefully start bringing some clarity to the topic for me and any of you that are also trying to unwind the infospeak it's often shrouded in.
Wikipedia describes Semantic Web as a "collaborative movement" which "aims at converting the current web, dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents into a 'web of data.'" This process "extends the network of hyperlinked human-readable web pages by inserting machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users."
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) identifies the concept as a "Web of linked data...technologies [that] enable people to create data stores on the Web, build vocabularies, and write rules for handling data." The goal of Semantic web is "to enable computers to do more useful work and to develop systems that can support trusted interactions over the network."
Steven Miller, in Metadata for Digital Collections, uses an earlier Wikipedia entry for Semantic Web as his definition, citing it as "a group of methods and technologies to allow machines to understand the meaning--or "semantics" of information on the World Wide Web" (2014, 304).
Arlene G. Taylor and Daniel N. Joudrey, in The Organization of Information, characterize the Semantic Web as an entity where "data on the Web will be defined semantically and linked to relevant data for the purpose of more effective discovery of information..." (2009, 17). They additionally state that Semantic Web will allow information to be "defined in such a way that its meaning or semantics can be discernible, shared, and processed by automated tools as well as by people" (2009, 112).
While these descriptions trend toward the overly general, there are at least some commonalities that can help us start piecing together enough information to gain a sense as to what Semantic Web is. Linked data, resource discovery, and data readability are all concepts that are fairly straight-forward to understand, even if the overriding idea of semantics is a bit ambiguous. Based on the context of the other concepts, we can perhaps jump to the assumption that semantics is referring to the underlying meaning of data, a notion that humans are fairly capable of deciphering, but computers are pretty terrible at (i.e. did my search REALLY result in 9 million RELEVANT hits?). If we accept that idea, then maybe we can cobble together a fairly general definition for Semantic Web:
Linked data and associated technologies that are employed to aid machines in discerning the meaning of information, or data, on the web, in order to more effectively facilitate the discovery and retrieval of information resources.
There's undoubtedly quite a bit more to Semantic Web than that, but hopefully we're on the right track. In the final part of this 3-part blog, we'll see if we can hone in on this concept in a little bit more detail.
Joudrey, Daniel N., and Arlene G. Taylor. 2008. The organization of information 3rd ed. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited.
Miller, Steven J. 2011. Metadata for digital collections : a how-to-do-it manual. New York : Neal-Schuman Publishers.
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