Introduction to Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web (DHSI 2026)

Description

This workshop provides an introduction to the web of data for humanities researchers and cultural data stewards. Linked open data is highly structured interoperable data hosted on the web that is structured with semantic relationships so that machines can become partners in discovering, disseminating, sharing, and analyzing data. Done right, LOD contributes to a semantic web of resources that can be accessed and used across multiple online locations, aggregating knowledge and facilitating its reuse: it is FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data in the most profound sense. The workshop will cover reasons for publishing cultural and research collections as LOD by looking at a range of existing uses in humanities research and GLAM (gallery, library, archive, and museum) contexts.

Participants will gain hands-on experience with several linked open data projects and tools; learn about the resource description framework (RDF), ontologies, and vocabularies used to create linked open data; learn how LOD can be leveraged in queries, visualizations, and web applications; gain an understanding of how LOD is created; and be introduced to a number of practical, ethical, and theoretical considerations that should inform the creation and reuse of diverse, nuanced, responsible, and usable linked open data for cultural research and dissemination. By the end of this workshop, participants should have grasped the major concepts of linked open data and the components of its technology stack; understand the basics of linked data creation, publication, and use; and be positioned to start to develop a linked data project of their own.

Intended audience: Advanced students, subject matter experts and researchers, librarians and data curators from GLAM contexts, research software engineers, and the LOD-curious!

Instructor(s)

Susan Brown (she/her) is a Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Collaborative Digital Scholarship at the University of Guelph. Her work explores intersectional feminism, literary history, semantic technologies, and scholarly research infrastructure. She is a founding director of Orlando Project on women writers in British literary history, and directs two infrastructure projects: CWRC (“quirk”), the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory virtual research environment, and LINCS, the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship.

Kim Martin (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Guelph and the Associate Director of THINC Lab. Her research focuses on serendipitous experiences of humanities researchers in digital environments, Early Modern London, and makerspaces. Kim is the Research Team Lead for Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS), and is excited to share the tools and knowledge from this project with the DHSI community.

Alliyya Mo (she/her) is Data Interface Developer with the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) whose involvement includes data transformation, vocabulary hosting, and interface work including management of the project website and Fuseki triplestore. She completed her Bachelor of Computing at the University of Guelph.

Click here for an example of previous syllabus and course material (2025)