Explores the potential of data created by archivists and, using approaches and tools for sharing structured data, how it can be shared with researchers in the digital humanities as well as how it can enhance archivists own discovery systems and strategies.

Aaron Rubinstein is the university and digital archivist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an adjunct professor in the Simmons College School of Library and Information Science. Prior to that he was the archivist for Digital Collections at Tufts University and the collections manager at the
Yiddish Book Center. Rubinstein has helped develop and maintain EAC - CPF, is a member of the International Council on Archives’ Experts Group on Archival Description, and has been writing and speaking about archives on the Semantic Web since 2008.

Introduction • 8

Structured Data in Archives • 10
A Brief History of Structured Data in Libraries and Archives • 10
MARC • 10
SGML • 11
XML • 11
The Digital Library Revolution and the World Wide Web • 12
Web 2.0, or the Web as a Platform • 12
The New Researcher and the Digital Humanities • 13

Best Practices • 15
Structured Data: The Basics • 16
What Is Structured Data? • 16
Serializations • 17
Data Modeling • 18
Understanding Web APIs • 20
Identifiers, Resources, and Representations • 22
APIs in Archives • 26

RDF • 26
The RDF Data Model • 26
RDF Vocabularies • 29
SPARQL • 30
RDF Serializations • 31
Linked Open Data • 32
Real-life Object vs. Representation • 34
Content Negotiation • 35
The 5 Stars of Linked Open Data • 35

Practical Approaches • 36
Opening Data • 37
Downloadable Data • 38
Embedding Data • 40
Microdata • 40
Schema.org • 40
Open Graph Protocol • 41
RDFa • 42
Linking Data • 47
Linking Access Points • 47
Linking within a Dataset • 48

Recommendations and Conclusions • 49
Make Your Data Available on the Web • 49
Enhance Your Data By Integrating It with Other Sources • 50
Think of Your Data as a Platform • 50
Build Sustainable Workflows • 50

Appendices
Appendix A: Further Readings • 52
Appendix B: Case Studies • 53
Implementing Schema.org at Rockefeller Archive Center • 53
by Hillel Arnold
The Digital Public Library of America’s Application Programming Interface
and Metadata Ingestion Process • 56
by Mark A. Matienzo

Sidebars
GLAMs • 9
Data vs. Metadata • 15
EAD: Formal Model or Serialization Format? • 18
REST • 23
JSON and Structured Data • 25
Vocabularies vs. Ontologies • 28