Open Metadata
During my flight to Calgary i listened to some episodes of Talking with Talis about open data in the realm of libraries. The general idea – how i understand it – is that data is often collected in locked-up repositories without really being able to unleash its full potential, but instead data should be made accessible employing open APIs and free licenses. Consider bibliographic entries of library catalogs that could be accessed and mashed-up in ways librarians (or readers) might not have imagined before. It could open up a world of new applications beyond the boundaries of the traditional library setting.
During the WWW2007 conference i am about to take part in as a volunteer there is a special panel devoted to open data and its potential implication for the Semantic Web. Rob Styles who will talk on that panel writes on his blog about the differentiation between the concepts of data, metadata, and content in terms of copyright law. Since most metadata would lead to the actual content, content providers are usually less interested in making money of just the metadata than of the actual content. In this sense metadata is less restricted in terms of copyright opening up interesting possibilities. Rob mentions several initiatives, e.g. Open Street Map, where metadata is made available by a community of people.
