Constraints for Linked Open Data

Presenter

Shawn Virgil Goodwin (@svgoodwin)

Abstract

The University of Chicago Library is creating a single platform to support the development of future digital humanities projects and to maintain existing projects. This project is called UChicagoNode. The goal of the platform is to increase the visibility and sustainability of digital humanities work of the students and scholars at the university. At the forefront of making the data more discoverable is adopting the RDF standards of Dublin Core and the Europeana Data Model. However, how do we ensure that the data is accurate and standardized for ease of search? We have adopted SHACL, the Shapes Constraint Language, to validate the data in our RDF store and to ensure its accuracy. SHACL provides some practical constraints for the open-world assumption of OWL. Providing constraints on RDF data provides several benefits: better reliability in querying the data, ensuring the quality of the data, and accuracy of data integration pipelines. This presentation will show how SHACL fits into our workflow, how SHACL aids the quality control over our linked open data, and some examples of complex SHACL constraints.