LOD2 Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data

When the LOD2EU-funded (FP7) research project aiming to take the Web of Linked Data to the next level. Main research challenges: improve coherence and quality of data published on the Web, close the performance gap between relational and RDF data management, establish trust on the Linked Data Web and ... project came into being in September 2010, the LOD2 consortium decided to offer a free Linked Open Data consultancy service to interested organisations and institutions to showcase what the potentials and benefits of linked open data (LOD) principles and technologies are – the LOD2 PUBLINK consultancy service – see also PUBLINK page. PUBLINK is accomplished by LOD2 together with the FP7-funded project LATC.

The first call of PUBLINK was promoted from September 2010 until the deadline on 20th December 2010 (via several channels as viral marketing, mailing lists, presentations at events etc). Its focus has been on Linked Open Data publishing: both in the area of know-how transfer (workshops and trainings) of LOD publishing principles, LOD tools and technologies and in the area of concrete implementations by publishing data sets as Linked Open Data together with the respective PUBLINK partner.

Today the LOD2 consortium is proud to announce the winners of the first call for participation in PUBLINK – the Linked Open Data Starter Service.

The following applicants have been selected from various public institutions across EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea to the ... (you can also find the responsible LOD2 team contact person for each PUBLINK partner):

• Umweltbundesamt GmbH (Environment Agency Austria), Austria
  LOD2 team contact: Bastiaan Deblieck, TenforceProject managment, knowledge management and semantic web consulting company situated in Belgium. (http://www.tenforce.com/content/about), Belgium
• Greater London Authority , UK
  LOD2 team contact: Hugh Williams, OpenLink SoftwareFounded in 1992, OpenLink Software, Inc. , is a software company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA. The company develops and deploys standards-compliant middleware products that cover: Transparent access to SQL data sources via ODBC and JDBC drivers, and OLE-DB, ADO. NET, and XMLA ..., UK
• Deutsche Bibliographie, Historische Kommission, Germany
  LOD2 team contact: Thomas Riechert, ULEI, Germany
• The Parliament of Finland FinlandFinland, officially the Republic of Finland Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Norway on the north and Russia on the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. ...
  LOD2 team contact: Jason Kitkat, OKFN, UK
• The City of Vienna, Austria
  LOD2 team contact: Martin Kaltenböck, SWCThe Semantic Web Company (SWC), based in Vienna, provides companies, institutions and organizations with professional services related to the Semantic Web, semantic technologies and Social Software, Austria
• Instituto Canario de Estadística – ISTAC, Canary Islands
  LOD2 team contact: Michael Hausenblashttp://webofdata.wordpress.com/, NUIG/DERICentre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) established in 2003 with funding from the Science Foundation Ireland. The vision of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute is to be recognised as one of the leading international web science research institutes interlinking technologies, ..., Ireland

The six awardees will receive trainings, consultancy workshops and on-site support in the publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD) within the next months. Until June/July 2011 they will be provided with an overall effort of 10-20 days of support from highly skilled Linked Data professionals from the LOD2 consortium. Through a standardized phased approach each organization has the opportunity to migrate some of their data using Linked Open Data to the internet in a smooth way and with a minimum of risks.

Trainings and workshops will, moreover, give them the ongoing competence to manage the Linked Open Data space successfully with regard to their data publications.

The LOD2 team will keep you informed about the status and the results of the PUBLINK project at the LOD2 weblog.

A second call of PUBLINK is planned for the end of this year, focusing on consuming Linked Open Data.

More information about the PUBLINK consultancy service of LOD2 and LATCEU-funded (FP7) research project to enable the leverage of the Linking Open Data cloud for research and product purposes by: - Deploying a 24/7 infrastructure to continuously monitor and improve the quality of data links within the Linking Open Data cloud. - Lowering the access-barrier for data ... is also available at: http://lod2.eu/Article/Publink.html