ZBW Labs as Linked Open Data
2013-04-24 by Joachim Neubert
As a laboratory for new, Linked Open Data based publishing technologies, we now develop the ZBW Labs web site as a Semantic Web Application. The pages are enriched with RDFa, making use of Dublin Core, DOAP (Description of a Project) and other vocabularies. The schema.org vocabulary, which is also applied through RDFa, should support search engine visibility.
With this new version we aim at a playground to test new possibilities in electronic publishing and linking data on the web. At the same time, it facilitates editorial contributions from project members about recent developments and allows comments and other forms of participation by web users.
As it is based on Drupal 7, RDFa is "build-in" (in the CMS core) and is easy done by configuration on a field level. Enhancements are made through the RDFx. Schema.org and SPARQL Views modules. A lot of other ready-made components in Drupal (most noteworthy the Views and the new Entity Reference modules) make it easy to provide and interlink the data items on the site. The current version of Zen theme enables the HTML 5 and the use of RDFa 1.1, and permits a responsive design for smartphones and pads.
