Welcome to the Linked Open Data, Wikidata and SPARQL Chapter of the JJKB
Linked data is a human-readable data format that allows researchers to search digital resources using keywords that are agreed upon by scholars across institutional and cultural boundaries while also supporting machine readability that allows for nuanced searches and creative data visualizations. Linked Open Data (“LOD”) refers to linked data that is available without proprietary software, hardware or data format constraints.
LOD is currently under study within cultural heritage research as it is seen as a tool that has the potential to provide open and to a certain degree, cost-effective or inexpensive access to data. We elected to use linked open data for our dataset in order to capture the relationships among the entities within our dataset e.g. works on exhibition, iterations of specific works, collaborations with the artist and other facets of curatorial and art historical study on this artist and her work.
We invite all readers to peruse the data visualizations and tables that have emerged from our research and hope that these in turn will inspire further research on Joan Jonas’ works in particular as well as on performance art and contemporary art generally. This chapter of the JJKB also serves as an introduction to Linked Open Data and offers tutorials and resources for readers who are new to this technology.
