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Forward Linking

The Forward Linking Partnership​

Forward Linking brings together some of the largest providers of online cultural heritage with other cultural memory institutions, information professionals and digital scholarship experts to create a path towards a vibrant, sustainable cultural data ecosystem. Our goal is to make cultural linked data in Canada more amenable to research and scholarly insights: materials on websites of galleries, libraries, archives, museums (GLAM) are woefully siloed from each other and from other scholarly contexts.

The success of the semantic web for cultural data depends upon:

  • the ongoing development of computer-legible persistent identifiers for real-world people, places, things, and concepts that are;
  • easily connected through models responsive to scholarly nuance and;
  • mobilized by tools and training that demonstrate the value of semantic web data creation and use.

Forward Linking is promoting these conditions through pilot projects within three research clusters.

Missing data and linked connections hamper interpretation, shackles researchers, and perpetuates biases and colonial legacies from older systems. Linked data allows researchers to address individual cultural artifacts via the web and to reference, annotate, and embed them within machine-readable scholarly conversations. Join us at conferences, workshops, and events, or peruse our publications to find out more about the Forward Linking team's use of linked data concepts, tools, and datasets across the heritage sector.

The stakes of bringing intersectional nuance to the world of linked data on the Semantic Web are high. Linked data is the format for adding source citations, meaning, and context to the Web. The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web, comprised of linked data, that makes the meaning of Web data machine readable--turning the Web itself into the equivalent of a queryable distributed database. Semantic Web data, or linked data, takes the form of that represent entities (real-world people, places, events, concepts etc.) connected to one another through relationships defined by an ontology (a set of computational rules that govern the type of relationships URIs can have to one another). Check out the Learn LOD section of this site if you are new to linked open data and want to understand more.

Forward Linking research clusters​

The Forward Linking partnership comprises three clusters, across which we are work to close the gap between scholarly activity and institutional content for mutual benefit while advancing partnership priorities and informing sustainability models.

  • The PIDs cluster pilots creates and promotes PIDs in ways that promote diverse content, establish respectful workflows, and build lasting relationships.
  • The Modelling cluster** explores appropriate strategies for the formal representation of knowledge in the data structures and vocabularies that will work across the ecosystem.
  • The Mobilizing cluster engages the partnership and the broader community in participatory design for rendering linked cultural content more usable.

PIDs cluster​

Lead: Lisa Goddard

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) to represent discrete entities (people, places, concepts, things) are the sine qua non of linked open data and a crucial component of DH infrastructure. Increasing the PIDs available for cultural research in Canada is essential to growing the ecosystem. The Persistent Identifier Research Cluster members are undertaking a number pilot projects.

PIDs for objects: Because cultural objects can only be linked to if they have PIDs, Lisa Goddard, AUL Advanced Research Services, and Dean Seeman, Head of Metadata at UVic, will spearhead a project to assign DataCite Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to all of the digital objects in the UVic Libraries digital asset management system, Vault, and to work with other Canadian Academic Libraries to facilitate the production and maintenance of DOIs for local digital collections, prioritizing EDID-oriented collections.

PIDs & Respectful Terminology: The National Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA) Respectful Terminology project is an Indigenous-led initiative to create an open, national linked data platform to enable a set of dynamic, multilingual terminologies applied to Indigenous Peoples, places, knowledge, and cultures, and thereby replace outdated and problematic terms used in many settings. The success of the platform rests with its ability to integrate into cultural institution workflows, including the use of available PIDS. In this pilot, project leaders Stacey Allison-Cassin (Dalhousie) and Camille Callison (UFV Library) will assess PID sources for use by the project, and prototype ways to integrate existing data respectfully and appropriately into an Indigenous linked data platform.

PIDs for researchers: ORCID IDs are PIDs that uniquely identify researchers and are a vital component of grant and research data management systems. Kim Martin (LINCS) and John Aspler (CRKN and manager of ORCID-CA) will work with RAs and LINCS staff to extend the “Linking Open Cultural Data in Canada” visualization to harvest publication and other information from ORCIDs to help motivate researcher uptake of ORCIDs to benefit scholarly networking and research data management.

Historical PIDs & EDID: Cultural scholarship requires PIDS for past people, places, organizations, events, and objects, but how existing sources represent them can perpetuate colonial knowledge frameworks. Jim Clifford (USask), Sharon Farnel (UAlberta Library), and Natalie MacDonald (CRKN) will work with the Dictionary of Canadian Biography to create historical entities in ways that signal archival silences, e.g., by minting unnamed persons (guides, wives) as well as named ones, and build in processes for feedback and revision in response to inclusion and decolonization efforts.

Modelling Cluster​

Lead: Constance Crompton

Modelling linked data by defining relationships among types of things as well as establishing categories themselves involves representational power with deep implications for EDID as well as basics like findability. This cluster’s research responds to community need for both interoperability to support linking and local, nuanced, respectful, context- sensitive data, and draws participants from academic, government, and GLAM sectors. The Modelling Research Cluster is undertaking the following pilot projects:

LOD in society: Philippe Michon, Trang Dang (CHIN) and Susan Brown, and LINCS ontologist Erin Canning taking an equity-informed perspective to compare how DOPHEDA and LINCS have modelled gender, sexuality, nationality, Indigeneity, and other cultural identities in records describing people, with the aim of arriving at a national standard to align GLAM institutional data in Canada with LINCS scholarly data.

CollectiveAccess to LOD: LINCS will create LOD for publication to advance repatriation, decolonization, and social empowerment by mapping fields from CollectiveAccess, a widely used open database system, to the CIDOC-CRM ontology. Emmanuel Château-Dutier; and Michael Eberle-Sinatra (UdeMontréal) will extend the reach of the Collection ethnographique du département d’anthropologie de l’Université de Montréal drawing on vocabularies including CHIN’s Nomenclature, and Jon Bath (USask) and j moore (USask Galleries) will attend to the complexities associated with various BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists-in- residence and recent acquisitions at the USask Galleries (Capacitor; Ohpinamake; Manacihitowin). Work will involve outreach and consultation with users about whether the mapping enables the desired uses of the data, and will be informed by the Indigenous Advisory Circles and appropriate Indigenous Protocols.

Optimizing LINCS for images: Jon Bath, Emmanuel Château-Dutier, and j moore will explore tools that use the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standard for image metadata representation and exchange with the above-mentioned ethnographic, Indigenous, and BIPOC visual collections. A prototype workflow using LINCS conversion tools to create IIIF records and interlink external image data will help smaller institutions to mobilize their data and diversify GLAM online.

Mobilizing Research Cluster​

Lead: Kim Martin

This cluster moves researcher LOD into new contexts within the cultural ecosystem, developing and building on respectful relationships, to foster communities of practice. This cluster’s participants are from the academic and library spheres, and the GLAM sector, who come together on three pilot projects.

Design frolics: Design frolics unearth implicit expectations of an interface (broadly conceived as a space of contact, involving processes as well as devices) to tap into users’ tacit design knowledge. Frolics are a central tool for iteratively testing interface design, to ensure that interfaces and processes meet the needs of users with a broad range of technical, cultural, and institutional backgrounds, and, furthermore, serve to build relationships within and beyond the team. Led by Kim Martin (UofGuelph) and Robin Bergart (UofGuelph Library) at Forward Linking and LINCS workshops and events, frolic-backed research involves all partnership members, as well as interested participants beyond the partnership.

Context Explorer extension: The LINCS Context Explorer contextualizes content users encounter across the web and brings LOD about cultural objects to data-holders’ websites for an enhanced reading experience without requiring any modification of the institution’s data, workflows, or website. It has the potential to provide the kind of context essential to remediating problematic data online, including the legacies of colonialism, slavery, racism, and sexism. Susan Brown (UGuelph) and Caitlin Horrall and team (LAC) will ensure the plugin is accessible and bilingual, and adapt it to work in an LAC-branded version with their collections.

Leveraging LOD in publishing: This pilot tests the Context Explorer extension as an aid to cultural scholarly dissemination in a DH project website about the Palatine Anthology; the open-access journal Sens Public; and an open-access monograph on art, j. moore and Christelle Proulx’s L’agir en condition hyperconnectée: Art et images à l’œuvre from the series Ateliers de Sens Public et Parcours numériques (Presses of l’Université de Montréal). Collecting prosopographical linked data of those people referenced in these works will allow editors Marcello Vitali-Rosati and Michael Eberle Sinatra (UdeMontréal) to reflect on ethnocentric, sexist, or racist biases and to redirect editorial policies accordingly.

Events​

Forward Linking partners, researchers, and the GLAM community came together May 5-7, 2024 at the University of Ottawa for the Forward Linking Conference hosted by Constance Crompton and the Humanities Data Lab/Labo de Données en Sciences Humaines.

SAVE THE DATE - May 28-29, 2026, K’jipuktuk!

Forward Linking with Respect and Equity will be held in K’jipuktuk (Halifax), May 28 and 29, 2026, organized by Stacy Allison-Cassin, Dalhousie University, with Camille Callison, NIKLA and the Respectful Terminology Platform Project and with Susan Brown, University of Guelph (LINCS).

Call for proposals here. Subscribe to the LINCS Newsletter for forthcoming information.

Partners​

  • Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL)
  • Canadian Heritage Information Network
  • Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN)
  • Dalhousie University
  • Library and Archives Canada
  • Scholars Portal
  • Western University
  • Université de Montréal
  • University of Alberta
  • University of Guelph
  • University of Ottawa
  • University of Saskatchewan
  • University of Toronto
  • University of Victoria

Contributors and Researchers​

  • Stacy Allison-Cassin
  • Clare Appavoo
  • John Aspler
  • Jon Bath
  • Robin Bergart
  • Susan Brown (PI)
  • Camille Callison
  • Erin Canning
  • May Chan
  • Emmanuel Château-Dutier
  • James Clifford
  • Lucia Costanzo
  • Constance Crompton
  • Trang Dang
  • Kate Davis
  • Alice Defours
  • Michael Eberle-Sinata
  • Sharon Farnel
  • Guilia Ferretti
  • Lisa Goddard
  • Susan Haigh
  • Kathryn Harvey
  • Natalie Hervieux
  • Erin Isaac
  • Bruno Lemay
  • Julie McKinnon
  • Natalie MacDonald
  • James MacGregor
  • Kim Martin
  • Dani Metilli
  • Philippe Michon
  • Alliyya Mo
  • jake moore
  • Stephanie Pettigrew
  • Julia Polyck-O'Neill
  • Sarah Roger
  • Mathieu Saborin
  • Zach Schoenberger
  • Jennifer Schofield
  • Dean Seeman
  • William Turkel
  • Marcello Vitali-Rosati
  • Jessica Ye