The CFR meets the Semantic Web: Lessons for Developers, Librarians, and Linked Open Data mavens

Presented by:  Dr. Nuria Casellas, Legal Information Institute and Autonomous University of Barcelona ; Thomas R. Bruce, Legal Information Institute.

Semantic Web technology creates possibilities for novel legal information services.  Practical application of the technology rests on a basic understanding of the technology and of a range of practical data-modeling challenges, including data curation issues of interest to librarians and other information specialists.   The LII has developed a number of interesting applications of Linked Open Data that link the Code of Federal Regulations with pharmaceutical information, information about regulatory and governmental structure, and take advantage of Linked Data representations of traditional finding aids such as the Table of Popular Names of Acts, the Parallel Table of Authorities, and Table III of the United States Code.

This presentation will explain Linked Data fundamentals and their application to the LII's work in this area.  If time permits, some of the natural language processing techniques used by the LII for feature extraction will be explained as well.  This session should be helpful to librarians and developers interested in understanding the application of Semantic Web techniques to legal information services.  While the technical level appears high, the concepts and techniques involved will be accessible to all information specialists.

Slides: 

Nuria-Tom-CALI-2012-final.ppt