Resource Description Framework (RDF)

CWRC-Writer allows users to markup their document with Resource Description Framework (RDF). In this document, we provide an overall description of RDF.

What is RDF?

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) was developed under the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is used to detail resources on the web. RDF is suitable for CWRC-Writer because it is written in XML. XML allows RDF to be processed by web operation systems, because RDF is not human readable in its raw form.

The resources described by RDF can include people, places, object, and/or documents. RDF information added to the document can be published across the web. Another term for this is “Linked Data”, and the user can follow this information to other document and sources of information. This allows you to seamlessly integrate your documents with the semantic web.

In CWRC-Writer you can add RDF resources to person, place, date, organization, citation, note, title, correction, keyword, and link from the toolbar. When you select one of these options a pop-up appears and you can linked data to the entity annotation. You can do this by lookup of named entities from within CWRC, as well as lookup in authoritative linked data sources. The external VIAF list of authorities, produced from national and major research libraries around the world, is used to link persons, organizations and titles, while GeoNames is employed in a similar capacity for place entities. More such authoritative sources will be added in future.

RDF is useful for CWRC-Writer because it allows you to semantically add information between datasets. This allows users to travel through threads of information linked together by RDF.

Related Links:

Websites:
  • World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Semantic Web. (n.d.). Resource Description Framework (RDF). Retrieved November 1, 2014, from https://www.w3.org/RDF/
Further Reading: