A Nicely Built Linked Data Web Never Resists Destruction

Yesterday was a bit of a downer in the office when Ed [1] filled me in on what was going on in with lcsh.info [2]. And it was sadder still to log on tonight and see the site down and replaced for good, though it's nice to see that the in-its-place blog post's comments [3] coming in are encouragingly positive.

I didn't really have much to do with this project, nor with its demise. I'd guess, though, that this will be one of those things that can feel like something of a failure today, in the immediate now(), but will be remembered as a clear success later on. Here's why I think that way:

• It worked. It showed off what was possible, and was useful, in just the way it was supposed to be.
• It was fun for humans to explore.
• People noticed it. Lots of people.
• People at LC were proud of it. This is from first-hand discussions, and from having heard it trumpeted as an important experiment by LC leaders in public statements.
• People got it. Even the non-semwebbers in the room saw what it was about and could relate to that.
• It filled a need. Many people had called for something like lcsh.info, and when it appeared, it seemed a plausible promise of answering their calls.
• It's not just the geeks and semwebbers who were calling for it and things like it. The wogrofubico [4] report explicitly recommended several steps much like the ones taken with lcsh.info.
• It was, in part, the output of diverse staff at LC who, in part, have been active participants in a related w3c initiative [5].
• It looked cool. Those graphs were nifty.
• It was an important enough success that it was taken down. If it never gained notice, if it weren't useful, if it didn't promise something bigger, if it didn't make sense, if nobody cared, it would still be up. Yknow?

Ultimately, if linked data is going to work as infrastructure -- which, as something beyond linked data for linked data's sake, I hope it becomes -- there will be more fits and starts on the way to What Works. It seems cheap to remember that "this was always labeled an experiment", even though it was, and rightly so, but to get things right in the long run you have to try some stuff and learn from it along the way. Even simply having this minor crisis is going to drive people, hopefully, to taking issues of persistence and stewardship very seriously as they figure how to move this exciting idea ahead.

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(Title appropriated, with apologies, from William Kentridge [6].)