Linked Open Usable Data for Cultural Heritage: Community Building and Semantic Interoperability in Practice

Abstract

This paper presents an extended transcript of a talk given online on 18 November 2025 for the 17th Semantic Web in Libraries Conference (SWIB25). It shares key findings from my PhD thesis on Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD) for cultural heritage. My research examined how LOUD specifications like IIIF APIs and Linked Art fostered collaborative knowledge creation, focusing on implementations in both the Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) project and Yale's LUX platform. Using a framework based on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the analysis revealed three critical dimensions. First, sustainable development required continuous engagement beyond implementation, with community-led practices providing the socio-technical foundation for specification maintenance. Second, demographic homogeneity perpetuated biases that marginalised diverse perspectives, requiring the transformation of inclusion frameworks. Third, LOUD improved the discoverability of heritage data while requiring investment in accessibility paradigms that acknowledged technological differences. The research demonstrates that LOUD methodologies foster collaborative knowledge production through community engagement, confront power dynamics in inclusion frameworks, and provide mechanisms for democratising heritage access while accounting for technological disparities.