Semantic web helps
computers and people work better together. But how? And what is it?
First, we understand that the World
Wide Web was made for humans with computers. Websites use language, images, and
layouts that present information in a way that’s easy for humans to understand
but not for computers. Computers can’t read, see relationships, or make
decisions about information or data like humans can.
Semantic Web is a movement led by
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) intended to
address this limitation of computers. W3C promotes common data formats and
exchange of protocols so that data, regardless of format of the source
document, can be read by computers universally.
For computers to understand
information, particularly what words mean and what the relationships between
words are, the computer needs to have documents that describe all the words and
logic to make necessary connections. Semantic Web creates this common
vocabulary so that there’s one framework where data can be shared and reused
across applications, platforms, enterprises, and community boundaries.
With data connected and understood
with this common vocabulary, the result is that computers can develop an
understanding about connections in data, enabling more useful work and
productive interactions.
Why is this important?
The growing significance and
emergence of open data encourages universities to improve the visibility,
promotion, and dissemination of research. Semantic web technologies make it
possible to link open data with a common framework and improve the efficiencies
of research. This is especially important today given the emphasis on
collaboration between researchers, research institutions, and industry.
Although there is an increasing
need for semantic web skills, there is a lack of resources in Canada dedicated
to educating people in these skills. To address this gap, the Université du
Québec à Montréal (UQAM), in partnership with Research Impact Canada and the
Future Skills Centre, developed a learning environment and conducted training
on semantic web skills for a group of 22 individuals that consisted of systems
librarians, application and web interface programmers, and data management
specialists.
Learn more about their approach to developing semantic web skills training and the training they provided by clicking on the link here.
We hope that UQAM’s work will
inform other institutions on how they too can provide semantics web skills
training in a world that demonstrates high demand for these skills.
The above report was created in
partnership between Research Impact Canada and the University of Quebec in
Montreal.
This work was funded by The Conference Board of Canada through the Government of Canada‘s Future Skills Centre. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Future Skills Centre, its funder, or its partners.
Future Skills Centre is a partnership of Ryerson University, The Conference Board of Canada, and Blueprint.