Data Catalog Vocabulary/Resource Guide

General reading on Open Government Data

• Publishing Open Government Data (W3C working draft)

Proposed standards for data catalogs

• Sunlight Labs: Government Data Catalog Guidelines — collection of links, list of suggested metadata terms
• Sunlight Labs: Drafting Guidelines for Government Data Catalogs — proposes an API for accessing catalogs (based on ROA with JSON/XML/CSV), list of metadata terms, Atom-based updates
• DERI's dcat is an RDF Schema vocabulary for describing government datasets and data catalogs.
• RPI's data.gov vocabulary proposal — focuses on data.gov, has general recommendations and design principles for vocabularies

Vocabularies for describing datasets and catalogs

• DERI's dcat is a vocabulary for describing government datasets and data catalogs.
• CTIC's Dataset Catalog Vocabulary is a simple vocabulary that provides classes for catalogs and datasets.
• DERI's voiD is a vocabulary for describing datasets available in RDF format (but not for other formats).
• SCOVO and SDMX-RDF are vocabularies for describing statistical datasets (but not other kinds of datasets).

Data catalogs in RDF

This section lists data catalogs that are already available in RDF.

• Peter Krantz's opengov.se and opengov-catalog — uses Dublin Core, FOAF and Atom
• (not really released yet) CKAN — uses dcat, contains data.gov.uk and many other datasets, has SPARQL endpoint
• CTIC's Datos de Asturias — uses voiD, everything (including the actual datasets) is RDF
• CTIC's Public Sector Dataset Catalogs — “meta-catalog”, a list of catalogs; uses the CTIC vocabulary, Dublin Core
• DERI's DERI dcat Demonstrator — contains data.gov, data.australia.gov.au, datasf.org, data.london.gov.uk; uses dcat; has SPARQL endpoint
• RDFa in data.gov.uk — simple Dublin Core + dcat descriptions of all datasets
• RDFa in data.australia.gov.au - uses Dublin Core mainly. Creative Common RDF vocabulary is used for license information. Available also as RSS 1.0 feeds
• RPI has the data.gov catalog in RDF
• @@@ Old CKAN mapping (semantic.ckan.net)
• @@@ others?

Data catalogs in non-RDF formats

This section lists some examples of data catalogs that are available in other, non-RDF formats.

• DC.gov data catalog in OPML
• recovery.berkely.edu: An Atom-based approach to publishing government data. Paper with technical background: Web Services for Recovery.gov (PDF)
• dcat in Atom Strawman

Federated data catalogs

• Sunlight Labs National Data Catalog
• Guardian's World Government Data

Lists of data catalogs

• CTIC's List of Public Sector Dataset Catalogs (and world map)
• Government data catalogs at Sunlight Labs
• Antti Poikola's List: Public sector data catalogues

Data catalog software implementations

Open-source software for running data catalogs—they could implement dcat

• CKAN
• opengov-catalog