Every Library, Archive, Museum and Historical Society has a Story to tell.

These stories reflect and connect with their communities. The Web needs structured data to understand these stories and make strong connections.

The Library.Link Network brings together libraries and their providers to tell the Web localized, comprehensive, connection-rich stories.

Seeding the Web with Library locations, services, and content.

Growing Library Visibility Together.

Getting Started Is Simple and Free

  1. Find your library
  2. Get a Library.Link account
  3. Begin to share the story
Get Started!

Tell Me More

Three keys to Web relevance

Find your library and begin telling the story.

1. Visibility

Contribution and relevance begin with visibility. Libraries must clearly answer:

  1. Who we are
  2. Where we are
  3. What do we have
  4. How can we help
  5. Why we add value

2. Connections

Libraries exist to know and serve their communities, whether centered around geography, purpose, or subjects.

Libraries maintain some of the richest descriptive metadata, curated content, and services in the world. For the Web to connect with libraries, we must share in a way the Web understands

3. Fulfillment

The Web values happy users above all. The Library.Link Network completes the cycle of visibility by working with libraries and providers to ensure the wealth of data and connections links Web users to the Library’s resources, locations, special collections, and events.

Visibility connects and illuminates all parts of the library

To tell the full story of the library requires collaboration of libraries and their vendors. The Library.Link Network Publishing Partners are commited to telling the Web the full story.

Become a Publishing Partner

Select a provider to learn more

Catalog Visibility and Enriched Content

Sirsi Dynix
Innovative Interfaces
Novelist
EBSCO
Zepheira

Library Location Information

Counting Opinions

Special Collections and Archives

Atlas Systems

Events and Programs

Library Aware

How does The Library.Link Network work?

  1. A Library claims and activates their Local Link Graph domain on The Library.Link Network.
  2. The Library adds key descriptive information like locations, hours, links, and services to their Local Graph.
  3. The Library determines how much additional information they wish to make visible (e.g. catalog, events, special collections, and archives
  4. The Library works with their providers to begin publishing the desired content to their Local Graph.

The Library.Link Network performs a 4 step process. Source data is transformed to Linked Data using the BIBFRAME vocabulary. The resulting data is linked across the Library’s Graph and external Web sources. Then the data is published to the Web in a variety of Linked Data vocabularies with clear Creative Commons attribution for the Library. Then through organic or direct consumption, the newly available library resources are available though web search engines or 3rd party applications.

By the Numbers...


While The Library.Link Network was introduced in 2016, the technology, infrastructure, and partnerships with libraries and some providers have been in place since 2014 helping pave the way. In just the last year The Library.Link Network now has:

  • +100 million connected resources published
  • 1000+ library systems representing over 2000 locations
  • Q4 2016 – On Google, over 20 million times Network libraries appeared in search results with 600,000 clicks to library content
  • Libraries in 28 states with 3 Statewide implementations
  • Global participation – libraries in 8 countries live, more coming

Library
Locations
MARC
records
Bibframe
Resources
Contextual
Links

How can I learn more and get started?

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