There are many graph databases out there that support Resource Description Framework (RDF): Virtuoso, GraphDB, Stardog, AnzoGraph, and RDFox, to name just a few popular ones. But if the requirements for your triplestore include open source, as it does for our CFI-funded LINCS project, then Blazegraph and Apache’s Jena Fuseki are two of your most mature options...

Pop psychology has a concept most of us are familiar with: the linear, calculating left brain vs. the intuitive, creative right brain. The theory is that you either use one or the other, you’re either left-brained dominant or you’re right-brained dominant, but you can’t be both. This myth has been debunked many times over, but still you can find countless Facebook articles and Pinterest links with quizzes to tell you which side of your brain is the one in the driver’s seat. Even if you don’t buy into the left and right brain theory, we’ve still managed to try to separate logic from creativity, arts from sciences.

For me, this has always seemed a little off...

The core of the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) project is the simple proposition that making Linked Open Data (LOD) out of the stuff scholars use to understand and analyze culture will make a difference. LINCS hopes to make a difference to how we can make sense of the human past and present. It aims to enable such work within and beyond academic contexts, and in so doing to improve how things cultural can be presented and circulated on the World Wide Web.

I say stuff and things to demystify the notion of data. Those who make culture seldom think of themselves as creating data, and neither do those who collect, celebrate, curate, and analyze cultural objects, processes, and events. But everything we make and do can be represented as data and circulated on the Web, and a large part of contemporary culture is Web culture...