Linked Data & Sparql Endpoint Help

Main Principals

This is a beta release of the linked data and SPARQL endpoint service. The linked data principals are based upon here. If you experience any issues please send a mail to: Web@britishmuseum.org

Linked Data

All British Museum URIs start with HTTP and are within the domain collection.britishmuseum.org. We have attempted to map fields from our collections system to URIs which follow a pattern in the url structure which is demonstrated below.

In order to distinguish between the representations and descriptions using URIs as specified in Cool URIs, we have employed the "303 URIs forwarding to Different Documents" solution. For every representation of a 'thing' uses the URI format: http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/..., has a document(s) at: http:.//collection.britishmuseum.org/description/... For each description document, the information about a particular resource are results from a DESCRIBE sparql query. This data can be returned in a number of formats by appending an extension to the end of the description URI. For example, for the uri: http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/object/YCA62958 the data for this resource can be returned in the following formats (the default will be .html):

• RDF/XML (Content Type: application/rdf+xml): /description/object/YCA62958.rdf
• Notation-3 (Conetnt Type: text/n3): /description/object/YCA62958.n3
• Tutle (Content Type: application/x-turtle): /description/object/YCA62958.ttl
• JSON (Content Type: application/json): /idescriptiond/object/YCA62958.json

The same results can be achieved by submitting a header (Accept) in the request:

• RDF/XML (Content Type: application/rdf+xml): Accept: application/rdf+xml
• Notation-3 (Conetnt Type: text/n3): Accept: text/n3
• Tutle (Content Type: application/x-turtle): Accept: text/turtle
• JSON (Content Type: application/json): Accept: application/json

Sparql Endpoint

The sparql endpoint allows querying of the triple store. The queries can be made in 2 ways:

• navigating to /Sparql and subitting queries via the editor
• HTTP-GET requests to http://collection.britishmuseum.org/Sparql (RESTful API)

As will be seen when queries are submitted via the editor, the URL will define the parameters to the service:

• Query: The SPARQL Query
• Syntax: The format of the response, either RDFXML or Json for sparql results. Other syntax for Notation3 or Turtle are valid for queries which returns RDF

The same results can be achieved by submitting a header (Accept) in the request:

• Sparql Results XML (Content Type: application/sparql-results+xml): Accept: application/sparql-results+xml
• Notation-3 (Conetnt Type: text/n3): Accept: text/n3
• Tutle (Content Type: application/x-turtle): Accept: text/turtle
• Sparql Results JSON (Content Type: application/sparql-results+json): Accept: application/sparql-results+json

URI Representation Structure

Collection Object

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/{object_identifier}

Thesaurus Term

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/thesauri/{term_identifer}

Biography (People / Institutions)

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/person-institution/{person/institution_identifer}

Bibliography

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/bibliography/{bibliography_identifer}

Departmemt

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/department/{department_identifier}

Units

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/units/{unit_identifier}

Dimension

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/dimension/{dimension_identifier}

CIDOC-CRM Ontology

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/crm/{resource}

British Museum Ontology Extensions

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/id/crm/bm-extensions/{resource}