Through the use of Linked Data (LD), Libraries, Archives and Museums (LAMs) have the potential to expose their collections to a larger audience and to allow for more efficient user searches. Despite this, relatively few LAMs have invested in LD projects and the majority of these display limited interlinking across datasets and institutions. A survey was conducted to understand Information Professionals' (IPs') position with regards to LD, with a particular focus on the interlinking problem. The survey was completed by 185 librarians, archivists, metadata cataloguers and researchers. Results indicated that, when interlinking, IPs find the process of ontology and property selection to be particularly challenging, and LD tooling to be technologically complex and unsuitable for their needs. Our research is focused on developing an authoritative interlinking framework for LAMs with a view to increasing IP engagement in the linking process. Our framework will provide a set of standards to facilitate IPs in the selection of link types, specifically when linking local resources to authorities. The framework will include guidelines for authority, ontology and property selection, and for adding provenance data. A user-interface will be developed which will direct IPs through the resource interlinking process as per our framework. Although there are existing tools in this domain, our framework differs in that it will be designed with the needs and expertise of IPs in mind. This will be achieved by involving IPs in the design and evaluation of the framework. A mock-up of the interface has already been tested and adjustments have been made based on results. We are currently working on developing a minimal viable product so as to allow for further testing of the framework. We will present our updated framework, interface, and proposed interlinking solutions. |