I was tech lead for an RDF/Linked Data base Library Discovery Interface called Prism. The dominant Libary Interchange Format is MARC which predates the relatio

I was tech lead for an RDF/Linked Data base Library Discovery Interface called Prism. The dominant Libary Interchange Format is MARC which predates the relational database by a few years, and is a hierarchical document structure. It's possible, but not particularly helpful, to store it normalised in a relational database. I gave a presentation almost a decade ago about our work. [1] The takeaway is that Linked Data is just a more natural fit for modelling Library Data, especially when you use external sources like VIAF[2] to help anchor your identifier URI's. Sadly, whilst RDF has seen some uptake in the library world (e.g. BIBFRAME[3]), the full potential was never tapped whilst I was working in the space. Quad Stores are very fun to tinker with though, and features such as inference and property paths in SPARQL 1.1[4] allow you to do some interesting things that are difficult, or non-idiomatic, in a relational system. [1] - here: https://www.slideshare.net/philjohn/linked-library-data-in-the-wild-8593328 https://www.slideshare.net/philjohn/linked-library-data-in-t... [2] - http://viaf.org/ http://viaf.org/ [3] - https://www.loc.gov/bibframe/ https://www.loc.gov/bibframe/ [4] - https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/REC-sparql11-query-20130321/#propertypaths https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/REC-sparql11-query-20130321/#prop...