Axiell CALM Limited announces pioneering new Open Linked Data

The latest release of Calm 9.3 makes Linked Data functionality available for the first time in UK commercial collections management software. Calm 9.3 allows archive services and museums to link to sources such as the British National Bibliography, to allow customers to connect instantly to external sources such as Wikipedia, or to explore collections more deeply through the use of interesting interfaces such as maps.

Axiell CALM has been working with King's College London, the AIM25 project and the Cumbria Archive Service on the JISC-funded Step Change project to incorporate Linked Data functionality into Calm and its web front end, CalmView. Geoff Browell is Senior Archives Services Manager at King's College London. He says, "This is a very exciting development. It will allow researchers to speed up their research by seeing parallel resources in one search; archivists can use it to improve exposure of their collections and could use Linked Data to make connections with external sources such as library catalogue data, museum records or Wikipedia entries."

Robert Baxter, Senior Archivist at Cumbria Archive Service, has been trialling the new software and says, "The future of search functionality is based on Linked Open Data, the semantic web and ‘Web 3' technologies. It's very innovative in the archives field but we see great opportunities for its use. It will be the next major area of web development to make searching simpler and more productive. It will also allow data from archive catalogues to be reused in different ways, for instance ‘mash ups' of catalogue entries associated with relevant historical data plotted onto digital maps."

Malcolm Howitt, Managing Director of Axiell CALM, explains, "This is a step change in the creation of a Linked Data service for the archives sector in the UK, providing the opportunity for more precise and consistent indexing and giving Calm customers the chance to connect their records to other authoritative sources and so improve the user experience. Calm is widely used by archive services in the UK so embedding the new technology into their normal working environment will help to increase its reach and adoption with no special technical knowledge required."