Linked open data – solution or complication?

Abstract

Linked Open Data (LOD) is widely promoted as the next step for digital humanities projects, yet our experience directing FLAME (Framing the Late Antique and early Medieval Economy) counsels a tempered, pragmatic view of its potentialities and drawbacks. Drawing on five years of work to align FLAME’s coin-find database with LOD ecosystems, we present several case studies on difficulties we have encountered in (1) reconciling typologies with the main initiative for creating a shared ontology in our field; (2) importing external datasets; and (3) integrating a large but narrow dataset. We conclude that LOD delivers clear gains when robust, centralized shared ontologies exist, but we encountered persistent barriers: disciplinary path-dependence; gaps and asymmetries in vocabularies; missing cross-project identifiers for finds; inconsistent metadata and coverage; duplication across platforms; and the amplification of geographic and methodological biases that users rarely read about but readily visualize. Resource constraints and distributed governance further slow coordination and maintenance. We recommend adopting or co-developing standards at project inception; designating liaisons; instituting and coordinating unique identifiers for coin finds; combining automated duplicate detection with manual review; and prominently highlighting provenance, methods, and biases. LOD remains desirable and practicable, but only under sustained, field-level coordination rather than assumed universality.