A rising number of actors in librarianship and its related fields are experimenting with Semantic Web technologies and Linked Open Data (LOD). The LOD cloud as a whole grew by 300% in 2010, whereas the amount of data relevant for libraries grew by nearly 1000%. For many, the question now arises how to integrate their holdings into the LOD cloud and how to embed externally provided LOD data into their own applications, adding value through cross-domain linking. The first conference day will focus on the corresponding infrastructure requirements.

At the same time, the principles and workflows of traditional scholarly communication and publication are under scrutiny with a view to a consistently web-based data and service infrastructure comprising the entire research and publication process. Concepts like “nano-publications”, “Semantic Publishing”, “Open Data”, “Enhanced Publications” or “Research Objects” mark the re-orientation of academic work, away from monolithic, comparatively unflexible and barely interlinked reference points towards a distributed, comparatively granular data infrastructure which is continuously accessible to researchers and into which their contributions recognizably return. These developments will be discussed on the second day of the conference.