Linked data in music and its potential for ITMA/traditional music web resources

LITMUS (Linked Irish Traditional Music) is a two-year cultural heritage linked data project at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, Ireland. It focuses on the creation of a linked data ontology specific to Irish traditional music and dance–the first such ontology based around a music primarily propagated by oral transmission. While efforts to accurately represent, describe, and organise traditional music have numerous challenges, the methodologies used to develop the ontology centre around text-based sources from traditional musicians’ album notes, mirroring language used by musicians when introducing tunes and songs in both formal and informal performance settings. Using practitioners’ own language will benefit the eventual application of the ontology within traditional music collections in Ireland, and have potential applications to other European and non-European folk/traditional music collections with similar considerations.