European data spaces and semantic interoperability

Marcell Ottó Ormándy, staff member of the Library Standardization Office of the Library Institute, took part in the European Data Conference on Research Data and Semantics (Endorse), held in Brussels on 15–16 October. The conference focused on reference data and semantic interoperability. The event was organised by the Publications Office of the European Union and the Interoperable Europe initiative of the European Commission.

The central theme of the conference was the data spaces used within EU institutions and the member states, as well as the interoperability between these spaces. Participants were introduced to ontologies, controlled vocabularies, knowledge graphs and application profiles, most of which use the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, the basis of the library standards Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Bibframe.

The two-day event consisted of two sections, several plenary and keynote presentations, pop-up workshops, and two panel discussions. One section presented the operation and objectives of European data spaces from a less technical perspective. This part included the two panel discussions, which examined statistical data modelling in EU Member States and the data spaces of the EU. The other section had a technical focus, addressing questions related to artificial intelligence, large language models, the SPARQL query language, and the construction of controlled vocabularies.

The conference provided an excellent opportunity to explore the non-library uses of RDF, as well as for the staff of the Library Institute, the Publications Office, and the Library of the European Commission to exchange experiences on the development of RDA.

Recordings of the event are available on the website of the Publications Office of the European Union.