When Ed Summers launched LCSH.info earlier this year I was thrilled. It was the first complete dataset from the library community to have an actual impact on the rest of the semantic web. It was elegant, had a SPARQL endpoint and a squiggly animation. Ed was asked to shut it down on December 18th by LC. Apparently because of “confusion”. Which is ironic since LCSH.info was a wonder of simplicity and usefulness compared to other  sites displaying authority information.

At work I used the SPARQL service to map the Swedish Subject Headings to LCSH. It only took a small number of lines of Python so, to me, it was instantaneously useful.

I’m going to give LC the benefit of a doubt and assume that this is just a “branding”-related mistake. Hopefully an avalanche of mail and blog entries will set them straight. Or work faster at the getting the “non-confusing” version out the door.