Swinging triples: Bridging jazz performance datasets using linked data

Abstract

The jazz performance metadata prototype JazzCats:Jazz Collection of Aggregated Triples uses Linked Data to bridge four discrete jazz music datasets: Linked Jazz, with prosopographical and interpersonal information about musicians; the Weimar Jazz Database (WJazzD), containing musicological metadata; a discography of the jazz standard Body&Soul; and J-DISC, a fourth independent but complementary and extensive discographic project. Through the use of custom-built ontological structures the data, originally stored in various different information structures, has been converted to RDF and merged together in a single triplestore. The result is a new digital resource that can be used to support and enrich scholarship and research in musicology and performance studies.