Freebase

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Have you heard of Freebase? If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard of it but it hasn’t really been on your radar, though you might be aware that it’s part of the mysterious semantic web. Well, maybe it’s time we sit up and take notice. It’s already attracted the attention of The New York Times, Jon Udell (Library Lookup), Tim O’Reilly, who believes “the idea is HUGE”, and the folks at Talis, an ILS vendor in the UK. Now there’s an article in the June 9 issue of The Economist . Here’s a summary. (By the way, this article is part of The Economist’s Technology Quarterly report, which is always worth at least a look.)

Freebase is a free, shared database of collaboratively-edited, cross-linked data, driven by technology from Metaweb, a firm established by the Freebase founders. The website describes Freebase as a data commons, with data all linked together. It’s still in alpha, with a limited number of users; the beta will be open to anyone. In contrast to Wikipedia, “Freebase is more of an almanac, organized like a database, and readable by people or software”. When Freebase and Wikipedia cover identical topics, Freebase will link to the Wikipedia article. Like Wikipedia, the information in Freebase will be subject to peer review.

How will Freebase be used? Someone who collects data on butterflies might upload the data so that others can add their information on butterflies. But then another researcher might add data on lizards, and still others might combine the butterfly and lizard data with geographical data to create maps. “The fact that users will not know in advance how their data might be used is precisely the point.”

This means that the database must have a new level of flexibility. Most databases today use schemas to describe “the types of records in the database and the relationships between them”. Metaweb’s database is “based on a more flexible structure known … as a ‘graph’, which allows users to contribute and use not just data, but schemas as well”. This lets them ask the database any kind of question. In contrast to other databases, such as Oracle’s or Google’s Base, Metaweb “reconciles conflicting data and ensures that each object exists only once in the database. But each object can be tied to every other object, so that the resulting web of associations looks rather like the neural networks in a brain.”

What’s the business model? Danny Hillis (a founder of Thinking Machines) and a co-founder of Freebase isn’t worried about that yet. “For now, he is much too excited about the technology to worry about the money.”

Implications for libraries? Plenty. Libraries might find a use there for library data — collections, circulations, usage, etc. That data could then be used in various ways: linked to survey data, commercial activity, census, etc.
(”Sharing What Matters“, The Economist, June 7, 2007.)

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