How Linked Open Data Can Help in Locating Stolen or Looted Cultural Property

Looting and theft of cultural property has been a problem for decades. While there are no exact figures, some agencies suggest it is a criminal industry grossing in the billions annually. Documentation is an essential and key component to finding lost or stolen cultural property and in establishing ownership in a court of law. However, the data on cultural heritage is locked up in data silos making it exceptionally difficult to search, locate, and obtain reliable documentation. Through an advancement of the Semantic Web, called Linked Open Data (LOD), walls can disappear and the potential for a global database on cultural heritage becomes possible. We will introduce and demonstrate how LOD is produced and point to new tools such as Karma that can handle conversion of large quantities of cultural heritage data to LOD. With LOD and a tool like Karma we can establish bridges across repositories of information and simplify access to cultural heritage information that in the long term could help protect cultural property from looting and theft.