I just had the great pleasure and privilege of speaking with Richard Wallis from Talis and Dave Pattern from the University of Huddersfield as part of the Talking With Talis podcast. It came about all thanks to Tony Hirst, who blogged here about Dave's work opening up the University of Huddersfield Library circulation data. I then picked up his work and RDFised the data.

We had a great conversation, ranging over the cultural and legal issues involved in opening up data, the licenses used, the possibilities for this and other data, the Horizon Report, standards that could push this work forward, Tony's assertion to all universities, "Don't you dare not do this!", and much more.

One of the take-away messages for me was the combination of worlds that might be considered very different. In the podcast you have not just the two sides of the pond, but two sides of the data in universities. Dave had lots of wonderful things to say about data in/from libraries, a central part of the intellectual life of a university. My perspective comes from the social interactions within the classrooms and on blogs, another central part of the intellectual life of a university. That we are both interested in the possibilities of exposing more information about these parts, and ultimately bringing them together, signals that there are many convergences coming soon for universities. Exciting stuff on the way.

Many thanks to Richard for inviting us. Many thanks to Dave for putting the data out there and for have such great insights into the value of opening up data. And many thanks to Tony for tweeting about it in the first place. Today was a big highlight for me.

I'll update this with a link to the podcast itself when it is up, hopefully in a few days.

It's up here! Hope you enjoy!