Here Be Dragons: Knowing Where the World Ends

Unfortunately it’s actually a myth that medieval cartographers used to label their maps with “Here Be Dragons”, but that doesn’t make the concept of labelling unsafe territory any less important.

In the realm of open data there are many issues to consider when exploring and publishing open data:

• Is the territory safe?—What can I reasonably publish, and how much can I rely on data that I find?
• Is the map wrong?—Can I rely on shared vocabularies, and if so, how do I identify which ones?
• Do the maps align?—How does open data link up, how can it be encouraged, and how can bridges be built between data sets?

This paper attempts to address these questions and provide advice for the wary open data explorer.