Literal

Some objects in Resource Description Framework (RDF) statements do not refer to other resources with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), but instead convey a value, such as text, a number, or a date. These objects are known as literals.

There are two types of literals:

1. Plain literals: strings with a language tag
2. Typed literals: strings with a datatype URI reference

Examples

• University of Saskatchewan Art Gallery: The following TTL snippet states that the title for 1998.004.001 has symbolic content, a plain literal of “Night Fire” with an English language tag.

<http://id.lincsproject.ca/kl4QYIdodRH>
        a crm:E35_Title ;
        rdfs:label "Title of University of Saskatchewan Art Gallery object 1998.004.001"@en ;
        crm:P190_has_symbolic_content "Night Fire"@en .

Further Resources

• Apache Jena (2022) “Typed Literals How-To”
• Emmons et al. (2011) “RDF Literal Data Types in Practice”
• W3C (2004) “3.4 Literals”
• W3C (2004) “6.5 RDF Literals”