Summary

In this chapter, we have seen how your dataset can be transformed from an isolated island into a connected collection of data. On one hand, you can perform reconciliation on columns that contain simple field values. Therefore, the text in the cells is given meaning by adding a URL to it which can be looked up online. You can either use the built-in Freebase reconciliation or install the RDF extension which allows reconciliation against Linked Data sources. On the other hand, you can perform named-entity recognition on cells that contain flowing text, again with an extension. This lets OpenRefine search for concepts inside the cell values, and it will try to find a URL for each of them. In the end, your dataset becomes enriched with links to other datasets, which is a valuable asset when you're publishing your dataset on the Web.