Open Work Graph (OWG) is an open identity and reconciliation layer for intellectual works and related entities.
OWG exists to help stewardship performed by libraries, publishers, archives, repositories, software systems, and individuals become easier to discover, reconcile, reuse, and improve.
Shared identity and reconciliation are the mechanisms that make that possible.
OWG is not a bookstore, publisher, ebook reader, catalog replacement, or universal knowledge graph.
OWG is infrastructure for shared identity and collaborative stewardship.
The world does not lack knowledge about intellectual works.
Libraries, publishers, archives, repositories, researchers, metadata specialists, open knowledge projects, and passionate volunteers have spent decades building knowledge about works, editions, authors, subjects, relationships, and history.
The problem is that this stewardship is fragmented across systems built for different audiences and purposes.
A work, agent, or subject may appear in:
Each system may be useful and authoritative within its own scope, but stewardship is difficult to connect, reconcile, reuse, and improve across system boundaries.
As a result, the same reconciliation and metadata work is often performed repeatedly by different organizations and individuals.
Chris’s Library contains physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks from multiple sources.
For a work such as The Hobbit, valuable metadata may already exist in publisher systems, library catalogs, Wikidata, Open Library, and institutions such as the New York Public Library (NYPL).
Chris should be able to benefit from that stewardship without recreating it.
Likewise, if Chris discovers a typo, a missing relationship, or a bad mapping, that knowledge should not have to remain isolated within a single collection.
The challenge is not creating knowledge.
The challenge is making stewardship easier to discover, reconcile, reuse, and improve across systems.
OWG exists to help make stewardship collaborative.
OWG provides three complementary pieces.
OWG IDs are durable identifiers for Works, Expressions, Manifestations, Agents, Subjects, and locally scoped Items.
The identifier is the stable integration point.
Metadata changes.
Relationships change.
Stewardship improves.
The identifier remains.
The public resolver is the canonical publication point for OWG reconciliation outcomes.
It connects OWG IDs to source identifiers, provenance, mappings, and stewardship decisions.
This is where shared reconciliation becomes useful to other systems.
Item Servers connect OWG identity to real-world collections.
An Item Server may describe physical holdings, digital files, OPDS entries, lending systems, licensing systems, or private collections.
Item Servers are locally authoritative while participating in the shared OWG identity layer.
OWG does not invent library science.
OWG adopts IFLA LRM as the conceptual foundation for Works, Expressions, Manifestations, Items, Agents, and Subjects.
OWG also expects to interoperate with existing systems rather than replace them, including:
Existing systems are already performing valuable stewardship.
OWG explores whether shared identity and reconciliation can make that stewardship easier to connect, reuse, and improve across the broader ecosystem.
Identity is the foundation.
Reusable and collaborative stewardship is the goal.
OWG succeeds when stewardship performed in one place can benefit many others.
OWG succeeds when improving knowledge in one place benefits many systems.
OWG succeeds when existing identifiers become easier to connect rather than less relevant.
OWG succeeds when libraries, publishers, archives, repositories, software systems, and individuals can participate without abandoning the systems they already use.
OWG seeks interoperability, not replacement.