  This study argues that metadata of library catalogs can stand autonomously,
providing valuable information detached from the resources they point to and,
therefore, could be used as data in the context of the Semantic Web. We present
an analysis of this perception followed by an implementation proposal for a
Master's thesis and PhD dissertation repository. The analysis builds on the
flexibility of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and takes into account
the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional
Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) in order to reveal the latent academic
network by linking its entities to a meaningful and computationally processable
set. Current library catalogs retrieve documents to find answers, whereas in
our approach catalogs can provide answers that could not be found in any
specific document.
