Wikidata as a Linked Data Platform

Kristina M. Spurgin

2019-03-06

What we'll cover

  • Quick intro to Wikidata
  • Selected GLAM Wikidata activity
  • Plans at UNC Chapel Hill Libraries

What is Wikidata?

Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and others.

Wikidata also provides support to many other sites and services beyond just Wikimedia projects! The content of Wikidata is available under a free license, exported using standard formats, and can be interlinked to other open data sets on the linked data web. --Wikidata home page

See also: Wikidata introduction

What about Wikibase?

Wikibase is the software application under Wikidata.

Wikipedia <- MediaWiki -> UNC Libraries Staff Wiki
Wikidata <- Wikibase -> (UNC Libraries Linked Data portal?)

Linked data lightning refresher

Classic linked data concept: TRIPLES

Subject Predicate Object
owi:297853 rdaw:P10256 lcsh:sh2008107935
Where the wild things are has subject Monsters–Fiction

The Wikidata version: STATEMENTS or CLAIMS

Item Property Value
Q13912 P921 Q276453
Where the wild things are main subject monster

Items and Labels

Items are the things/concepts described.

Anyone can create an item.

label.png

Multilingual

  • Because I have my primary language set as English I see that as main label.
  • Because I have French set as another lanuguage, I see that in my interface.

Very multilingual!

multilinguallabel.png

Description

description.png

Use of description

descriptionuse.png

Alias

alias.png

Use of alias

aliasuse.png

Statements

All of the following are statements:

  • Main statements
  • Identifiers
  • Sitelinks

Look at item: Jeanette Winterson (Q233584)

  • references of different types (look under date of birth)
  • qualifiers (look under award received)

Identifiers+ – VIAF links back!

viaf.png

Properties

Properties describe the relationships between items.

New properties must go through a proposal process. (See all open proposals)

Look at property: author (P50)

Discussion and history

View item for: book (Q571)

Query Service (SPARQL)

https://query.wikidata.org/

Example: Instance of work (or any of its subclasses) where author is Jeanette Winterson

Check out the examples and the help!

The ecosystem: Reasonator

Nicer views of Wikidata

Reasonator view for Jeanette Winterson

reasonator.png

The ecosystem: Reasonator

Reasonator view for Jeanette Winterson

reasonatorplus.png

The ecosystem: Wikidata Graph Builder

Visual way to explore relationships/ontology in Wikidata

Class hierarchy for "book" (Q571)

wgb.png

The ecosystem: SQID

SQID Item Browser entry for "book" (Q571)

SQID Property Browser – look at properties used for class "book (Q571)"

Get started: The Distributed Game

Easy ways to start editing Wikidata

Get started: Mix'n'match

Hundreds of vocabularies being reconciled with Wikidata

Interface to:

  • verify automatic matches
  • simplify process of creating new matches

Example: JSTOR topics vocabulary

Selected others of interest:

The big time: Wikidata at scale

GLAM and Wikidata? – General

Projects

Wikidata projects working out data models, best practices, data enrichment in certain areas, including:

Applications

GLAM Wikibase

At UNC Chapel Hill Libraries

On the table:

Other ideas:

  • create items for unique archival collections
  • representing our faculty and publications in Wikidata (?)
  • edit-a-thons to reconcile vocabularies we care about
  • experiment with leveraging Wikidata in our systems
  • NC Metadata Connect name authority project (possible use of Wikibase)

Resources

This presentation heavily cribbed from: