In a new Association of Research Libraries (ARL) white paper, a task force of expert Wikidata users recommend a variety of ways for librarians to use the open knowledge base in advancing global discovery of their collections, faculty, and institutions.
Librarians are using Wikidata’s structured data about people, topics, concepts, and objects to populate open source faculty profiling systems, to enhance bibliographic records in online catalogues, and to collaborate with communities on meaningful, culturally relevant, descriptive metadata for special collections and archives. The white paper, circulated for public comment in fall 2018, contains examples of Wikidata applications, screenshots, and recommendations for involvement on an individual or organisational level.
Beyond the task force, many library professionals from within and outside the Wikimedia community contributed to the white paper in draft form, offering a productive mix of enthusiasm and skepticism that improved the final product. ARL convened the task force and wrote this white paper to inform its membership about GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) activity in Wikidata and to highlight opportunities for research library involvement, particularly in community-based collections, community-owned infrastructure, and collective collections. Many in the international research community, including in libraries, are focused on community-owned infrastructure and robust metadata to facilitate open scholarship practices, and this paper takes a close look at Wikidata through that lens—as a public good worthy of examination and support.
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