Category: libraries

Powerful tool to quickly create items for publications in Wikidata

This is a great example of why I love the WikiCite community. At WikiCite 2017 a group of people decided to write a zotero translator for the Wikidata community.

Last week I had the opportunity to learn about a data archive at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. The archive is well-curated, and has a lot of metadata about data files that they house, such as supporting data sets or replication materials related to published papers and books that ISPS-affiliated scholars have created.

This week I read about the zotero translator and I wanted to try it out. Thank you very much, zotkat! This translator meets the needs of people who want a semi-automated way to quickly create items of publications of many varieties.

If you run this query on the Wikidata Query Service then you will be able to explore the items for publications and explore the supporting data files by following the links to where the data is stored at ISPS.

Windham-Campbell Prizes

The Windham-Capbell Prizes are awarded in Fiction, Nonfiction, Drama and Poetry. This year 8 awards were made.

Erna Brodber
Erna Brodber in 2015 by Peter Bennett , via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erna_Brodber.jpg

Erna Brodber, Andre Alexis, Marina Carr, Carolyn Forche, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ike Holter, Maya Jasanoff, Ashleigh Young are the 2017 recipients of Windham-Campbell Prizes.

For each recipient who already had an item in Wikidata I added a statement using property P166 “award received” to connect them to the prize.

I was then able to write queries about the set of prize recipients.

  1. Who are all the winners of the Windham-Campbell Prizes in history? Try the query here on the Wikidata Query Service.
  2. How many recipients do we have images for in Wikimedia Commons? Try the query here on the Wikidata Query Service.
  3. Return a list of all winners of the Windham-Campbell Prize along with the geocoordinates of their birthplaces. Try the query here on the Wikidata Query Service.
  4. Return a list of winners with their DOBs and plot it on a timeline. Try the query here on the Wikidata Query Service.
  5. Winners of the Windham-Campbell Prize listed with all other awards received. Try the query here on the Wikidata Query Service.

I think this is a helpful example of how library bibliographic metadata could further enhance Wikidata. I would like to be able to see the metadata for each of the works created by these authors, but this data is not yet in Wikidata. Imagine what we could build for library users- or what library users could build themselves- if we could also provide bibliographic metadata from Wikidata!

Library of Congress Digital Preservation using Wikidata URIs!

The Library of Congress Digital Preservation team recently updated their inventory of Format Description Documents to include Wikidata URIs. The Library of Congress has detailed descriptions of more than 400 file formats on their website.

Wikidata QID on the TIFF format description document
This is an excerpt from the format description document for TIFF, Revision 6.0 showing the Wikidata ID.

The purposes of these format descriptions are listed on their website:

  • To support strategic planning regarding digital content formats, in order to ensure the long-term preservation of digital content by the Library of Congress, and
  • To provide an inventory of information about current and emerging formats, including the identification of tools and detailed documentation that are needed to ensure that the Library of Congress can manage content created or received in these formats through the content life cycle, and
  • To identify and describe the formats that are promising for long-term sustainability, and develop strategies for sustaining these formats including recommendations pertaining to the tools and documentation needed for their management.
  • To identify and describe the formats that are not promising for long-term sustainability, and develop strategies for sustaining the content they contain.
  • The overall analysis is part of the execution of the Library of Congress Digital strategic plannning goal pertaining to the management and sustenance of digital content.

I’m looking forward to seeing many additional cultural heritage institutions and organizations using Wikidata URIs in the future.

Wikidata is already serving as a crosswalk between identifiers. Here is a SPARQL query for the Wikidata endpoint showing all of the items in Wikidata for which we have IDs from the Library of Congress, PRONOM, and the Just Solve Wiki.

UPDATE: I updated this post on March 15, 2017 with new links to the Library of Congress websites.

 

#loveyourdata week 2017

Love Your Data logo
Logo for Love Your Data Week

#LYD17

Similar to Open Access Week, the purpose of the Love Your Data (LYD) campaign is to raise awareness and build a community to engage on topics related to research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, and library-based research data services. We will share practical tips, resources, and stories to help researchers at any stage in their career use good data practices.

I created a series of 5 SPARQL queries that highlight Wikidata, collections at Yale University Library, and are expressions of how I relate to #loveyourWIKIdata.

One Librarian, One Reference #1lib1ref

Logo for the #1Lib1Ref campaign
The Wikipedia Library  is hosting the #1Lib1Ref campaign. The object is to get every librarian to add one reference or citation to a Wikipedia article.
Here is a roundup of links to videos related to the campaign:
A video introducing #1lib1ref
A video created by Wikimedia Deutschland und Simpleshow Foundation on the topic of adding references.
A video featuring Alex Stinson, GLAM-Wiki (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) Strategist at the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wiki-librarians Phoebe Ayers (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Kelly Doyle (Wikipedian in Residence for Gender Equity, West Virginia University Libraries), Merrilee Proffitt (OCLC Research), and Jessamyn West (Vermont librarian and technologist) discussing libraries and Wikipedia.
 image credit: By OlafJanssen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Wikidata: Archival papers held by institutions

I was curious to know how many links to archival collections are being added to items about people in Wikidata. I wrote a SPARQL query for the Wikidata Query Service to find out.

This query makes use of Property 485 “archives at” and the bubble chart visualization is one of the built-in options for data display of the Wikidata Query Service.

Bubble chart visualization showing the institutions named in P485 "archives at" in Wikidata
Bubble chart visualization showing the institutions named in P485 “archives at” in Wikidata

 

The institutions named the most often by the “archives at” property are in the largest bubbles. Yale University Library and the Beinecke are in the middle layer as of today. I would like to add enough links to archival collections at these two institutions to see this visualization change (with the bubbles for Yale and the Beinecke increasing in size) before the end of 2016.