Wikidata as an open, collaborative bibliographic database: the case of the National Library of Sweden

Wikidata, one of Wikipedia’s sister projects, is a free and open database of structured data. With its over 87 million linked data entities and a community of thousands of volunteers, it is occupying a unique position in the Open Knowledge landscape. By providing a structured yet flexible and content-agnostic framework for describing the world, as well as easy ways to query and access its contents, Wikidata gives data owners a collaborative platform to share and spread their resources.

Wikidata is a great platform for sharing bibliographic data, and has attracted attention from libraries around the world, including the Library of Congress and the Association of Research Libraries. The National Library of Sweden has been working with Wikidata since 2018, in partnership with Wikimedia Sverige.

The library made history by becoming the first national library to transition to Bibframe 2.0, a system based on Linked Open Data. This paradigm shift means that the data in the library's union catalog is easily available to the rest of the web. We are using this as a springboard to explore how a national library can use Wikidata to share its resources and better meet the needs of the open web and the Open Knowledge movement.

An integral part of our collaboration is education and training about the Wikimedia platforms, giving Swedish librarians tools not only to understand them, but also to contribute with sources and other improvements themselves. Our common goal is that libraries should be able to meet the needs of the modern, open web by participating in the Open Knowledge movement and informing the public about how to look at and use Wikipedia as a source when they visit the libraries.