Introduction to Wikidata for Maastricht University, Theory and Pratice - 15 October 2024

Navigating the World of Wikidata for Research, Science and Cultural Heritage

Wikidata's Twelfth Birthday: Workshop in Maastricht 

Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual database, collecting structured open data for anyone in the world to use. It also plays a crucial role in supporting Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Over the last 12 years it has strongly increased in popularity among the scientific and cultural heritage communities.

In this 2,5 hours workshop you will learn the basics of working with Wikidata, both in theory and practice. You will learn

1. The basics of Wikidata: A first look at what Wikidata is and how it works, both technically and socially (Wikidata community)
2. How Wikidata can be relevant for research, science and cultural heritage (GLAM), and
3. First steps in contributing to Wikidata yourself, with a focus on the topic of UM professors from past and present.

As part of the Wikidata 12th Birthday celebrations this workshop is open to academics, researchers, students, and professionals interested in working with Wikidata in the intersection of open data, research, and science. Whether you are new to Wikidata or looking to deepen your understanding, this session will provide valuable insights for improving your work.

Workshop outline

Part 1:  Theory, Wikidata basics (45-60 minutes)

• Slides: PowerPoint or PDF
• Video (.webm) including audio transcription (.txt) and closed captions (.srt) are available from https://zenodo.org/records/13984149

1) Wikidata basics

• What is Wikidata?
• What are the principles of Wikidata?
• How are things described in Wikidata?
• Who builds Wikidata? - The Wikidata community

2) Wikidata for research, science and cultural heritage

• To what extent is Wikidata used throughout science, research and GLAM?
• Six anecdatic cases
  1. Scientometrics - Scholia
  2. Life and biomedical sciences
  3. Astronomy
  4. Language technology / AI / LLMs
  5. GLAM – KB collection highlights
  6. Representation of (female) scientists

Break (15 minutes)

Part 2: Practice, contributing to Wikidata (75-90 minutes) 

• Slides: PowerPoint or PDF
• Handout for participants: Word or PDF
• Video (.webm) including audio transcription (.txt) and closed captions (.srt) are available from https://zenodo.org/records/13984149

  The goals of this hands-on part are:

• Get familiar with basic data editing via the Wikidata interface
• Understand WD data models and structures related to professors (of Maastricht University)
• Extend existing Wikidata items about UM professors, based on information in public sources.
• If time allows: Create new Wikidata items about UM professors

The visual slides and the textual handout explain the same content, blocks and exercises, albeit in a slightly different order.   

Required preparation

To make optimal use of our time, participants must create a Wikidata account in the weeks before the workshop. See https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount.

This is important because very fresh accounts may have limited editing rights. Furthermore only 6 Wikidata accounts can be created per day from UM IP addresses, so creating a lot of new accounts during the workshop might overstretch this limit.

Workshop leader

This workshop was given by Olaf Janssen, the Wikimedia coordinator of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands.

In this role he stimulates and facilitates collaboration between the collections, knowledge, open data and staff of the KB on the one hand, and the projects of the Wikimedia movement, such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata on the other. He is also active as a volunteer within the community. Feel free to contact Olaf via olaf.janssen(at)kb.nl

Materials on Wikimedia Commons

Photos, videos and presentations related to this event can be found on Wikimedia Commons: Category:Wikidata Workshop at Maastricht University, 15 October 2024

Relevant URLs 

• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Twelfth_Birthday/Workshop_in_Maastricht 
• https://theplant.maastrichtuniversity.nl/event/navigating-the-world-of-wikidata-for-research-science-and-cultural-heritage-2  + archived version
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7244614063102529536/
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7245329234385059843/

Earlier LinkedIn posts (April-May 2024, before rescheduling the worlshop to October)

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7188470390858428416/
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7188180802021543936/
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7189276985267826691/