Wikibase as an environment for harmonisation of data about past: the example of WikiHum

Adam Zapała, Tomasz Królik

Wikibase as an environment for harmonisation of data about past: the example of WikiHum

The increasing number of digital projects in the field of history and cultural heritage over the last decade has led to a situation where very extensive information about the past became accessible online. Unfortunately, most projects use their own data model and do not refer to any reference databases. For this reason, researchers who intend to utilize combined resources are often forced to merge the data by themselves. Hence, data produced by projects often do not enter into general use and are not used optimally. The solution of this problem is the creation of an infrastructure that harmonizes and combines different data sets. An environment perfectly suited for this task is Wikibase. 

As part of the DARIAH.Lab project, an instance of Wikibase (called WikiHum) has been developed. First of all, it serves as an interface for the automatic delivery of permanent identifiers (each item will automatically receive a Handle.net identifier). Secondly, it enables data from different projects to be added, stored and harmonized with tools compatible with Wikibase (e.g. Open Refine). Thirdly, the infrastructure also makes data available, both through the SPARQL- endpoint, and also through plug-ins to other software (e.g. TEI Publisher). Furthermore, the database will contain not only various external identifiers, but also the most important data to capture the relations between entities and its change in time.

As part of the project, the most important Polish historical resources for places and people in the past will be added to the WikiHum database. These include resources already available online (Historical Atlas of Poland, The Historical-Geographical dictionary of the Polish Lands in the Middle Ages), as well as resources that were previously available only in printed form (Polish Biographical Dictionary, Lists of Officials of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Ultimately, the database in question will harmonize a much larger scale of resources. The database will be expanded both with new resources related to people and places, but also with new types of entities (e.g. intellectual or artistic works as well as seals). The aim of the proposed presentation is to share the experiences gathered during the creation of WikiHum.

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