Submissions:2023/Agents, Name Authorities, and Linked Open Data: Leveraging Wikidata for Access and Discovery of Archival Materials

This submission has been accepted for WikiConference North America 2023.

Etherpad

Title:

Agents, Name Authorities, and Linked Open Data: Leveraging Wikidata for Access and Discovery of Archival Materials

Theme:

GLAM / Heritage / Culture, Open Data

Type of session:

Lightning talk

Abstract:

This lightning demonstrates the benefit of opening archival description for inclusion in wikidata. Archival repositories offer rich descriptive metadata about their collections and its creators, however this data is often siloed within a particular repository's archival management system. This talk highlights efforts to create and enhance a group of three hundred wikidata entities for creators of collections held by the Indiana University Archives and linked them to the repository's entity via the "archives at" property. Specific properties identified for archival collection creators included birth date and place, death date and place, occupation, field of work, educated at, and employer. Additionally these entities were linked to existing name authority identifiers from VIAF, SNAC and others. Finally the Indiana University Archives entity was enhanced to include contact information, physical location information, as well as information about its accessibility onsite and online. The aim of this small project was to establish a model of information widely applicable to repositories and collections within the archives community. It offers a low barrier way of including wikidata in archival description creation workflows, and begins to open archival metadata for use and reuse by a wide range of audiences.

Author name:

Jeremy Floyd

E-mail address:

jeremyjfloydgmail.com

Wikimedia username:

Jjfloyd

Affiliated organization(s):

Indiana University Bloomington

Estimated time:

8 minutes

Special requests:

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?:

a version of this topic will be presented by me at Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, July 2023, Washington DC

Okay to livestream?

Livestreaming is okay

If your submission is not accepted, would you be open to presenting your topic in another part of the program? (e.g. lightning talk or unconference session)

yes