Wikidata:GLAM/ASCL Library

This page gives an overview of the Wikidata activities carried out by the ASCL library. The ASCL library collection focuses entirely on Africa. It is the most extensive and specialized collection on Africa in the Netherlands.

In order to contribute to the closure of the Africa gap on Wikidata the library initiated the WikiProject Africa. A big thank you to all members of the Wiki community who joined the project and and who work together with us toward the same goal.

Maintained by User:Walkuraxx // Last update: 5 May 2020

WikiCite

The ASCL Library contributes to WikiCite, an initiative that strives to create an open bibliographic database in Wikidata.

Weekly uploads of journal articles on African studies

Recently published journal articles on African studies are uploaded to Wikidata on a weekly basis using Zotero and QuickStatements. Before uploading the articles to Wikidata, a link to property P1433 ('published in' field) is added to relate the articles to the corresponding journal. If a journal is missing or lacks statements, it will be added/completed. For the better findability of Africa publications in Wikidata the ASCL Library started to add keywords P921 ('main subject') to Wikidata (mainly country names). The additions are done via batch uploads. They are based on a query written by Daniel Mietchen.

Examples for journal articles: Mmekọrịta asụsụ na ihe ndị so ya: ... & African business models: ...

Occasionally uploads of publications on a specific topic

In conjunction with the publication of a library web dossier the ASCL Library occasionally uploads publications on a specific topic, f.e. on proverbs in African languages and on Somali literature. These uploads are carried out with OpenRefine and QuickStatements.

If time permits and data is easily available, Wikidata items in the subject area will be completed by adding additional information to the item such as f.e. aliases, date of birth and identifiers of Somali poets.

To increase the visibility of Africa publications the ASCL library adds a Scholia template* to the English Wikipedia article, under the condition that the query will retrieve a sufficient number of titles, see f.e. the English Wikipedia article on Somali literature (*Scholia is a tool that presents bibliographic information and scholarly profiles of authors and institutions using Wikidata).

ASC Leiden Thesaurus in Wikidata

The African Studies thesaurus is uploaded to Wikidata. 75% of all preferred terms are already matched to a Wikidata record by the Wikidata community using the Mix’n’Match tool.

Example: Usage of ASC Thesaurus in Wikidata: Bamileke people (see ASC Leiden Thesaurus ID / P5198)

Future activities:

• Completing Wikidata records that have a ASC Thesaurus ID but lack statements (To retrieve items with only a few number of statements, see queries on Property Talk Page)
• Embedding Wikidata into the African Studies Thesaurus and the ASCL library catalogue

Semantic image tagging on Wikimedia Commons

The ASCL Library started to add structured data to Wikimedia Commons (P180 'Depicts' fields). These Wikidata tags enable semantic searching for (ASCL) images in Wikimedia Commons.

Example queries: Images depicting the Nigerian Durbar festival in the ASC collection of Wikimedia Commons / Images depicting the Nigerian Durbar festival in Wikimedia Commons

Tools used for tagging:

• Direct tagging in the Commons image interface (tab 'Structured data')
• ISA tool; closed campaign: Rietveld collection (Nigeria 1971-1973)

The set-up of this page is inspired by Wikidata:GLAM/Koninklijke_Bibliotheek_Nederland.