Property talk:P485

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archives at
the institution holding the subject's archives

Description	institution with the subject's archives
Represents	archives (Q166118)
Data type	Item
Corresponding template	no label (Q125506500)
Domain	persons, organizations (note: this should be moved to the property statements)
Allowed values	instances of organization (Q43229) (note: this should be moved to the property statements)
Example	Johann Sebastian Bach (Q1339) → Bach-Archiv Leipzig (Q798038) Deux-Sèvres (Q12765) → Departmental archives of Deux-Sèvres (Q19606454) Lyon Cathedral (Q1521) → Archives nationales (Q182542) International Federation of Journalists (Q26750) → La contemporaine (Q856640) Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Q32120) → Archive of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Q28735033) Ruby Duncan (Q19957642) → University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries (Q73644758)
Tracking: usage	Category:Pages using Wikidata property P485 (Q75176207)
See also	collection creator (P6241), has works in the collection (P6379), archive URL (P1065), personal library at (P9419), artist files at (P9493), oral history at (P9600), periodical archive URL (P7213), documentation files at (P10527), type of document(s) held (P11868)
Lists	Items with the most statements of this property Count of items by number of statements (chart) Items with the most statements Items with the fewest statements Count of items by number of sitelinks (chart) Items with the most sitelinks Items with the most sitelinks, but no link to one Wikipedia (sample: Welsh Wikipedia, cywiki) Items with the fewest sitelinks Most linked wikis Items with the most identifier properties By value of property Most statements Fewest statements Most sitelinks Most linked wikis Total of sitelinks on items Most identifiers Fewest identifiers Items with no other statements Most recently created items Items with novalue claims Items with unknown value claims Items with deprecated claims Usage history (total) Usage history (main statement) Chart by item creation date Database reports/Constraint violations/P485 Map Random list
Proposal discussion	Proposal discussion
Current uses	Total 176,450 Main statement 174,158 98.7% of uses Qualifier 345 0.2% of uses Reference 1,947 1.1% of uses
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[create Create a translatable help page (preferably in English) for this property to be included here]

Value type “organization (Q43229), human (Q5), institution (Q178706)”: This property should use items as value that contain property “instance of (P31)”. On these, the value for instance of (P31) should be an item that uses subclass of (P279) with value organization (Q43229), human (Q5), institution (Q178706) (or a subclass thereof). (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P485#Value type Q43229, Q5, Q178706, SPARQL

Qualifiers “described at URL (P973), applies to part (P518), URL (P2699), inventory number (P217), statement is subject of (P805), subject named as (P1810), copyright license (P275), collection creator (P6241), level of description (P6224), archive date (P2960), title (P1476), start time (P580), end time (P582), file format (P2701), newspaper format (P3912), original film format (P3803), page(s) (P304), number of pages (P1104), country of origin (P495), distribution format (P437), location (P276), state of conservation (P5816), based on (P144), document file on Wikimedia Commons (P996), retrieved (P813), reason for deprecated rank (P2241), reason for preferred rank (P7452), collection or exhibition size (P1436), copyright status (P6216), start of covered period (P7103), end of covered period (P7104), latest start date (P8555), earliest date (P1319), earliest end date (P8554), latest date (P1326), collection (P195), access restriction status (P7228), use restriction status (P7261), donated by (P1028), amount cataloged (P7328), Archives West finding aid ID (P9335), official website (P856), production date (P2754), scope and content (P7535), object of statement has role (P3831), object named as (P1932), type of document(s) held (P11868), has part(s) of the class (P2670), together with (P1706), fonds (P12095)”: this property should be used only with the listed qualifiers. (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P485#allowed qualifiers, SPARQL

Allowed entity types are Wikibase item (Q29934200): the property may only be used on a certain entity type (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P485#Entity types

Scope is as main value (Q54828448), as qualifier (Q54828449), as reference (Q54828450): the property must be used by specified way only (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P485#Scope, SPARQL

Item “instance of (P31)”: Items with this property should also have “instance of (P31)”. (Help)

Exceptions are possible as rare values may exist. Exceptions can be specified using exception to constraint (P2303).
List of violations of this constraint: Database reports/Constraint violations/P485#Item P31, search, SPARQL

This property is being used by:

• en:Template:Archival records
• nl:Sjabloon:Infobox architect
• ary:موضيل:معلومات تلفازة

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Please notify projects that use this property before big changes (renaming, deletion, merge with another property, etc.)

Constraint fails when collection (Q2668072) used

Can someone see the best way to resolve when "archives at" specifies an item that has an instance of collection (Q2668072), eg. target is Constantine Collection (Q28028160). The target is a collection that is housed within an institution, so it seems we need a means to connect the two, as archives in a collection at an organisation will often be most accurate.  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:54, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Self-references seem reasonable for archives

The constraint report does not like that an organisation's archives may not be housed at the organisation. It seems a reasonable assignation, so is there a means to reflect this in the items?  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:56, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

2019-12 partial archive

Can this property be used for partial archive, and how? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 17:42, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Removing allowed qualifiers constraint

I see no good reason why this property should have an allowed qualifiers constraint. If anybody sees value in that constraint, please explain. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 19:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Notified participants of WikiProject Source MetaData/More ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 19:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@ChristianKl: Don't see a reason for it either,  Support removing it. Iwan.Aucamp (talk) 20:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

 Oppose removing it. There are a lot of archiving-specific properties that may be hard to discover without this constraint. At the very least, I'd argue the constraint should be kept to provide autocomplete suggestions for manual input (though it can be set to "deprecated" for that use case). –IagoQnsi (talk) 19:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Reciprocal property?

Shouldn't this property be reciprocal? Meaning that the institution named should have a property such as "Archives contained" where it would list all instances where P485 has named it? - Kosboot (talk) 14:49, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Was just created 2 days ago: has archives of: Q105285756 - Kosboot (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

@Kosboot: that is an item, not a property, which is what would be needed. I have requested its deletion. Why do you see that it needs its own property rather than being able to be inferred?  — billinghurst sDrewth 06:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Be careful with 'start time' and 'end time'

It seems that in some cases, editors are mistakenly adding start time (P580) and end time (P582) to indicate the time period covered by the archives, instead of using start of covered period (P7103) and end of covered period (P7104). This is incorrect usage; when used as qualifiers on this property, P580 and P582 actually indicate the time period during which the archives were available at some institution. To use the Johann Sebastian Bach (Q1339) property example, the qualifier start time (P580)1999-12-31 would indicate that Bach-Archiv Leipzig (Q798038) obtained the archived material in 1999, NOT that the archives include material from 1999 onward.

It seems likely that legitimate uses of P580 and P582 would be fairly rare, as archives don't change hands terribly often (archives are meant to be rather permanent, after all). Thus, I've whipped up a SPARQL query to check for all instances of these qualifiers to allow for checking: WDQS link. –IagoQnsi (talk) 19:52, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Handles, DOIs, etc?

Any reason this property just takes URLs? Lots of libraries (especially major ones) assign persistent URIs to their archives (see, e.g., https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/4519). AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:52, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Limiting value to "organization" leaves out things that are instance of "archive"

One of the most frequent values for "archives at" statements will be entities that are instance of (P31) archives (Q166118). However, based on how archives (Q166118) are currently defined, they are not parsed as organization - obviously one can add instance of: organization to each archive, or update archives to say that they're all organizations, but perhaps one could just extend it to include archives? Ruthbrarian (talk) 17:04, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Self link using P485

Weadock313 (talk) 01:27, 20 April 2020 (UTC) 2le2im-bdc (talk) 19:36, 30 May 2018 (UTC) Beat Estermann (talk) 23:29, 1 June 2018 (UTC) Flor WMCH Gilliane Kern (talk) 05:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC) Mauricio V. Genta (talk) 23:42, 1 September 2018 (UTC) Laureano Macedo (talk) 09:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC) Daniel Mietchen VIGNERON Patafisik anarchivist KelliBee123 (talk) 16:29, 6 August 2019 (UTC) :kedouch Kedouch (talk) 11:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC) Anne Chardonnens (talk) Yooylee 30 (talk) 23:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC) Mlemusrojas (talk) 19:40, 19 February 2019 (UTC) erussey Kcohenp (talk) 16:28, 03 June 2019 (UTC) Mrtngrsbch Amandine (talk) 19:58, 12 August 2019 (UTC) RenéLC (talk) 11:17, 13 February 2020 (UTC) Sp!ros (talk) 09:00, 27 April 2020 (UTC) Ccooneycuny (talk) 16:49, 19 May 2020 (UTC) Librarian lena (talk) 19:57, 11 August 2020 (UTC) Valeriummaximum (talk) 16:42, 23 August 2020 (UTC) Jneubert (talk) 07:11, 24 September 2020 (UTC) MaryCDominique (talk) 10:06, 25 October 2020 (UTC) Epìdosis 17:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC) P feliciati (talk) 17:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC) JnyBn (talk) 07:27, 22 April 2021 (UTC) Hsarrazin (talk) 13:25, 1 July 2021 (UTC) Carlobia (talk) 15:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC) Heberlei (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2021 (UTC) KAMEDA, Akihiro (talk) 18:30, 18 September 2021 (UTC) Jonathan Groß (talk) 08:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Notified participants of WikiProject Archival Description

Hello, I'm expanding here a discussion on my talk page initiated by @RVA2869. The issue is: should it be recorded when an institution keeps its own archives? RVA2869 arguments are that it is obvious and that it creates a self-link, which could be a bad practice. My own are that it could be helpful nonetheless, particulary when describing all the fonds hosted by an institution and in case the institution archives are actually split between several institutions, itself included. I gave the following example: Q679689#P485. Thanks for your inputs! --Thomas Kerboul (BGE) (talk) 10:02, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Also separately pinging

Ruthbrarian (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Erussey (talk) 17:12, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Pobocks (talk) 17:36, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Codewitch (talk) 17:57, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Lottebelice (talk) 11:34, 12 July 2020 (UTC) Librarian lena (talk) 19:03, 14 August 2020 (UTC) Jneubert (talk) 07:03, 24 September 2020 (UTC) Sp!ros (talk) 12:39, 6 October 2020 (UTC) Sradovsk (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC) Heberlei (talk) 14:57, 11 June 2021 (UTC) KelliBee123 (talk) 03:46, 1 July 2021 (UTC) --F.Gelati (talk) 12:05, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Ballerlikemahler (talk) 16:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC) --2le2im-bdc (talk) 19:13, 24 October 2023 (UTC) Printstream (talk) 22:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC) Gkacton (talk) 15:41, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Notified participants of WikiProject Archives Linked Data Interest Group to avoid the maximum 50 adressees per ping (sorry for those who will get a double ping). --Thomas Kerboul (BGE) (talk) 10:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

@Thomas Kerboul (BGE): mhhhh, RVA2869 is right when saying that self-link should be avoided, 99% of the time is indeed a mistake. But there is a few exceptions (like Tree That Owns Itself (Q1421130) that owns itself or Dave Lister (Q3489077) which is his own father thanks to time-travel ), I think archives should be an exception too (because it's not always obvious, I can indeed think of a few cases where archives are stored elsewhere, an other obvious case are former archives, after they disappear the archives are - if not destroyed and at least partly - moved to an other institution). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 10:10, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I totally agree with @VIGNERON AND @Thomas Kerboul (BGE), that the problem of who keeps the archives of an institution could be an exception to the rule of "no self link", especially when the archives are shared between more than one institution Hsarrazin (talk) 11:08, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with @Thomas Kerboul (BGE), VIGNERON, Hsarrazin:. Epìdosis 12:11, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi ! I also agree. Thanks for the discussion. LuciOle (talk) 13:56, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

The problem is not so much in self-linking (although this is of course a consequence of it), but mainly in the confusion between the institution and the archive. Q17621489#P31 municipal archive (Q604177) = the data and memory institution (Q1497649) = the institute.

We don't put the park manager in P31 in combination with Tree That Owns Itself (Q1421130)*, do we? (To quote @VIGNERON)

• or another tree (you know what I mean)

RVA2869 (talk) 16:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Don't understand what you mean here... :/ Hsarrazin (talk) 16:37, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

TL;DR: The archive should be separated from the institution. RVA2869 (talk) 17:14, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

@Hsarrazin Look at: Q17621489#P31 RVA2869 (talk) 17:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

yes ! I don't understand, perhaps because of the language...(I use fr) Hsarrazin (talk) 18:48, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure how spliting the data and the institution will help here, as this property takes anyway an institution for its object. In case an institution self-host, the archives created by that institution should still be P485 by the same institution. --Thomas Kerboul (BGE) (talk) 07:47, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

especially since P485 is about the archives of a person or an institution Hsarrazin (talk) 08:24, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

+1, there is clearly a self link in reality here (archives archiving their own archives), so Wikidata must reflect this self link. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2026 (UTC)