Wikidata:Property proposal/collection items at

collection items at

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Done: collection items at (P11146) (Talk and documentation)

Description	Institution (museum, collection, etc.) holding items (specimens or other objects) collected by the subject (collector) or at the subject (e.g. site). (use archive location P485 for the archives)
Data type	Item
Domain	human (Q5) linked to natural history (Q484591) or other domains; paleontological site (Q9096832), maybe other sites such as archaeological site (Q839954)
Allowed values	natural history museum (Q1970365) (including geological museum (Q26958726), mineralogical museum (Q4294133), paleontological museum (Q65611482), etc.), university museum (Q866133), museum (Q33506), research institute (Q31855), maybe a few others
Example 1	Alexander von Humboldt (Q6694) → Natural History Museum, Berlin (Q233098), Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin (Q163255), Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Q838691), etc.
Example 2	Georg August Zenker (Q103473) → Natural History Museum, Berlin (Q233098), Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin (Q163255), Ethnological Museum Berlin (Q688353), etc.
Example 3	Richard Schomburgk (Q106178) → National Herbarium of Victoria (Q6973038), Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Q838691), etc.
Example 4	Messel pit (Q639217) → Senckenberg Museum (Q706441), etc.
Source	information from aggregators (e.g. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Q1531570) maybe via Bionomia (Q64446405)), collection management systems (CMS), publications, archives, etc.
Planned use	linking collectors with museums holding items (specimens and other objects) collected by them, also linked to a pilot project (https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/science/collector-edit-a-thons-museum-fur-naturkunde-developing-innovative-formats-participatory) but more widely requested from within the community
Robot and gadget jobs	no but there is potential to populate this using quickstatements from information in Bionomia (Q64446405) (see this example https://bionomia.net/Q103473/deposited-at)
See also	has works in the collection (P6379), archives at (P485), oral history at (P9600)
Wikidata project	Wikidata:WikiProject_Collectors_affiliated_with_the_MfN_Berlin

Motivation

Discussions within the natural history collections community have shown that currently, it is difficult to state in Wikidata that specimens (objects/items) collected by someone are deposited/housed in a specific collection. Some institutions have used property P6379 ('has works in the collection'), and this property has also been recommended for use to model this relationship. However, property P6379 has originally been created to be used for creative works and is a property related to art. The Wikidata usage instructions for P6379 clearly state: “use when an organisation has creative works of this person or organisation in their collection.”

There is much demand to state in a community agreed way which institution is holding specimens or other collection items collected by a certain person (zoological, botanical, paleontological collector, etc.).

One significant question is if the property should be specific for the natural history domain or more open for other domains. This would depend on whether we use 'specimen' or 'collection item', respectively. A more narrow property ‘has specimens in the collection’ or ‘specimens at’ could not be used for collection items from other domains (e.g. ethnology, anthropology, maybe archeology).

In both cases, the new property could and hopefully would be used widely. To be able to model this information would support research on provenance and increase openness and transparency of institutions. For research in colonial contexts and in the context of transdisciplinary collecting practices, it would be beneficial to know where (part of) a collection is housed today, especially if it has not been studied yet or is distributed among many institutions.

Another question is, if it should mirror the property ‘has works in the collection’ or better the property ‘archives at’ (or ‘oral history at’), resulting either in a property name ‘has items in the collection’ or ‘collection items at’.

Potentially, this new property could also be used to link a certain place such as a paleontological site or lagerstätte (maybe also archeological sites) with a certain museum collection. Then, only the last option ‘collection items at’ might be useful. This might, however, pose new questions we might need to think about and discuss.

Since this is my first property proposal, I am looking forward to questions, suggestions, ideas and thoughts from the Wikidata community. Thank you!

S.v.Mering (talk) 12:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support I'm of the opinion that this is a needed property. I have previously been using the has works in the collection (P6379) property to link natural history specimen collectors to institutions that hold their collections. However I have been uncomfortable with this use of has works in the collection (P6379) as that property was created to be used for linking creative works by an artist. To me, the use of that property for such items as natural history specimens was a stretch. I regard this proposed property as more fit for purpose when adding data about the placement of natural history specimens. - Ambrosia10 (talk) 13:37, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:44, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment I feel that the suggested property might be too generic and might therefore bring more issues to the table compared to what it solves. Rather than having a property that's (much) broader than has works in the collection (P6379) in scope could one that is equally specialized be introduced instead? Let's avoid a similar situation to what we have with main subject (P921) and its related properties! Abbe98 (talk) 15:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for this comment! An alternative to this relatively generic property could be "specimens at" for natural history specimens (incl. biological specimen (Q2075980), zoological specimen (Q2114846), herbarium specimen (Q61726742)). However, this would exclude the use for other collections objects partly collected at the same expeditions, ethnographical / anthropological objects now deposited in ethnological museums. S.v.Mering (talk) 18:34, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Although the property is broad is does cover such examples as an economic botanist who collects both botanical specimens as well as objects made from those plants.- Ambrosia10 (talk) 19:08, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Could you please specify your concerns? How could we modify our proposal without losing the advantage of this broader property scope for application in many cross-domain use cases? S.v.Mering (talk) 12:04, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

• generally  Support the proposal, but User talk:Abbe98's cautious comment seems very worthy of attention and should be resolved. Lit cht (talk) 12:00, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you! How can we resolve it? We don't know at this point if it would create issues, do we?

  We are and were considering the more specialized option 'has specimens in the collection' or 'specimens at' but this would not allow us to model different use case many are interested in (e.g. collections distributed in different museums, not just natural history museums but also in cultural collections, ethnological museums, etc.). How could we solve this issue and model this in Wikidata if not via such a property focussing on "collection items" (regardless of the type of collection)? S.v.Mering (talk) 12:01, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

•  Support Am in full support of the proposed property. --Dshorthouse (talk) 14:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support It would be good to have a property that avoids needing to use has works in the collection (P6379). I don't love the name - unless you know it is meant to be applied to people items, it isn't very clear what it means from the name alone...have you considered "has items in the collection" as a slightly less ambiguous name for the property, and which invites a comparison with "has works in the collection" to help people see the appropriate choice? DrThneed (talk) 02:46, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, we have been considering this option (see the Motivation text on different options, either to mirror property 'has works at' or to mirror 'archives at'). The property name 'has items in the collection' would exclude the option to link to a site as well (items from a paleontological site are housed in a museum XY) but there might be other, maybe better ways to model this(not sure?).

  If a majority of users believe that 'has items in the collection' would be a more appropriate property name, I don't stick to the name originally proposed. S.v.Mering (talk) 11:56, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

To give a bit more background, one of the use cases for this property which was discussed in this recent workshop was to use this property to collate specimens collected at a particular paleontological site and that are now held at various institutions. Of course editors may have an opinion on whether this is an appropriate way to use this property and model these data. The "archives at" property can be applied to both people and organisations. -Ambrosia10 (talk) 02:38, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

•  Support. Great idea, support --DerHisto (talk) 11:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support. Great idea, support Raymond (talk) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support. --ThT (talk) 12:20, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support. --Jegelewicz (talk) 12:20, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support and  Comment I do think a property like this is much needed but I'd like to suggest not to apply such a property directly to the person's item (the collector) but to use it for an additional item which describes this person's (the collector) collection. This collection can be linked to a person by the property collection creator (P6241). This collection can then be described more accurate at the same time: the type of objects that are collected and where and when they are collected, and you can also distinguish the objects one person intentionally collected, from other 'paraphernalia' concerning this person, like personal belongings which are neither archival nor artistic. The same is possible for a collection of fossils/specimens gathered at a specific site. which gives you the possibility to describe the character of such a collection and add the property to this item.

Then this collection can be linked tot a (one or more) museum(s). It's just a suggestion but it might solve some disambiguities. I am curious what you think. Also I was wondering why you have not chosen for 'deposited at'? (and a last small remark, but more a matter of taste, I would not use 'items' but specimens or objects because it might be confusing with the wikidata terminology regarding an item). And a last remark: objects made from organic material f.e. may also be artistic works, and should be treated as such in these cases. AHendriksen-collecties (talk) 12:03, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

•  Support I am in full support of the proposed property! --ekrimmel (talk) 10:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
•  Support I definitely support this, it would allow us to get knowledge gathered during disambiguation of natural heritage collections to wikidata.MNHNL pbraun (talk) 14:53, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

•  Done @S.v.Mering, Ambrosia10, Pigsonthewing, Abbe98, Lit cht, Dshorthouse: -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 17:39, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you! S.v.Mering (talk) 22:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you AHendriksen-collecties for your comment (which I only saw today shortly before the property was created) and thoughts! We will discuss this further within the community. - We mirrored our property to 'archives at' and 'oral history at', therefore not adding the word 'deposited'. I am not sure at this point about the extra item for a collection of every collector, it would create a huge number of additional items. However, I see the point you make about having a chance to add more information to this collection. More to think about before. S.v.Mering (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2022 (UTC)