Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Affinity Group Calls/Meeting Notes/2019-05-07

Overview of Cohort Institution Projects

University of Minnesota (Christine DeZelar-Tiedman)

• No formalized plans, will use some of the batch loading tools to contribute wikidata based on their University researchers. Their platform (Pure) does a batch export, so they’ll find ways to load to Wikidata.
• Both researchers and archive related info, papers, etc.

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Paloma Graciani Picardo)

• No formal plans quite yet
• Local authorities. Correspondence in their archives, they keep indexes. Some might comply with authority schema on Wikidata.
• Want to learn about Wikibase as possible platform for authority data

Northwestern University (Paul Burley)

• Going to work on metadata for posters from their collection of African Studies. In African languages--Hausa. LCNAF won’t work. They’ll need to create URIs in Wikidata.
• YES, would be interested in using QA to look up entities they’ve created (via Sinopia)

University of Pennsylvania (John Mark Ockerbloom)

• John not on call, maybe next call

Harvard Music Projects (Christina Linklater & Christine Fernsebner Eslao)

• Slides
• Guido Adler Collection
  • Materials on musicology, initiated musicology study at University of Vienna (advised first Jewish PhD in musicology, first PhD in musicology obtained by a woman)
  • Harvard purchased because annotated--interest and engagement with musicologists of his day
  • First critical biography of Beethoven--annotated heavily by Adler--foundational text in the field
  • Show connection between musicologists driven into exile
  • Digitizing pamphlets, hope to make a product for musicologists, whom did Adler know, where did his contemporaries go after the war
  • Pretty fully described in MARC records, but could better see the connections by creating Wikidata. Enhance descriptions
  • Names do have LC NAF
• Arthur Freedman Collection
  • More wikidata focused project. These are well described in finding aids.
  • 1,000 recordings of punk shows: audio and video. Digitizing.
  • Driven to document shows he really loved
  • Metadata--cassette liners, but sometimes not information about the venue
  • Interest in recordings that have been digitized
  • Number of bands are well represented in Wikidata
  • In process of reconciling
  • Most venues aren’t described, but a few are
  • Found Wiki project music--info boxes for Wikipedia
  • For venues and musical performances--cast a wider net for places and events
  • A number of places don’t exist anymore--reflect different eras of Boston cultural life
  • Musical performances
    • Performances of ballets, operas, hip hop concerts, etc
    • Only 1 similar event to one recorded in concert
  • One question: what data is appropriate for Wikidata, what would be better elsewhere
  • Trying to find matches in Wikidata for bands using OpenRefine
  • Q: Have you found any names you need in MusicBrainz
    • A: Tends to be quite exhaustive--used by fans and record dealers. Many items in Wikidata are barebones, so matches against MusicBrainz is helpful. Hoping to use as outreach to music community--MusicBrainz tend to note things like location and dates active. Barebones local authorities--would like to avoid in Wikidata--don’t want to create item that no one can disambiguate
  • Q: am curious about how to add all these resources into a realistic virtual earth for libraries. Am thinking Google Street View with TIME SLIDER / Maps / Earth / TensorFlow with languages +. For ex., add video of the Rathskeller in in the 1970s or 1980s and now, or add punk rock video from the 1970s differentially from the 1980s … for archival research … and then patch them together bibliographically and archivally … in a new conceiving of libraries and wikidata
How best to do this?
    • A: Would like to be in touch--browsing data in Wikidata--timelines and maps, time slider, visual cues about chronology--potential for mapping time periods and neighborhoods cool
  • Q: Is anyone incorporating DISCOG identifiers as they’re creating wikidata entries?
    • A: it’s not linked data, but there is an api. We’re finding it useful
  • Q: Work on venues is open ended?
    • A: We have venues where recordings were made. How far down rabbit hole to go?
    • Steven:Cornell had hip hop flyers that described venues and went with schema.org a few years back--could look at how schema.org does it
    • Christine: Other digitized collections--complementary collections that we could link to through Wikidata
  • Q: How best to connect them library-wise and newly for interactivity … so that people in video could become avatar bots … and then we could eventually converse with these new syntheses, libraries-wise.
Thanks.
    • A: Coolness….
  • Naun: It might be interesting to see how this might work for other kinds of performances, not necessarily music performances
  • OpenRefine--Honor’s talk on Saturday
    • We will devote one of these calls to OpenRefine, hopefully get developer to join us
• Trying to convert marc authority files into wikidata entities

Is there interest in standing up wikibase instance for local authorities??

• Christine has made instances in AWS, would love for someone with some experience to chime in
• Jens, Wikimedia -- Germany
  • Working on integrated authority file
  • Can check with contacts there, and present on this in future call
  • They are evaluating Wikibase for authority file, making a decision about one/several Wikibase installations
• Interest Add your name here!:
  • Paloma, HRC
  • Tim Knight: Wikibase is something a few colleagues and I are just starting to explore; nothing groundbreaking to report at this stage
  • Rhonda Super: Interested in learning about Wikibase
  • We at SI are at the planning stage on creating wiki entity for SI scientists who are not on NACO. We are also exploring if creating VIAF directly is an option?!

  • At Vanderbilt we have been playing with Wikibase, but have run into technical difficulties: Quickstatements don’t work and also we have encountered bot throttling issues that make them unusable. So technical advice would be great.
    • Harvard: I believe Quickstatements doesn’t work for the Docker image, for anyone
    • Jens: Yes, it is hard to get QuickStatements to work with the Docker image, but there is a solution.
  • Merrilee Profit: 

I would suggest that Wikibase be part of these discussions, not separate. Wikidata / Wikibase are quite intertwingled....
  • Steve Baskauf, Vanderbilt University Libraries. We have experimented using Pywikibot to load data, but the built-in throttling makes it way too slow. Interested in either a way to reduce the throttling or an alternative (preferably Python) to Pywikibot.
  • Jackie Shieh (SIL)
  • Mairelys Lemus-Rojas (IUPUI)
  • Ahava Cohen (National LIbrary of Israel)
  • Ryan Mendenhall, Columbia University
  • Kristina Spurgin (UNC Chapel Hill) - we are exploring a state-wide name authority project with several other institutions. We are assessing needs and determining next steps for the project, but could be interested in WikiBase as a platform for building a shared North Carolina names authority file.

Introduction to Wikidata WikiProjects (Hilary Thorsen)

Wikidata:WikiProjects

• Helpful entry point to finding out how entries are described in Wikidata
• How other projects have been approached

• history/background
• Ways to contribute
• List of participants
• Can ask questions: how are they modeling data, look at properties they are using
• Model items
• Will talk about this more in next meeting.
  • Add yours to list (in agenda above) if want to discuss

Suggested future topic

• From Scott MacLeod (@WorldUnivAndSch) to Everyone: (09:53 AM)
  • Future possible topic? Wikidata for brain science, libraries at the cellular and atomic levels, and with an all languages’ approach … and into brain simulations in a realistic virtual earth for species?