Linked Open Data
publications through
Wikidata &
persistent identification
in Flemish museums

Museum as an online knowledge source
‘Offering original authentic information from trusted
sources’:
• permanently available
• access to authentic and up-to-date information about
artworks
• easy to find and to reuse

Persistent URI’s

artwork
http://cvg.
be/collectie/work/i
d/1856
data
http://kmska.
be/collectie/work/
data/1856
picture
http://kmska.
be/collectie/work/
representation/185
6
picture
http://lukasweb.
be/collectie/work/
representation/185
6
data
http://cvg.
be/collectie/work/
data/1856
creator
http://viaf.org/
viaf/312406452/
type
http://vocab.getty.
edu/aat/3000337
99

DATA CLUSTERS

RESOLVER
Open source!
https://github.com/PACKED-vzw/resolver

RESOLVER
API / collectie-
beheersysteem
DAM - systeem
resolver
CMS collectie
website
Data manager
europeanamobiele apps
museum
website
URI
URL (JPEG)
URL(XML)
URL (HTML)
URI
URI

https://www.projectcest.be/images/3/38/20150430_Handout_Open_Refine_workshop.pdf

ENRICHMENT THROUGH LINKED DATA
External authorities:
- Wikidata, VIAF, RKDartists, ODIS,
Geonames, AAT (Getty Vocabularies),
Iconclass
https://www.projectcest.be/wiki/Publicatie:
Project_Persistente_identificatie

More contextual data!

Event-based object description
Wikidata, VIAF, RKDartists..
Event 1 Event 2 Event 3 Event 4 Event 5
Geonames, TGN …
Wikidata; Worldcat; Amazon
api; Librarything api; LoC
CDS; Olid; Openlibrary.org…
ISO 8601

Lifecycle of an artwork
What happend to an
artwork over time and
where did this event
take place?

Lifecycle of an artwork
What happend to an
artwork over time and
where did this event
take place?

Lifecycle of an artwork
What happend to an
artwork over time and
where did this event
take place?

Provenance timeline
How did an artwork change owners through time?

Exhibitions map
In which countries
were artworks from a
particular collection
shown in an exhibition?

Acquisition source
From which sources did a museum
acquire artworks?
(one museum)

Acquisition source
From which source did a museum
acquire artworks?
(five museums)

Objectname/Iconography streamgraph
How important was an objectname in a collection through time?
https://www.projectcest.be/wiki/Publicatie:Event-based_objectbeschrijvingen

Museums & Linked Open
Data via Wikidata

What were we going to do?
1. PACKED writes a whitepaper on Wikidata (how can you add data to Wikidata,
what are Wikidata advantages to your institution, # best practices).
2. Project partners send a CSV dataset to us containing a.o. the created PIDs
for their artworks.
3. This dataset is uploaded to Wikidata under CC0 license - the info from the set
is then used in different Wiki-channels (a.o. Wikipedia)
4. Partners get back an RDF export of the data they delivered to us

Why would you, as a museum, participate?
1. Because it is done for FREE
2. PACKED & Wiki-community do the work: MINIMAL INPUT
3. Wikidata feeds Wikipedia = REACH (BIGGER/OTHER/...) AUDIENCE
4. Lots of possibilities for REUSE in your own projects, cf. by means of RDF
export

Our biggest help: the Wiki(data) community

Some great people here
Sandra Fauconnier, hired as project staff member
Foto: Eneasmx, CC-BY-SA 4.0
Maarten Dammers, volunteer data uploader
Foto: Sarah Stierch, CC-BY 4.0

We made a nice explanatory screencast
Publicly available via YouTube / only in Dutch

We wrote a whitepaper
Chapters
1. Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Wikidata
2. Costs and benefits of using Wikidata
(=business cases)
3. Crosswalk, delivery, upload process
4. Conclusion
Annex: cases usage guidelines

Business cases / costs and benefits
Museums Wikimedia Society
Benefits 1. Low cost
2. Audience reach
3. Creativity
4. Data in wider context
1. Mission accomplished
2. Quality data
3. Time to learn
4. Incremental growth of data
1. Heritage visible to
audience
2. Low cost
3. Open data
4. Source for Wikipedia
articles
Costs 1. Waive exclusivity
2. Time invested for
maintenance
3. Time invested for cleaning
1. Cost for storage
2. Time investment (volunteers)
3. Need for new tools

Museums sent us their dataset ...
What was included?
● Results from previous PID project
● Almost no ‘own’ information
● Largely external enrichments
● Inluding persistent resolverlinks

… this got uploaded ...
Largest load: through bot by
volunteer Maarten (Multichill)

… and the CC0 license got ok-ed
The project page of Wiki Loves Open Data explains the expectations of the
Wikidata community regarding donated open data:

Information = facts.
You ONLY provide the information from your CSV set, NOT the corresponding digital
images. What WILL be on Wikidata:
● Persistent links going to your resolver
● Links referring to other external authorities, like e.g. VIAF
The ‘own’ data you provide under CC0 is title of the artwork, creator, date(s), object
name/type and the name of your organisation.
As CC0 permits any kind of reuse, you can add Usage Guidelines. Though not legally
binding, they may touch on the ‘good family father’ principle. MoMa, Tate and Cooper-
Hewitt have done this too.

NOTABLE (‘relevance’)
Wikidata: 2 goals
● Wikidata centralises links between different language versions in
Wikimedia projects
● Wikidata serves as a generic knowledge bank for the entire world
In there: 3 criteria (at least 1 should be met)
1. The item contains at least one valid sitelink to a content page on a
Wikimedia project.
2. The item refers to a clearly identifiable concept or material entity, and
is sufficiently relevant, which can be proven by the fact that the item is
described in serious, public sources.
3. The item covers a structural need; for example it is useful for describing
other items.
The Reading by Emile Verhaeren
(Théo van Rysselberghe)
0 Wikipedia articles but: OK!
Kazuifel with saints (Anonymous,
16th century) … ?

EDITABLE, MAINTAINED
● Who are the Wikidata volunteers?
● Museums as authorities
● Wikidata -> references/sources
● There is room for a different opinion …
● … with authoritative sources!
Authority control (literally) on Wikidata
Peter Paul Rubens is linked to the following identifiers on Wikidata: Library of Congress Authors, VIAF, ISNI, GND, Freebase, ULAN,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, CANTIC, BBC Your Paintings, RKDartists, Sandrart.net, Oxford Biography Index, NTA, Digitale
Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Letteren, EMLO, genealogics.org, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Web
Gallery of Art, BALat, SUDOC, Artsy, Open Library, NGA, NNDB.

The numbers
Wikidata now (end if Jan ‘16) contains descriptions/records on 26.680 works of
art from the museums that participated in this project. At project start (Oct ‘15),
there were 65. (Wikidata had 10.453 items from Dutch collections.)
● Those 26.680 works of art were created by 3.615 artists. Of these, a few
hundreds are newly entered in Wikidata because of the project.
● There was a mapping of 399 different object names/types to the ‘instance of’
terms of Wikidata - from acrylicschilderij to zwart-witfoto.

The publications
Whitepaper - but also a Manual on how to add Wikidata records from scratch
or update/add more information to existing ones
● manually, using Quickstatements language (or not)
● using a bot (and a volunteer)
Full doc contains screenshots, step-by-step design
& is translated to English
& will be made available on Wikidata project page (+ communication)

Closing project workshop
1. Get your own account!
2. Search for your own collection & museum on Wikimedia Commons and add
an image to a Wikidata record
3. Find an item from your collection on Wikidata that had already been worked
on by a volunteer
a. Win a biscuit if you find a huge ‘mistake’
b. Correct / add information where needed
4. Add a brand new record to Wikidata
5. How does the watchlist work?
6. Look at the RDF version of one of the works of art from your collection. Which
information do you find most interesting?

Next steps: PACKED vzw & Wikidata
● Publication of all materials in English on project page: model/inspiration for alike
projects or museum communities
● Adding information to creators: meat to bones (birth/dying date/profession/authority links, …)
● Add and correct dates, match ‘parts of’ works with the sum of parts (e.g. tryptich)
● Complement materials and ‘instance of’ types
● Correct PIDlink mappings
● Check and correct doubles, wrong attributions, copies, …
● Framework of larger project: Datahub for Museums

Next steps: Museum partners
● Public side of the project: interested
in Sum of all Paintings, edit-a-thons,
Wiki loves Art
● Own communication!
● (Prototyping)project based on
Wikidata (catalogue, app, game …)
as a developing testbed or case
And … an IMAGEdonation

~~ The End ~~
Questions/experiences on persistent URI, events-data or Wikidata?
Share them with
ALINA@PACKED.BE
BARBARA@PACKED.BE