Wikidata provides a comprehensive authority for geographical entities that can be used by the SowiDataNet Research Data Repository. Wikidata contains countries, German states, the European Union, and geographical regions without needing to create a custom authority. A custom query can access just the required geographical data items from Wikidata, gaining identifiers, multilingual labels, links to other identifiers, and abundant information from Wikipedia with minimal cost and effort compared to maintaining a custom authority.

1. Using Wikidata as an Authority
for the SowiDataNet Research Data Repository
Joachim Neubert
ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel/Hamburg
Lightning Talk
ELAG 2016, Kopenhagen
9.6.2016

2. Geographical scope of research:
small piece of controlled metadata
• SowiDataNet: Subject data repository on social sciences and
economics
• Several subject specific knowledge organization systems
• Entities for geographical areas are not subject specific at all
• Create a custom authority? We need
• Countries
• States in Germany
• „European Union“, and possibly other multinational political unions
• Geographical Regions (which are not administrative units – e.g.
„Eastern Germany“)
Page 2

3. All of this is in Wikidata!
Page 3
• … and by a custom query we can precisely get access to and select
from the required portion of the data items
• What we gain:
• Identifiers
• Labels in multiple languages
• Links to lots of other identifiers
• An abundance of information from Wikipedia
• Updates of the underlying data by the community
• Open edit interface for contributing own improvements to Wikidata
• … with minimal cost and effort

4. Page 4Query link
Query for autosuggest list
of Wikidata items