#Wikimedia #GLAM - donation of pictures from #Syria

The Tropenmuseum was asked to make available pictures they have from Syria. Today, it is my pleasure to inform you about a donation by the "Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen,

At the time we celebrated the Erasmus Prize and, at the time we worried about Bassel Khartabil. There is little hope for Bassel but there is hope for us to become informed about Syria.

It is Ramadan, and whether you believe or not, this is an auspicious time to consider the information we have on Syria.

Share the pictures you hold in Commons. As we learn just a little more about the country, its peoples and history we may find them to be just like us.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Maren Hassinger is on the "Black Lunch Table"

Maren Hassinger is a sculptor born in Los Angeles. She was awarded both the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to this there is a Wikipedia article.

When you read the article, all kinds of statements are made that could reflect in the article having Wikipedia categories. In this case statements in Wikidata were made.

The outward appearance is that Wikipedia and Wikidata are two distinct projects. Wikidata however has always included data from Wikipedia and there has always been a realisation that Wikipedia in its turn could benefit from Wikidata; generating category entries should be possible for instance.

When you consider the immediate future of the Wikimedia projects, Commons will be wikidatified. One part of the information that is directly related to GLAM activities is registering the museums that include an artist in their collection. This is applicable for many artists that are part of the Black Lunch Table including Mrs Hassinger. So the question is; should we include such information in Wikidata and how should we do this?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Jamaica and William O'Brien, 2nd Earl of Inchiquin

William O'Brien, the second Earl of Inchiquin is an interesting person. When you consider what Wikidata knew about him, much of it is missing. No members of the Irish Privy council were known, and he was not noted as being a governor of Jamaica. It is not known that a ransom was paid by the English parliament to the Turks.

When you read the Wikipedia article, It is mentioned in one sentence that he was the first governor of Jamaica but that is all there is. There is not much more except that he died in Jamaica in 1692 and that he was Vice-Admiral of the Caribbean Seas.

When you consider the bias in all this, it is found in the lack of attention for countries like Jamaica. Their history is in the people who were responsible for what is their country. When you read about the family of the earl, you may note that he married women of substance and obviously they are notable enough for inclusion in Wikidata. What is not known is if his wife accompanied him to Jamaica..

Much of the source material on the history of countries like Jamaica can be found in British archives and museums. Improving on the articles on people like Mr O'Brien and sharing this information widely will make Wikipedia more useful outside of its immediate and current interest.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#MissingBassel - What to do for him and, for #Syria

#Bassel is a Wikipedian. He has been sentenced to death and according to some, there is not much that we can do. They are wrong. We can do so much even within the confines of what they think is our neutral point of view.

Bassel is from Syria, in many ways people think they Syrians are the enemy. They are wrong. Bassel is a Syrian and he is one of the 735 Syrians in all of Wikipedia. Writing about Syria, about Syrians is what we can do. Without adequate coverage of Syria there is no neutral point of view. We need to know about Syria and its history, the people that make up the Syrians without making information available in Wikipedia, it is all too easy to persist in the idea that they are the enemy.

When we write articles, we need illustrations. We need illustration about modern Syria and the Syria that once was. Particularly for this last part, our friends in the many GLAM institutions for help. When we explain our need, they are quite happy to raise to the occasion, after all it is for a Wikipedian..

At the Erasmus award ceremony we got to talk and people from the Tropenmuseum came up with the idea of checking their collection. They have a small collection of 356 images readily available for upload and, they need some assistance.. It is such a small collection because it is not easy to ask the often Syrian photographers for their permission.. the fog of war you know..

We can make a difference for Bassel, make no mistake. We can ask our GLAM friends, we can ask Syrians who live abroad, we can ask anyone for illustrations about everything Syria. We can ask ourselves what we can do and the least we can do is make a difference and write about Syria and the Syrians.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata, its fucking amazing quality

Finding this illustration captures in many ways Wikidata. When we are to convince about quality we first have to be totally fucking amazing.

Quality is not an absolute. Quality is in being the best of the pack, in being better that what went before. Some say quality is in making no errors but for me that is a dead end. Quality is in acknowledging errors and dealing with them.

The first thing Wikidata did was bring some needed quality to Wikipedia. It brought all the interwiki in one place and it made for much better interlanguage links and it brought us time to improve on the mess that it was. The other Wikimedia projects and with two projects to go, Commons and Wiktionary it is fucking amazing what a difference it made.

Once Wikidata existed, many people feverishly started to include statements. Its progress can be followed in the statistics set up by Magnus. In a way it is similar to the wild west. Every Tom, Dick and Harry moved in and what has been accomplished is totally fucking amazing. It happened in the wiki way and some watch it in shock because there is no controlling it. Some of what has been done is good, bad and some is totally fucking amazing.

What Wikidata offers is to take much of the drudgery out of Wikipedia. Bassel for instance received the Index Award. The latest prize winners are from the batch of 2013. When this data was from Wikidata, it would be easier to update all fifteen Wikipedias when new data becomes available. It would improve quality and, would it not be fucking amazing to make that happen?

The chair of the Dutch Wikimedia chapter remarked at its annual conference: "So much is about Wikidata". Several of the presentations were about new ways collaborations with GLAM's, the potential they offer is huge. The one person with the biggest impact on Wikidata was mentioned often. It is fucking amazing to hear people from GLAM's say that Magnus's work enables them to contribute to Wikimedia.

All this is happening before your eyes. You have to see it to believe it.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia - #portal to all #knowledge

The Dutch Royal #Library donated, yet again, a wonderful collection of material to #Commons. This time 3100 images were uploaded using the GLAM-wiki uploadtool for the first time.

When you read the announcement, it is really interesting to find what is known in Wikidata and by inference in Wikipedia. One fun fact is that the old image for Mr Schoemaker has his name in a way that makes more sense in Dutch.; schoenmaker means, shoemaker or cobbler.

When you visit Wikidata for the subjects mentioned in the mail, you find not that much information but often a rich source of external sources. Some of it is really informative and well worth a visit. For Wikipedia articles, we provide badges for excellent material. It highlights quality where we find it. Maybe something like this can be done for external sources as well.

Having attention for the external sources we link to makes Wikidata more of a portal to all knowledge. It would extend from what Wikidata already is: the portal to all available knowlege in the Wikimedia Foundation.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia Nederland - #Sebastiaan is leaving

Sebastiaan was project leader at the Dutch Wikimedia chapter. He did tons of great work, and made a point of registering activities with his camera. Of particular mention is his huge involvement in the GLAM area.

Sebastiaan will pursue his career elsewhere. His friendly cooperative attitude will be sorely missed.
Thank you,
       Gerard

#LOC - #Wounded Knee II

At the time I blogged about the restoration of an old photograph take after Wounded Knee. At the time there were many people actively restoring pictures as a group. This is just one of the important restaurations undertaken by Durova.

Now almost five years later, I learned that the Library of Congress included the restored picture with the original. Now that is awesome.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Commons - the Como Cathedral

The Como Cathedral is a cathedral in Como, Italy. In it you will find works of art that are represented in Commons. This link to the works of art is established through an "institution template". It was easy to link the Como Cathedral by adding this: "| wikidata    = Q1101730" in the template.

At the moment there are 1149 templates waiting to be linked to Wikidata. With this link established, it is possible to either populate these templates with information from Wikidata or populate the templates with information from Wikidata.

It is a precursor for easily finding files in Commons that are linked to institutions. Many of them are GLAM partners of us and it is yet another way of establishing how important they are to us.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Dutch (National #Library, #DBpedia, #Wikimedia chapter) cooperation

So far #Wikidata did not have much in the sense of GLAM attention. When the Koninklijke bibliotheek, the Dutch (DBpedia and Wikimedia) chapter have anything to say about it, this will change.

Their aim is to bring the sum of all Dutch authors to Wikidata. You can imagine that a national library knows about these authors. You can imagine that the Dutch Wikipedia knows many of them and so does the Dutch DBpedia. The great thing of this cooperation is that DBpedia will identify those authors Wikipedia knows so that a clean list of new items can be added to completely include all these authors.

There have been several meetings about it, an RFC happened in Wikidata and importing all this data is the first objective. The mapping of attributes for authors to both DBpedia and Wikidata will be published and when this meets approval the import will happen.

Once it is all imported, DBpedia will be aware of all the changes to both Wikidata and the Dutch Wikipedia. It will keep its data up to date and when this finds approval, it can do this for Wikidata as well. There is no license issue as the Dutch DBpedia considers any updates "real time" and all updates happen under the license of the project involved in their own process.

When this project is completed, when all the details have been worked out, other collaborations between these four parties are possible. For instance, many authors received awards for their works or for a specific book and there may be more books..
Thanks,
     GerardM

#WMhack - GLAM statistics

People of the Wikimedia analytics team are in strength at the hackathon in Zurich. It makes a difference; Multichil reported on work done on page views of GLAM pictures.

The first results are available. It may need more attention but there is actually something to see.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Baglama - #statistics that make a difference, that demonstrate impact

Arguably the #GLAM partners of the #Wikimedia foundation are its most relevant partners. They share through us a wealth of imagery and data. Among other things they help us illustrate our articles.

What they provide us with is high in numbers and high in quality. It is dropped in Commons and, it is then for the Wikimedia communities to make use of this wealth.

Baglama, one of Magnus's finest tools, has had a refresh and it shows again what impact any given collection has. It shows the page views they generate. This information is vital; how else can you prove that providing us with freely licensed media files makes a difference, gains a public? What better way to convince that we make a difference?

The Tropenmuseum for instance has much of its impact in Indonesia. Its collection is used more on the Indonesian than on the Dutch Wikipedia. 

What the Tropenmuseum collection proves is that Western museums can have a big international relevance. When they collaborate with us, they have an impact in the countries where their collection originated. This message is as relevant to the Wikimedia communities as it is to the GLAM institutions. We could and should care more about those collections that are not "local". Collections that are typically underfunded.
Thanks,
          GerardM

#Wikidata, #maps and #sprites

Maps are static but many maps define something that is very much alive. Take the "raid on the Medway". It shows two flotillas, it indicates how they move. It does not show anything happening of the other side of this battle. It does not show positions.

A sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. It can be put on a map. Picture this, the same map of the raid on the Medway and two little sprites moving in time along the indicated lines.

Technically it is not much of a challenge. It becomes interesting when it starts moving on a real map, an OpenStreetMap for instance. Add the moments when we have images that show scenes of a battle, an occurrence and we get something that becomes relevant.

Technically it seems doable. It seems like a challenge that brings together the parts that already exist. It will be really exciting when it brings Wikidata, Commons, OpenStreetMap together. It will help us explain about events. It is part of sharing the sum of all knowledge.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata and naval history

The answer of what a GLAM hopes to find in Wikidata can be surprising. "We have several paintings of the Raid on the Medway and, we would like to find data about that battle and be able to place our paintings as illustrations in the sequence of events".

One Dutch admiral, Michiel de Ruyter, has a painting hanging near paintings of the battle and, it would be great when he can be associated to these events as well.

When you have a look at the info-boxes of the battles that were fought as part of the second Anglo-Dutch war, you will find the commanders of the opposing sides. You will find that the treaty of Breda ended this war.

The question is very much how to include all these facts in Wikidata. When we do and when we include information on the many historic events that have an item, we become extremely valuable to our partners.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#DBpediaAmsterdam - a confererence update

Speaking about #Wikidata at the #DBpedia conference in Amsterdam was a joy and a privilege. It was a joy because there was a real interest even a practical interest in what can we do to make a difference.

These are some of the points that they found most relevant

• Wikidata is used in templates in several Wikipedias
• for DBpedia, the specific properties in use in Wikidata are mostly a mapping issue
• having more properties in use than are on display in a Wikipedia is in Wikidata not an issue
• Wikidata is language agnostic while DBpedia has projects concentrating on specific languages

The process of how Wikidata is filled with information by bots was discussed at length. What bots do is harvest information from a Wikipedia and update the relevant items in Wikidata. This process is exactly the same for the update of DBpedia. The innovation that DBpedia can bring is by adding one extra functionality; reporting on the differences found. Obviously this will include new statements but identifying where Wikidata and Wikipedia have differences is really relevant when we work on improving the quality of the information we provide.

The relation of GLAM and Wikidata was another topic that received attention. In one presentation, Abraham Jacob van der Aa was mentioned. I added several statements for Mr van der Aa and showed how it shows in multiple languages in the Reasonator. It is not unlikely that as a result the Koninklijke Bibliotheek may provide us with information on Dutch authors in addition to what is available in DBpedia. The prospect of the Commons / Wikidata integration was also discussed; the existing links from Wikidata to Commons were mentioned but the possibility to link to the "Creator" and "Institution" templates were appreciated as having relevance to current practices.

The DBpedia conference had multiple simultaneous sessions so it should be obvious that much more was discussed. It is also my update of a conference that dealt with so much more and where a really vibrant community showed off what issues they are dealing with.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Archive #KIT saved by #Library of #Alexandria

When governments cut spending, the results are often disastrous. The subsidies of the Royal Institute for the Tropics were slashed and, consequently its activities and its archive were no longer funded. The archive is enormous; 7 kilometres of books, magazines and more.

If it was not for the Library of Alexandria, it would all go into the shredder. Much of the information in this archive is unique and it contains information that is relevant for the Netherlands and for many countries in the tropics as well.

The contract for the transfer has been signed and on the one hand it is a relief that all this information is kept on the other hand it is a disgrace that an archive of such prominence is only saved at the very last moment.

The Library of Alexandria is well known for its ability to digitise books. With a little bit of luck they will decide to digitise the KIT archive. In this way the information that is in this archive is not completely lost to people doing research in the Netherlands.
Thanks,
       GerardM

An unknown woman from #Indonesia, a picture from the #Tropenmuseum

The Tropenmuseum has provided us with a large collection of images from its collection. Within Commons these images are particularly relevant because there is so little available on the subjects covered by this collection.

Attribution to the GLAMs we are working with is vitally important. Providing an insight to how a collection is used determines subsidies.

As these images are by and large in a category, it is possible to use that category and accumulate data with it. GLAMorous informs about the number of articles using images in a category. Even more relevant is the BaGLAMa tool; this is where you find the number of page views for these images.

There is room for improvement; there is a template for the Tropenmuseum but it is not part of the data on most images from the Tropenmuseum. There are templates for creators like Isidore van Kinsbergen; they are not universally applied either.

When the data on images exists in a database, it will become much easier to combine data in many new ways. Adding the creator and institution templates prepares for the moment when these templates are populated with data from Wikidata.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The Gelman #Library, an institution in Washington DC

The Gelman library or by its full name the "Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library", is one of the many GLAMs we have content from in Commons. For all these institutions there is a template in the "Institutions" namespace.

All these templates are an amazing resource, it must have been compiled by many people over many years. On Commons it links to material that is known to be part of the collection of that institution. Making such links is in itself an Herculean job and one that is not finished at all.

The template on all those institutions typically refer to a Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article links to a Wikidata item and it aims to include all the information that exists on the institution template on Commons. To harvest all that information tools like the pywikipedia bot will be used.

Some people complain about Wikipedia that "everything is said and done". For those people Wikidata is a bit of fresh air; there is so much more that can be done.
Thanks,
        GerardM

Junkers 188A-3, a photo from the #Bundesarchiv

The Junkers Ju 188 was a German Luftwaffe high-performance medium bomber built during World War II. A picture was part of the continuing cooperation with the German Federal Archives.

Once images become part of Commons, it is not the end of the cooperation. When the descriptions of the pictures are thought to be problematic, people report this and these reports often result in changes both in the descriptions on Commons and at the General Federal Archives.

The problem with this picture is that at the indicated time this type of air plane was not flying with the unit it is attributed to.
Thanks,
      GerardM

More heady stuff about #Wikidata and ontologies

When I asked Emw many questions, I received only three answers. Having an opinion on Wikidata and expressing it is hard. It feels very much like exploring new frontiers. The questions did not go away so I asked them again and, I am mighty pleased that Antoine Isaac was willing to provide me with some answers. Antoine does not do Wikidata, he is a/the scientific coordinator at Europeana.eu. He wrote an email to the Wikidata mailing list that got me interested in asking him my questions. I hope we will collaborate for our GLAM data well with Antoine and Europeana.

I exchanged several emails with Antoine but the answers do stand on their own. I will react in a follow up blog post. I hope you appreciate what Antoine has to say as much as I do.

Thanks,

     GerardM

The Wikipedia article calls upper level ontologies "political" why should Wikidata be interested in any of that?

I wouldn't call them 'political', that's a bit far-stretched. Indeed ULOs embody some abstract considerations on how to represent the world. And as said before, this can backfire as soon as you consider an open web of data, where different representations may well co-exist. Considering a single upper-level ontology as the guiding principle for everything is dangerous. But it is true that they provide valuable bodies of knowledge to re-use, and it may make sense to re-use them for specific domains (e.g. biology, geography) that could be compatible as a whole with the approach of one ULO.

Does it not make sense to group statements together as qualifiers as part of a statement (like it is done for office held [1]) ?

I like qualifiers and dislike them at the same time!On the one end, it's good to have some meta-metadata about the provenance of a statement (who made/endorsed it), or its scope (e.g. the time it applies). In your example, this is the "start date" and "end date". This practices actually fits what is happening in the RDF / Semantic Web area, where a lot of work is being done about Provenance, and many people use quad stores with 'named graphs' instead of just triple stores. 

On the other end, I am anxious about qualifiers being used with other semantics that "here's some info about a statement". In your example, "preceded by" and "succeeded by" are more difficult to interpret in this sense:  (compare with property P580 that mentions explicitly "statement"). I mean, it is possible to interpret your qualifiers as data on statement. But I really feel that people (and you?) will understand it as, say "Te Rata is the predecessor of Korokī Mahuta" and not "The statement 'Te Rata held the office of Maori Monarch' is the predecessor of the statement 'Korokī Mahuta held the office of Maori Monarch'". Which should be the right thing to do (I mean, the one compatible with the "start date" semantics).  

Note that what you told in the other email is the kind of use of qualifiers that would worry me: it is the person who has a birth/death date or a sex, not the statement 'is a person'.Of course one could see the birth and death date to influence of the 'date of validity of the statement "is a person"'. But still we'd be talking about two different things, from a knowledge representation perspective. 

Note also (just for the fun of refering to upper-level ontologies and their dangers) that for some ULOs 'is a person' doesn't have a begin and end date. Being a person is 'rigid' i.e. it must stick to the subject forever. You can't have been a person once and then cease to be a person. Even if you die you're still a person...And don't tell me that rigidity foresees the some ontologies may have Person an an anti-rigid property. This may probably not be the choice made in your favourite ULO. Unless it's one that addresses both reality and beliefs as two possible sides of a same property. But then, good luck re-using it!!!

DBpedia does not have qualifiers, will this impact their ability to use data from Wikidata?

I can't really speak for DBpedia. But I'd say that if qualifiers are used in a way that is both consistent and compatible with the understanding of 'named graphs' in RDF, then they might be interested.

As we map Wikidata items to the content in other repositories, what do we need to compare the data from these repositories

Which repositories are you talking about? Which content? Are 'repositories' knowledge bases, like OCLC or Europeana in the book/artwork domain? Is 'content' 'data'? If yes, then what is required to establish correspondences is hard work looking at the fields and seeing how they correspond. This may be of course alleviated if all (wikidata included) look at what's already happening and try to minimize the risk of coming with data models that are too indiosyncratic. (this is why something like RDF is quite useful!)

When differences in content between repositories are found is there a standard method to harmonise the content

Again assuming a reading of 'repositories' and 'content' as above. I don't think there is a standard method. What you can prey for (and of course as designers of data repositories, we are somehow in the position of making it happen!) is that all repositories keep track of as many unambiguous identifiers they can keep track of (e.g. ISBNs for books) which would help automatic reconciliation. Otherwise make sure the data on the content (where 'content'='the object in the real world') is as complete as possible. For works of art that would mean that comparisons can be made on titles, creators, dates and place of creation, etc.