25.000 books, old books

When 25.000 books, books from the early days, English texts from 1473-1700 become available it is quite something. Many of these text are the earliest sources on many subjects in English.

All of them deserve to be registered in Wikidata, The most relevant question would be: how do we serve our public best. Yes, it starts with indicating that these books exist but it is easy enough to point people in the right direction. The direction where these books can be found to be read.

It seems obvious. When books are (finally) available under a free license, it is important for people to find them.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - Mr J. Djanogly, MP for Huntingdon

The electoral system of the UK, the USA and India have in common that they work with "constituencies" or "electoral districts". At election time one constituency chooses one representative and Mr Djanogly is the representative for Huntingdon.since 2001 succeeding Mr John Major.

As you can expect, Wikidata knows about the districts and the persons involved. That does not mean that it brings things together. Neither for Mr Major nor Mr Djanogly it was known that they held the office of an MP nor was it known that they represented Huntingdon.

This type of election is personal; at election time it matters who the candidate is. A candidate may run repeatedly. This is quite different in a representative system where people vote for parties and where nobody in particular represents a specific area.

Mr Major and Mr Djanogly are now registered as MP in Wikidata. The challenge is how to include the elections and representatives in constituencies like Huntingdon. Obviously a lot of work needs to be done to mark every MP for the office that he or she held.
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

#Wikidata - #Cambridge revisited II

When you are interested in #maps, projecting the results of a Wikidata query on a map will become increasingly exciting. It seems obvious but only those items that have a geo-coordinate will find their place on a map. When I blogged about Cambridge revisited, the message was very much that we can find all items within a certain radius and, that we can process them with AutoList and WD-Fist.

Magnus is now providing us with something new. The results of a WDQ query are projected on a map. When you run a query, it could result in every item with geo-coordinates in a municipality, a county. It could be all the castles of the United Kingdom.. Just give your imagination some room.

As always, this is the first iteration of functionality. It makes use of components that we have been using for a long time. What will be interesting for us is to learn if the map functionality is able to cope. We learn by trying things out and at that, this is the perfect environment for you.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Elcot, Swydd #Berkshire

Elcot, is a hamlet in Berkshire. According to the English article, its claim to fame is the four star Elcot Park Hotel.

When you search for Elcot, you find the hotel, the hamlet twice and a disambiguation page. The other item in the list is called "Elcot, Swydd Berkshire". swydd probably means "county" and, when you search for swydd, the result is interesting. It is not that there are 1721 results, it is the impression that you get that so many of them because items for Welsh articles co-exist with items for English articles.

PS there is no picture for the Elcot Park Hotel. Thanks to Geograph there is a picture for the Halfway Inn.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Magnus on #Wikidata in #Cambridge

When you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Cambridge on 27 February 2014, you have the option to attend a lecture where Dr Magnus Manske will give a presentation on Wikidata. According to the information, you may "learn more about all its functionality, how it works, and how it will change the future!”.

For the rest of us, we have experienced how Wikidata has developed and how Reasonator makes information out of Wikidata's data. There is a lot to all the tools that Magnus developed, tools like WDQ, AutoList WD-FIST.

Being a fly on the wall in the Plant Sciences Lecture Theatre, Downing Site is an ambition. However, I will happily report about the developments of both Wikidata and the tools that Magnus is famous for.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Reasonator - #dates and their #context

The timeline functionality shows when there are three or more statements that have been dated. The most obvious dates are the life events; birth, death, marriage and children.  For many people other dates are as significant; Mr. Gandhi for instance was born in India, studied in London, returned to India, took a job in SouthAfrica and returned to India.

For authors the dates of publications of books are relevant. For military men the battles they fought, for politicians the positions they held, for people competing in sports the competitions they participated in. There are the people who won prizes or received awards in any field.

There are so many things that are dated and when they are presented together on a timeline in a context, they provide a different kind of understanding.

Thanks,

     GerardM

#Wikidata - prime minister of the United Kingdom

The property "position held" has been linked to "prime minister of the United Kingdom" 24 times in Wikidata. Illustrious predecessors of Mr Cameron like David Lloyd George or William Ewart Gladstone are missing.

This is now even more visible because of the new timelines functionality. For events to become visible on a timeline, appropriate qualifiers have to exist.

A good example is the second period when Mr Churchill was prime minister. This was from October 26, 1951 to April 7, 1955 and this makes it obvious that the current description in English for Mr Churchill is incomplete.

There are many people who have a special interest in the United Kingdom. It is for them to complete all the missing information that will show up on timelines like this one.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Europeana advertises Thomas Lawrence

On #Facebook Europeana mentions that Thomas Lawrence died on this day in 1830. Europeana brings you a really nice presentation of his work.

Multiple people are known to Wikidata with the name of "Thomas Lawrence", and to know the difference between these men, it helps when there is sufficient information for the process of automated disambiguation.

I added a statement for Mr Lawrence and made him a "painter". At this moment there are 3852 painters known to Wikidata. When a label for painter is added for a language, the disambiguation for all of these people will improve.

Obviously there have been more than 3852 painters. As more painters become known and as more languages have their label for "painter", Wikidata gains value.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Follow up of a #Wikipedia editathon

Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner is notable enough if nowadays a bit obscure to be worthy of her own Wikipedia article. You may have seen the picture in a blog post of Wikimedia UK.

I was intrigued if the article was already known in Wikidata. To my amazement the only article about her was in the Dutch Wikipedia. I added the English article and from the text I added information that is pertinent about Mrs Bradlaugh Bonner. The reasonator makes a nicely formatted view of the available information for you.

As Mrs Bradlaugh Bonner is an author, I was sure that there will be a record in one of the standard resources like VIAF. There is and from there a wealth of other information is available.

One thing I learned in the process is that according to Wikidata, "atheism" is a label used together with "religion".

What I am interested in is if a bot will pick up on the data that I gleaned from the Wikipedia articles and bring us something we do not know yet.
Thanks,
        GerardM

Multilingual cluefull bots

The #BBC writes that #Wikipedia without its bots is doomed. It is a good story, a happy story and well worth a read. Wikipedia as you know is not only the English language Wikipedia, there are over 280 Wikipedias in different languages. They are not all created equal; most of the smaller Wikipedias have less than 100.000 articles, a small community of editors and their own issues with people who think it funny to write penis wherever they can.

The BBC article writes about "Cluebot NG" and is said to reside on a computer somewhere. It would be a great project to move Cluebot NG to a Wikimedia server and make instances for all the other languages. First for the 40 something languages with more than 100.000 articles and when its lessons are learned there may be scope to expand.

There is a committee supervising the bot activities, it will be wonderful when it has the potential to expand its expertise as widely as possible.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#CTM11 #Tate and #Tate and #Tate and #Tate and #Wikipedia

One reason for GLAMs to come and talk to us is because they do think the articles on their museum, their collection can be very much improved upon. There are obvious things that can be improved upon:

• lists should be in reverse chronological order
• permanent collections are more relevant
• information on temporary exhibitions should time out

Such things make sense. When you have, like the Tate, multiple locations each with their own article, it becomes a bit distressing to be told not to edit.

People in GLAM do understand NPOV, they understand the need for sources. What they also understand well written articles. Well written is not the same as marketing speak but it is very much a step up from the current accumulation of facts.

I introduced the ladies of the Tate to John, I informed them about many of the vagaries of editing Wikipedia and I am sure that the articles about all the Tates will become a much better read.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Learn to write British Sign Language

If you sign in the British Sign Language and want to learn how to write in your language, you can come to Southport for the first workshop in the United Kingdom.

As we want to spread the word of SignWriting and as a friend of mine worked hard but in vain to organise one such event earlier, I am really happy to bring the flyer of the event under your attention.
Thanks,
     GerardM