Helping @Wikipedia readers find their read, one author, one publication at a time

Reading is what the public of Wikipedia does and in a way, every Wikipedia is an invitation to further reading. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and by definition, its coverage of a subject is limited. Its reliability is defined by its sources and they themselves are typically a subset of what may be read about that subject.

The quality of the invitation for further reading differs. How do we invite people to read a Shakespeare in Dutch, German, Malayalam, Kannada even English?

The primary partner in this quest for further reading; the local library. We can put all of them on a map and invite people to go there or to probe its website for further reading. Having them all in Wikidata with their coordinates puts libraries and what they stand for on the map. We can invite them to use services like OpenLibrary or WordCat, the bottom line; people read.

In this people first approach, the user interface is in the language people want to read their book in. It follows that the screen may be sparse. When it is to be a success, it is run like a business. We have statistics on libraries, people seeking, books found and a perspective in time. It is about people reading books not about transliterating books. Our business model: people reading. Funding is by people, organisations who care about more reading by more people. The numbers entice people to volunteer their efforts making more books, publications available in the language they care about.

To make this happen, the WMF takes the lead enabling and maintaining such a system and partnering with any and all organisations that care about this, organisations like the OCLC and the Internet Archive.

We will succeed when we make the effort.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Authorities relieve us from the tedium of completeness and enable functionality

At Wikidata we do not rely on any one authority and we refer to many. As a consequence we bring many links to authorities to our users and only when they know how to value them, it is of value.

The link for William Shakespeare to the Open Library gains you access to his work.. It links those works to the Library of Congress to indicate that it is indeed that work of the bard.

When authors we know are linked to the Open Library, it does not really matter if we know their books. People find them regardless. When we want people to read, all we need to do is promote these links to Open Library and to local libraries.. Such promotion could be done in the Wikipedias. Like we do for WorldCat and WorldCat could be so much better if it is about local attention for the user and consequently have more of a purpose.

One project on Wikidata has been to include scholarly works that are free to read. Free to read enables for those works and their authors an additional audience and increased relevance. However among all the works we represent, we do not know what works were added. That makes it a fail. There is an authority for that. It is Unpaywall. However even when we have a link to Unpaywall it only makes a difference when people use it and read articles. This effect is something we can measure when people go to the free version of an article.

We can get the database of Unpaywall and add just another authority. Next is the issue of maintenance. We could partner with Unpaywall and have a hybrid system where we import the database and regularly check those articles we do not know to be open.

In this way we still do not see the effect of more reads of open science. To achieve that we should mark free articles with an Unpaywall icon in Scholia and Reasonator. Measuring the amount of reads is now possible and we positively acknowledge authors with free to read articles.

Next could be an Unpaywall icon in Wikipedia for all free to read references..
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikimedia - A user story for libraries

The primary user story for libraries is something like: As a library we maintain a collection of publications so that the public may read them in the library or at home .

Whatever else is done, it is to serve this primary purpose. In the English Wikipedia you will find at the bottom for many authors a reference to WorldCat. WorldCat is to entice people to come to their library.

It does not work for me.

My library is in Almere and, I have stated in my profile in WorldCat that I live in Almere, I have indicated that my local library is my favourite. WorldCat indicates that the Peace Palace Library is nearby.. It isn't.

When it does not work for me, it does not work for other people reading Wikipedia articles and consequently it needs to be fixed. So what does it take to fix WorldCat for the Netherlands; for me. WorldCat is used for a wordwide public and all the libraries of the world may benefit when WorldCat gets some TLC.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata and #Libraries - RAMP and #WorldCat identifiers

There are books and there are authors. Libraries are first and foremost in the book business. They register their books because otherwise they do not know what they have. Authors are important but they are secondary. Particularly the not so well known authors, authors with one book do not always get the full treatment. There is a registration, sort of, and it is waiting in the wings to be fully registered.

Libraries and librarians are Wikimedia's friends. A presentation from the IUPUI University Library shows how their wish for good documentation works for them. They release the rights to their "finding aids" and add missing "authority records" for people and companies. They then create Wikipedia articles based on their "finding aids" and add Wikidata records. They have it down to an art so much so that their tool, RAMP (Remixing Archival Metadata Project) lives as a web-based tool on WMFLabs. This invites any librarian anywhere to join the fun.

One of the articles is about Hugh Ned Brown. The article is good and the Wikidata is quite good as well. RAMP is a tool for librarians. It is wonderful and if there is one question left, it is how Wikimedians can contact librarians like the ones at IUPUI to fix the issues we find at our end.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#OCLC, #VIAF and #WorldCat - I love them and, they could be even better for me

Jimmy Wales is doing his thing for proper news and it is welcome news. When it pans out it will work but people have to read what WikiTribune will bring. As always it takes education and access to information. Libraries have always been the bedrock of available information to people and the OCLC is what connect the worlds libraries. So it is important for it to be as good as it can be when it is to bring more people to libraries and read.

The OCLC brings two programs that are important to me as a person and as a Wikimedian. They are VIAF and WorldCat. VIAF is the "Virtual International Authority File"; it is a system that brings together the information the world's libraries have in their system and aims to connect them. VIAF is largely maintained by software but there are processes to fix issues that do occur. Wikidata is connected to VIAF because it is the link to information about authors that exists in Wikipedia and Wikisource in many languages. There are bots that do find VIAF identifiers thanks to identifiers known at Wikidata and once a month Wikidata identifiers are updated in the VIAF registry. Using VIAF on its own, you will find for instance a Uilyam Şekspir.

WorldCat is where it becomes interesting to readers. For me its information is available in Dutch. Echoing a blogpost on the OCLC blog we can bring more joy to the library's website and for people who come to the library world from a Wikipedia there are opportunities. I have a profile at WorldCat; it knows my library because I entered it as one of my favourites. WorldCat assumes that it knows my location and suggest a library that is not near to me and that is not useful. So picking up on the cookie information it does not need to know my location and allow for an easy link to my library. This will help me. What WorldCat could do is ask people if the suggested library is indeed their library.

The blogpost mentioned earlier talks about web analytics. I would absolutely love to know how many Wikipedia readers get to VIAF or WorldCat. It would be wonderful to know if we get readers connected to their libraries. When we do, the effect of improvements will show and that will motivate Wikimedians even more to get people their facts, and have us share in the sum of all knowledge.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata user story - the #library

The OCLC is an organisation combining most of the libraries in the world. It used to connect to the English Wikipedia but as Wikidata connects all Wikipedias, the OCLC does a better job linking to Wikidata. Through Wikidata it can link to articles about authors in any language.

For many authors the connection between VIAF, the system used by the OCLC and Wikidata is still missing. Many people are adding VIAF identifiers and once a month the data is imported and all the new data pops up.

Best practice at English Wikipedia has it that an {{authority control}} template is added in the reference section of people. When a VIAF identifier is added in Wikidata not only a VIAF identifier but also Worldcat information is shown (the example is for William Keepers Maxwell Jr.). Doing this is possible for any Wikipedia.

Now to expand on this; when a reader opts in, we could show if a book of an author is available in the local library.. What do you think?
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - First a #strategy, then #Action

The people at Open Library have books they love to share. They are in the process of opening what they have even more.

In a previous post it was mentioned that there is a JSON document to getting information on authors like Cicero. There are many works by Cicero and today they have a JSON document in production for the books as well.

So what possible scenario is there for the readers of any Wikipedia; they check in Open Library what books there are for Cicero (or any other authors). They download a book and read it.

Where we are:

• there is an API informing about authors and their books at Open Library based on the Open Library identifier.
• an app can now be build that shows this information
• this app could use identifiers of other "Sources" like Wikidata, VIAF or whatever on the assumption that Wikidata links these "Sources".
• this app could show information based on Wikidata statements in any language using Wikidata labels.
• this app may download the book (maybe not yet but certainly in the future)

What next:

• investigate the JSON and see what we already can do with it
• publish the results and iterate
• Add more identifiers of authors known to Open Library to Wikidata
• there are many OL identifiers in the Freebase information; they need to be extracted and a combined list of Wikidata identifiers and OL identifiers allows OL to curate it for redirects and we can then publish.
• Raffaele Messuti pointed to existing functionality that retrieves an author ID for Wikidata and VIAF using an ISBN number.
• Open Library knows about ISBN numbers for its books. When it runs the functionality for all the authors where it does not have a VIAF identifier it can enrich its database and share the information with Wikidata.
• Alternatively someone does this based on exposed information at Open Library.. :)
• We add a link to Open Library in the {{authority control}} in Wikipedia
• We could add information for nearby libraries like they do in Worldcat [1].
• We can measure how popular it is; how many people we refer to Open Library or to their library.

At the Wikimedia Foundation we aim to share in the sum of all knowledge. We aim to enable people acquire information. Making this happen for people at Wikipedia, Open Library and their library is part of this mission we just have to be bold and make it so.

Thanks,

      GerardM

#Wikidata - actionable quality; Debora L. Silverman

Mrs Silverman is the 2001 winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. As Wikidata had only two statements for her, it was appropriate to add more information. The Wikipedia article is a stub but it had two categories for a university where she studied and one where she worked. Adding this fact to all the people in a category is relatively easy.

The Ralph Waldo Emerson award was given for "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art". It makes Mrs Silverman an author and consequently there is a VIAF registration for her. Adding this has an effect when the {{Authority control}} template is available in the article.. I added it to the Wikipedia stub and was pleasantly surprised with the WorldCat information from the OCLC.

It is wonderful to find such quality information provided as a consequence from having VIAF information in Wikidata. That is actionable quality!
Thanks,
     GerardM