From data to images: OpenRefine for Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons

Elena Martellotta

Confirmation: I have read and agree with the workshop's policy on behalf of myself and my co-authors.

Keywords: OpenRefine, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Cultural Heritage, Museums, Open Data, Public Domain, Quickstatements

Abstract:

Many cultural institutions are increasingly embracing the open data movement by making their collections, research, and archival materials accessible to the public, matching the Wikimedia movement mission that aims to provide free access to the human knowledge.
Through platforms like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, institutions can share structured data on artworks, historical events and figures, making them interoperable. By 'freeing' data and images for their use and re-use, they are therefore facilitating research, education, and collaboration.
From this context moved the pilot project "Progetto Dati Lombardia", developed focusing practices, methods and use possibilities of OpenRefine's extensions. Starting from the dataset concerning cultural buildings from the Lombardia region, released in public domain, data has been before wrangled through OpenRefine, checked using Quickstatements and then has been uploaded to Wikidata. Transforming data values as property values has minimised the loss of information.
After that, in parallel to the specific implementation of OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons, The Egyptian Museum of Turin released, not just data, but also pictures of the collection, already available on their website. The fist step was similar to what was done for the previous project about data. For the images it was necessary to link the item page on Wikidata for each artwork, so that the metadata were already structured, before uploading on Wikimedia Commons.
These projects showed how cultural institutions can contributing to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, to preserve and disseminate cultural knowledge, enhance the visibility of cultural heritage globally.

Format: Lightning talk (5 minutes presentation)

Submission Number: 42