Wikidata for authority control: sharing museum knowledge with the world

The development of Wikidata as the web’s central authority hub has created new opportunities for cultural heritage institutions wishing to make their data more visible, accessible and relevant. This paper introduces the project Usable Authorities for Data-driven Cultural Heritage Research, in which the Nationalmuseum and the National Historical Museums, in partnership with Wikimedia Sverige, explore this new area. The aim of our project is to develop and evaluate methods of linking museum authority data to Wikidata, with the ultimate goal of making it easier for researchers and other users to find, understand and analyze relevant information distributed across different museum collections. The project includes visualizations of relations between historical persons and places to show the potential of otherwise abstract large amounts of data. Another aim is to increase the knowledge about Wikidata and its possibilities among cultural heritage institutions in Sweden, encouraging them to use the data and resources accumulated on the Wikimedia platforms, as well as to actively contribute to them themselves. The project has proven to be an innovative case study on what is required from a cultural heritage institution to make their data more open and shareable. The focus is on cleaning up the authority data in the museums’ databases, including correcting errors and deleting duplicates. The data is there aligned with Wikidata using OpenRefine, so that relevant Wikidata items can be updated with the museums’ identifiers. Later on, by developing attractive visualizations, the data is brought to life, highlighting how much information Wikidata volunteers have contributed with and how it complements the museums’ own knowledge bases. The visualizations showcase how Wikidata, by being heavily structured and machine-readable, enables the development of new applications that bring the data closer to the users.