Introduction to wikidata
Upskilling librarians in Gombe on open knowledge practices through Wikimedia projects
Ibekeme Merit
Facilitator
Ibekeme Merit
Merit Ibekeme is a librarian, a wikimedian and the program officer for Gombe Wikimedia Network.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
Introduction
A sister project of wikimedia
Data
Wikidata
Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary database, collecting structured data to provide support for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, the other wikis of the Wikimedia movement, and to anyone in the world.
allowing the reuse of the data in many different scenarios. You can copy, modify,
distribute and perform the data, even for commercial purposes, without asking for permission.
content creation and management. Automated bots also enter data into Wikidata.
in any language is immediately available in all other languages. Editing in any language is possible and
encouraged.
databases. This reflects the diversity of knowledge available and supports the notion of
verifiability.
Collecting structured data. Imposing a high degree of structured organization allows for easy reuse of
boxes and links to other languages, thus reducing editing workload while improving quality. Updates in
one language are made available to all other languages.
programming interface.
Components of wikidata�
Wikidata consists of:
The Wikidata repository consists mainly of items, each one having a label,
a description and any number of aliases. Items are uniquely identified by a
Q followed by a number, such as Douglas Adams (Q42).
Statements describe detailed characteristics of an Item and consist
ITEM
In Wikidata, items are used to represent all the things in human knowledge, including topics, concepts, and objects. For example, the "1988 Summer Olympics", “Gombe State", “Inuwa Yahaya", and "gorilla" are all items in Wikidata.
Items are uniquely identified by a Q followed by a number, such as Gombe State (Q376241)
We create item
We create articles
Label
The label is the most common name that the item would be known by. It does not need to be unique, in that multiple items can have the same label, however no two items may have both the same label and the same description.
Description
The description on a Wikidata entry is a short phrase designed to disambiguate items with the same or similar labels. A description does not need to be unique; multiple items can have the same description, however no two items can have both the same label and the same description.
Statement
In Wikidata, a concept, topic, or object is represented by an item. Each item is accorded its own page.
A statement is how the information we know about an item - the data we have about it - gets recorded in Wikidata.
Statements can also be expanded on, annotated, or contextualized with additional values, as well as optional qualifiers, references, and ranks. Statements also serve to connect items to each other, resulting in a linked data structure.
A statement consists of a property and value
Wikidata Overview
Property
A property describes the data value of a statement and can be thought of as a category of data, for example "color“
Properties in Wikidata have a P followed by a number, such as with “Country”(P17).
Value
The value in the statement is the actual piece of data that describes the item.
Note: If an item by nature can have properties with multiple values (like language spoken), it is perfectly acceptable to add each of these multiple values.
If, on the other hand, an item ideally should have only one value (like the population of a city) but has multiple values (for example, because different sources report different numbers), all values may be added, and additional qualifiers should be used
Property asks a question while value answers the question
WIKIDATA URL
www.wikidata.org
Conclusion