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About Thing 14

Purpose: Explore Wikimedia Commons as a platform for amplifying digital collections and inspect the structured linked data embodied in Wikimedia.

Learning Outcomes: Awareness of Digital Public Library of America's Wikimedia project and the usefulness of linked data. Learners may consider similar Wikimedia projects that might work for your local digital collections.

Intended Audience: Beginner

Prerequisites: Thing 4. Editing in Wikidata

Author: Hsianghui Liu-Spencer, Carleton College

Expected Duration: 45-60 minutes

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Getting Started

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) collaborates with cultural institutions across the United States to aggregate content from their digital collections. One of their recent projects, DPLA + Wikimedia, has added millions of image files from partner organizations to Wikimedia Commons, the digital asset management platform that is used and linked to from other Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia. They are expanding on this work by making improvements to the structured data in Wikimedia Commons. This structured data may look familiar to you if you have completed Thing 4. Editing in Wikidata.

Activities

Watch a video:

Explore Wikimedia Commons:

Explore connections between Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikidata:

Reflection

What is the connection between the structured data in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata? Why do you think some Libraries and Cultural Heritage institutions choose Wikimedia as another discovery platform? What factors would make you choose to contribute? Are there limitations that would make you ponder a bit more?

Additional Resources

These are all related to the process of adding digital items to Wikimedia Commons and connecting to Wikipedia articles.

Claim Credit

What is the connection between the structured data in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata? Why do you think some Libraries and Cultural Heritage institutions choose Wikimedia as another discovery platform? What factors would make you choose to contribute? Are there limitations that would make you ponder a bit more?