Content Partnerships Hub/Strategic data uploads

Content Partnerships Hub

Improving the Wikimedia movement’s work with content partners

---

• 

  About

• 

  Needs assessment

• 

  Helpdesk

• 

  Capacity building

• 

  International partnerships

• 

  Software

• 

  Data uploads

  • Connected Open Heritage
  • Structured Data on Commons
  • FindingGLAMs
  • Updates

Strategic data uploads

Over the years, the ways in which we can describe the world have expanded and structured data creates many new opportunities. Machine-readable data is now an essential part of the Wikimedia platforms and a lot of the data has been shared by partners, such as cultural heritage institutions.

We recognize that sharing data on Wikimedia projects is a challenging technical activity and would like to support the community with developer time to batch upload strategic datasets. A specific focus will be on collaborating with the global Wikimedia community to provide more data about GLAM institutions, about built cultural heritage sites and about Structured Data on Commons.

Like many other Wikimedia organizations, a lot of work at Wikimedia Sverige has been focused on supporting the community and our partners for years in uploading and improving the data on our platforms. This has involved researching what data is available and how it can benefit our users, mastering tools such as OpenRefine to work with the data, as well as clearing up copyright issues to make sure the data we work with is free to reuse.

These efforts will continue together with other Wikimedia organizations and volunteers. For this the Hub can assume a coordinating role, to be a place where we can exchange experiences and learn from each other.

What the hub team is doing

The work initiated in previous projects will continue and be built upon. The work involve researching, identifying and uploading data about the world's cultural heritage – under the Content Partnerships Hub umbrella. We are going to work with data uploads whenever possible, when we are not engaged with other tasks via the Helpdesk or with material shared by our IGO partners.

Please share input and ideas on what strategic datasets should be done next.

How we can work together

The hub will always be on the lookout for sources of interesting open data that can be uploaded to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. The local community that is collaborating with the content partner to jointly upload the data will always be crucial for this work to happen.

Perhaps you have identified any of the following types of datasets that you would like to collaborate with us to upload:

• Lists and registers of GLAM institutions around the world.
• List and registers of cultural and natural heritage, such as listed buildings, monuments or protected natural areas.
• Tabular data that could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons – see some examples of what has already been done.

(These examples are based on the work Wikimedia Sverige has done in our earlier projects.)

A lot of the previous work has focused on working with and uploading open data published by other actors, and it does bring us closer to the vision of the Wikimedia ecosystem hosting the sum of human knowledge. But this is not enough, especially when it comes to regions outside of the Global North – which are already underrepresented on our platforms.

That's why more crowdsourcing is needed to identify the data about the world's cultural heritage and GLAMs, such as by organizing focused projects and drives to encourage people to contribute with their knowledge and fill in the gaps.