Benefits of opening content on Wikimedia projects

Thank you for being interested in sharing openly the data that you have prepared and maintained. The benefit extends beyond this project, and below we are gathering information about why it is important and impactful, and what you need to consider.

Cultural heritage data is preserved

Information scattered around world about heritage elements can be brought together on Wikimedia projects. In Wikidata, institutions participate by contributing their materials and Wikimedia editors collect information from a variety of sources and maintain the integrity and quality of the data.

Wikidata has also been very helpful for language preservation and revitalization. Information can be added in almost 700 languages. This is especially useful for allowing content tagging across languages on Wikimedia Commons as well as in memory institutions.

Adding information on Wikimedia projects gives a direct access to the heritage communities to expressing their culture.

Describe shared media in hundreds of languages

The documentation campaigns result in a rich, evolving archive of openly available photographs and videos on Wikimedia Commons about living heritage. The media elements can be described in hundreds of languages and tagged with multilingual content tags, allowing to use the native languages for depicting them.

Media is shared under Creative Commons licenses. The licenses used on the Wikimedia projects require to attribute the author but no further restrictions are placed on how they can be copied or used.

Ethically sound data and media collection

In this project, we explore if more nuanced sharing models can be used to better combine sharing and safeguarding. The materials will form a collection that has been produced in collaboration with the heritage communities or by themselves, following the good practices we are exploring. We wish to promote these practices in the Wikimedia projects as well as in other online repositories.

Visibility to the heritage elements

The data and the coordinated participatory activities incentivize writing articles to Wikipedia and illustrating them with the newly available images. Wikipedia is among the most visited websites in the world, providing fact-checked information in over 300 languages.

Through these activities, the role of oral citations in Wikipedia articles can be further explored. Raising awareness of the traditions and increasing their visibility would enhance the aim of safeguarding living heritage worldwide.

Collaboration

The process provides an opportunity for the global network of ICH focal points and safeguarding organizations to collaborate with the local Wikimedia affiliates and editor communities to create further local activities. There are also many related thematic initiatives in the Wikimedia movement and broader open knowledge community to collaborate with.

Working with ICH data

Share your inventory data openly on Wikidata. The heritage elements become visible across all Wikimedia projects and their information can be enriched and expended. The data for Wikidata needs to be open in terms of copyright and other rights.

Copyright

Making the data available as open data is the first step. The data needs to be available as public domain. With this in mind, the information should not disclose any sensitive data either personally or culturally. The permission can be granted to the database or only to the dataset made available through this project. Creative Commons CC0 waiver is used to express the public domain status.

It is worth noting that pieces of data do not have copyright protection. However, we strongly encourage to work in collaboration to share knowledge in accordance with the communities involved.

Community rights

Even if the data is free of copyright, the communities may have reservations to the use of the data. This project explores the best practices of open sharing of community-owned data and materials. No materials should be published without the permission of the heritage communities. See the page about Ethical sharing.

What data is shared

Information about an inventory

Inventory title in English and in all available languages
Descriptive sentence in English and in all available languages
Maintaining organization
Official website
Country
Operating area
Number of records in the inventory – at a specific date or year
Creation date or year of the register
Other related registers (regional or thematic inventories, good practices, wiki, network, living treasures…)
Wikidata property for an element ID in the inventory, if available

Information about an element

Heritage element title in English and in all available languages
Descriptive sentence in English and in all available languages
Type of the tradition (following Wikidata practices)
Date/year added in the inventory
Web pages of the element in the inventory in all languages
Element ID in the inventory, if available. Consider creating a Wikidata property for it.
Country of the designation / country of the event or publication / country of origin / indigenous to / culture
Additional notes

Note that the Wikidata element will represent the tradition, not the inscription. The inscription is information about where the tradition has been listed. Therefore items may be merged differently or their countries of origin differ from the inventory listing.