Wikimedia CH/Grant apply/Sum of all Swiss GLAMs

Infodata

• Name of the Project: Sum of All Swiss GLAMs Onboarding Project
• Amount requested: 16155 CHF
• Type of grantee: ORGANIZATION
• Name of the contact: Andrea Allemann
• Contact: andrea.allemannopendata.ch

In case of questions, please write to grantwikimedia.ch

The problem and the context

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

A lot of Swiss GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) do not use, or are not present on the wiki platforms.

Project goals

Sum of all Swiss GLAMs aims to improve the information about heritage institutions on Wikidata and to promote the use of this information on Wikipedia and in other projects. The goal is to achieve a complete and high-quality inventory of heritage institutions and make this information available on an international level.

Background and Context

Sum of all Swiss GLAMs is a spin-off of the project “Sum of all GLAMs”, carried through by Wiki Movimento Brazil in 2019 in collaboration with OpenGLAM CH. The Brazilian project, which was kindly supported by the MY-D Foundation, focussed on the creation of templates enabling the automated use of data from Wikidata in Wikipedia (infobox and M-Babel templates in different languages). In parallel, the project “Sum of all Swiss GLAMs” analysed the current state of data quality, data modelling and data completeness related to Swiss GLAMs on Wikidata.

Sum of all Swiss GLAMs was initiated during a Wikidata Hackdays Series organised by the Swiss National Library, the ETH Library and the Zurich Central Library in 2019. During the hackday series, two other projects pursued complimentary endeavours to Sum of all Swiss GLAMs: one focused on enhancing the search experience for users browsing through library portals and the other one was dedicated to referencing archival fonds on Wikidata. Together, these three projects contribute to the creation of a “Linked Open Data Ecosystem for Heritage Institutions” in Switzerland. In this perspective, OpenGLAM CH organised a workshop on the ecosystem approach in February 2020. During the workshop, the Hackdays projects were presented to a broader audience and further developed in smaller groups.

The group focussing on the creation of an inventory of Swiss heritage institutions discussed the properties which such an inventory should have and what the possible uses of this inventory could be. A basic inventory of all Swiss heritage institutions already exists on Wikidata as a result of an earlier effort by OpenGLAM CH, but the data entries are often incomplete and there is no apparent process to ensure their up-to-dateness. It appeared clearly that the completion and future maintenance of such an inventory would greatly benefit from the active involvement of Swiss heritage institutions.

Furthermore, it was found that the establishment and maintenance of a high-quality inventory of Swiss heritage institutions would be greatly facilitated if those organizations who currently maintain partial inventories would cooperate and tackle the challenge of maintaining the inventory together, thereby avoiding duplication of efforts both among each other and for the Swiss heritage institutions at large who are asked to review and update their data entries. The following organizations currently maintain relevant inventories: the Association of Swiss Archivists (VSA), the Swiss Museums Association (VMS) / ICOM Switzerland, the National Library, and UB Basel / Swissbib.

So far, Swissbib is publishing their list as linked open data, VSA has agreed to collaborate by furnishing their list. Discussions with VMS / ICOM have been initiated, and the Swiss National Library has proposed to start tackling the creation of a complete and updated inventory by comparing existing inventories, defining an appropriate data model, merging the data and finally finding a solution for the data maintenance. The resulting inventory can then be matched with the Wikidata entries of Swiss heritage institutions and contribute to Sum of all Swiss GLAMs by enriching the data on Wikidata. At the same time, it will be able to harvest updates that are made directly on Wikidata.

The Sum of All Swiss GLAMs Onboarding Project, which is the object of this funding request, will be complementary to these efforts of integrating and synchronizing existing databases, as its goal is to involve staff members of Swiss heritage institutions along with volunteers directly in the maintenance of the Swiss GLAM inventory on Wikidata. In fact, if the project succeeds, parts of the maintenance tasks currently carried out by several institutions in parallel, could be centralized in a crowdsourcing environment on Wikidata. Furthermore, maintaining the data on Wikidata will allow increasing the scope of the data covered over time to include all the data relevant for Wikipedia infoboxes or other external applications.

Project Goals & Strategies

The Sum of all Swiss GLAMs Onboarding Project (hereafter: “the project”) focuses on two aspects: (1) data provision and maintenance through a crowdsourcing approach; and (2) promotion of actual data use to encourage data provision in the first place.

Data Provision and Maintenance

The project will sensitize heritage institutions to the usefulness of Wikidata in the pursuit of their own mission. Currently, the use of Wikidata differs strongly from one institution type to the other. Some archives and libraries already make use of Wikidata to give their holdings greater visibility, namely by referencing relevant holdings of their institutions by means of the property “archives at”. Other institutions, such as the ETH Library and Swissbib, are developing their collection discovery systems with the help of Wikidata to enhance the users’ search experience. Nevertheless, the number of Swiss institutions making use of Wikidata is still rather low, in the museum community in particular.

The project will encourage Swiss heritage institutions to check, correct and complement their data entries on Wikidata. Thereby, the focus will lie on providing information not only about the institutions themselves (first level of description), but also about the institutions’ holdings (second level of description).

As many institutions do not have any editing experience and some may not even know about the existence of Wikidata, the main challenge of this sensitization campaign is to engage the GLAMs in something completely new. To give a large number of institutions a first insight in Wikidata, to show the possibilities which it offers and to explain how to edit and query the database, free introductory courses and online tutorials will be provided that are particularly targeted at GLAMs. The courses and tutorials will be promoted through the various OpenGLAM CH communication channels (website, newsletter, mailing lists, Facebook, Twitter) and through the communication channels of the professional umbrella associations VSA, Bibliosuisse and VMS / ICOM Switzerland. Promotion of Data Use In order to incentivize GLAMs to regularly update the information on Wikidata, it is important to show and promote the use of the data in a variety of applications.

Some institutions already use Wikidata as a means to give their holdings greater visibility on Wikipedia or to improve their own collection discovery systems. One of the goals of the Sum of all Swiss GLAMs Onboarding Project is to familiarize a greater number of institutions with the opportunities offered by Wikidata as a central data repository that powers a variety of applications, including Wikipedia infoboxes, Google searches, graph-based searches in library discovery systems, Wikidata-powered maps used for a variety of campaigns, etc.

By promoting its use, the project ensures that the data gets more visibility, which in turn encourages active data maintenance – not only by the institutions themselves, but also by the members of the Wikimedia community. As indicated in figure 1 below, greater data use thus promotes better data quality. And better data quality will enhance the benefits for the users of the various applications.

/ Figure 1 cannot be uploaded because wikicommons can not determine if the image is acceptable, please write an email to andrea.allemann@opendata.ch if you would like to see the image, if possible I will enter a direct link to the picture at a later date/

To accompany its outreach campaign towards Swiss GLAMs, the project will focus on promoting the following applications:

Infoboxes on Wikipedia

Building on the Brazilian project “Sum of all GLAMs”, the implementation and widespread adoption of Wikidata-driven infoboxes in the Wikipedias of the three national languages French, Italian and German will be promoted. As several Swiss institutions have more than one Wikipedia article, the use of Wikidata as a centralized place to gather information makes a lot of sense. A new director, for example, only has to be added in Wikidata and it will automatically appear in the corresponding infobox on the various language versions of Wikipedia – to the extent that the respective Wikipedias use automated infoboxes. The current state of implementation of Wikidata-powered infoboxes is resumed in the “Sum of all Swiss GLAMs” project report: As of today, in the Italian speaking Wikipedia, all infobox templates for GLAMs retrieve most of the information from Wikidata. In the French speaking Wikipedia, only the template for museums does so. A template for archives has been programmed, though not yet implemented. In the German speaking Wikipedia, only a small amount of information is taken from Wikidata. The pilot will intensify the outreach efforts to promote the widespread adoption of Wikidata-powered infoboxes in the various Wikipedia communities – a process which needs time and persuasive skills.

Interactive maps

Thanks to the property “coordinate location”, Wikidata easily enables the creation of maps showing institutions according to their geographical location. The query can be individualized to display additional information such as the website, the logo or an image. Such maps can be embedded in applications or websites related to leisure, tourism or for research purposes. Wikimedia CH provides examples giving information on the number of Wikipedia articles on the given institution: https://map.wikimedia.swiss/. Such maps are regularly used in a variety of campaigns encouraging contributions by users (e.g. photo contests, editing campaigns, etc.) and will be used to accompany the sensitization campaign targeted at Swiss GLAMs.

Graph-based search in library discovery systems

Both the ETH-Library and Swissbib are currently rolling out graph-based discovery systems that make use of Wikidata. This provides heritage institutions with an additional opportunity to enhance the visibility of their holdings by referencing them in Wikidata using the “archives at” property. Furthermore, the search experience can be improved by providing additional data about the institutions and the subjects of their holdings. The tutorials developed as part of the project will provide hands-on examples on how to achieve this.

Project impact

How will you know if you have met your goals?

We will know we have been success full when we achieve the deliverables described in the work packages below.

Project plan

Activities

The project is organized in four work packages:

WP 1 – Project Management

This work package comprises all aspects of project coordination, including the management of partnerships. To allow for an output- and outcome-focused progress reporting, the progress of key indicators is being tracked over the project’s lifetime. To the extent possible, these indicators provide information about: the number of GLAM staff introduced to Wikidata at live workshops (online or offline); the coverage of Swiss GLAMs on Wikidata (quantity & completeness of data entries); the take-up of GLAM-related infobox templates on English, German, French, and Italian Wikipedias. Project activities: project coordination; progress tracking; reporting. Deliverable: Final project report Timeline: July 2020 - April 2021

WP 2 - Workshops / Tutorials

This work package comprises the creation of instruction material in English, French and German, the creation of online tutorials in each of these languages and the organization of online and offline workshops. The content of the tutorials and workshops will be coordinated with the Wikidata and GLAM communities (especially as regards data modelling issues). To complement the online tutorials and the workshops, online coaching is provided to GLAM staff, and online activities by Swiss GLAMs are monitored to identify problematic editing patterns. Project activities: creation of instructional material; organization of workshops; coaching, online monitoring. Deliverables: online tutorial in three languages; 4 introduction workshops with the cumulative participation of 40 participants Timeline: January 2021: First version of tutorials is ready; January 2021 - August 2021: Implementation of workshops.

WP 3 – Infobox Templates

This work package comprises the implementation, improvement and promotion of Wikidata-powered infobox templates on English, German, French, and Italian Wikipedia in close cooperation with Wikipedia community members. While the main focus of the work package is on promoting Wikidata-powered infobox templates on Wikipedia articles about Swiss heritage institutions, some of the related activities vary depending on the community approach towards infobox templates and the implementation state. Thus, the activities on German Wikipedia also comprise the introduction of new Wikidata-powered elements in existing infobox templates for libraries, archives, and museums, while the activities on French Wikipedia also comprise the implementation of Wikidata-powered infobox templates for libraries and archives. Project activities: implementation and promotion of Wikidata-powered infobox templates on Wikipedias Deliverable: Wikidata-powered templates for libraries and archives on French Wikipedia; additional Wikidata-powered data fields in German templates (which ones is to be decided in close cooperation with the community). Timeline: September 2020 - April 2021

WP 4 - Communication Campaign

This work package comprises the development and implementation of an outreach campaign both online (website, newsletters, social media) and offline (presentations at conferences). The goal of the campaign is to encourage Swiss GLAMs to edit their own Wikidata entry and to provide information about holdings. To incentivize GLAM staff to contribute to Wikidata, core information contained in Wikidata is displayed on an interactive map, drawing attention to lacking information. Online tutorials and online / offline workshops are promoted to guide GLAM staff in their first steps on Wikidata. The Switzerland-focused outreach campaign will mainly be in German and French. Project activities: development and implementation of the outreach campaign Deliverable: website, info messages, presentations Timeline: January 2021 – August 2021

Budget

Work Package	Hours	Hourly Rate	Cost
1 – Project Management	40	85 CHF	3’400 CHF
2 – Workshops / Tutorials	160	85 CHF	13’600 CHF
3 – Infobox Templates	60	85 CHF	5’100 CHF
4 – Communication Campaign	80	85 CHF	6’800 CHF
Total, excl. VAT	340	Example	28’900 CHF
VAT (7.7%)			2’225 CHF
Total, incl. VAT			31’125 CHF

Amount Requested from Wikimedia: 15'000 CHF + 7.7% Mwst = 16155 CHF

WP - 3 will be financed by the MY-D Foundation (confirmation pending).

The remainder as well as further expenses (travel costs, rental fees, etc.) will be covered by the members of the Friends of OpenGLAM Network in form of financial or in-kind contributions.

Community engagement

Building and strengthening the local GLAM community.