Hello Wikidata Wizards,
Phoebe Ayers from the Board recommended I talk to you. My name is Max
Klein and I am the Wikipedian in Residence for OCLC. OCLC owns
Worldcat.org the world's largest holder of Library data at 264 million
bibliographic records about books, journals and other library items. We
would really like to partner with you as Wikidata is being built, in
incorporating our data into your project.
What we can offer:
*
WorldCat.org metadata
http://www.worldcat.org/ .
o Typically, for any work we have most of the following: title,
authors, publisher, formats, summaries, editions, subjects, languages,
intended audience, all associated ISBNs, length, and abstract.
* APIs to this data
http://oclc.org/developer/
o And some other cool APIs like xISBN which returns all the ISBNs of
all the editions of book on the input of any single one.
* Library finding tools
o When viewing a record on our site, we show you the closest library
which has that work, and links to reserve it for pick-up.
* The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
http://viaf.org/, which is an Authoritative Disambiguation file
o That means that we have certified data on disambiguation of Authors
* WorldCat Identities, an Analytics site
http://www.worldcat.org/identities/
o It gives you for Author metadata and analytics: Alternative names,
significant dates, publication timelines, genres, roles, related
authors, and tag clouds of associated subjects.
What's in it for us:
* We are a not-for-profit member cooperative. Our mission is
"Connecting people to knowledge through library cooperation."
* Since I work at the research group, for now this is just a
research project.
o If at some point this goes live - and you want to - we'd like to
integrate the "find it at a library near me" feature, that means
click-throughs for us.
The ideas:
There are a lot of possibilities, and I'd like to hear your input. These
are the first few that I've can come up with.
* Making infoboxes for each book or author that contains all
their metadata.
o Ready to incorporate into all language projects.
* Using authority files to disambiguate or link works to their
creators.
o Solving DABs
* Using our analytics (e.g. author timelines) as Wikidata data
types to transclude.
o Curating articles with easy to include dynamic analytics
* Populating or creating works/author pages with their
algorithmically-derived history and details.
o Extremely experimental semantic work.
I'm roaring and ready to get this collaboration going. I know Wikidata
is at an early stage, and we are willing to accommodate you.
Send me any feedback or ideas,
Max Klein
Wikipedia in Residence
kleinm(a)oclc.org
+17074787023