Dear GLAM-Wiki professionals and enthusiasts,
The Luxembourg Competency Network on Digital Cultural Heritage is developing a Shared
Authority File, to combine the knowledge from national heritage institutions and to
increase the impact of the member institutions' digitised collections.
The Shared Authority File uses Wikibase as its main data store and internal user
interface, and has created an extension that might be of relevance to the broader GLAM
sector: A datatype for Extended Date Time Format compliant statements.
Wikibase contains a datetime representation based on ISO 8601:2004
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601>. The project extended the Wikibase software
through an Extended Data Time Format extension, which includes ISO 8601:2019
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:8601:-1:ed-1:v1:en>, and their extensions
in a new datatype which can then be utilized within a Wikibase instance.
This resulted in two open source products. A library
<https://github.com/ProfessionalWiki/EDTF> for the validation and humanisation of
EDTF dates in PHP, and an extension
<https://github.com/ProfessionalWiki/WikibaseEdtf> to WikiBase to use this library.
Both are available as open source software for all to use and improve. The humanisation is
translated in various languages using Translate.wiki
<https://translatewiki.net/wiki/FAQ>.
With this email I’m asking support for the inclusion of this work into the fall release of
the Wikibase Docker bundle. You can voice your support through this ticket: Include the
EDTF Datatype extension in the Fall 2021 Wikibase Docker release
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T280656>
This would allow other GLAM initiatives using Wikibase to easily make use of the EDTF
standard within their own Wikibase deployments.
Feedback and contributions to the repositories for this extension as a stand alone product
are also welcomed!
Thanks for your attention and best wishes,
Maarten Brinkerink