Hi,
My view is that, in order for there to be any point in cultural heritage
bodies (museums, libraries, archives, historians) publishing their
collections etc. as Linked Data, there needs to be a common Linked Data
framework representing the historical space-time universe, which they
can all quote. Current practice (such as the British Museum Linked Data
offering) suggests that concepts such as people, places and events will
otherwise be represented either by useless string values or by
system-specific URLs which have no wider meaning.
As a result, I would like to explore the potential for Wikidata to act
as this lingua franca for the cultural heritage community.
You'll see from my earlier messages to this list that I have been
grappling with the SPARQL end-point. Initially I was confused by the
interactive version of the Query Service [1], which differs in its
response format from the similarly-URLed end-point and doesn't provide
an RDF/XML response. I have now managed to set up Wikidata as a 'web
termlist' service for artists, within the Modes software (see attached
screenshot). (The data in the pop-up window is generated on the fly from
the Wikidata RDF.)
At this point, I have the following questions:
1. what level of stability is planned as regards Wikidata
identifiers/URLs? Can I treat the full URL (e.g.[3]) as persistent, or
can I only rely on the core Wikidata identifier (e.g. [4]) remaining
unchanged into the indefinite future? (Can I even rely on that?)
2. what is the policy on inclusivity? Do entities need to be 'notable'
in some sense to be accepted into Wikidata? (I'm imagining a research
body wanting to offer very precise place or event data, or someone with
the ambition to include in Wikidata details of any person who ever lived.)
3. is there a template for each entity type (e.g. person, place, event)
which guarantees that a query for certain properties will at least
identify entities of the desired type? (My artist termlist query
includes a test '$s ps:P31 wd:Q5' which picks out humans: I'm not clear
how I would do the same for events or places.)
Thanks,
Richard
[1]
https://query.wikidata.org/#{SPARQL}
[2]
https://query.wikidata.org/sparql?query={SPARQL}
[3]
http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2591521
[4] Q2591521
--
*Richard Light*
