From June-September 2019, my colleagues and me talked to 16 users who worked at different cultural (“GLAM”) institutions to find out about “How and why do people in cultural institutions use Wikidata?” and thus learn more about participants’ motivations, activities and problems.

In the report, we describe…
- The advantages participants saw in sharing data
- Problems of modeling
- How people come to Wikidata via Wikimedia Commons
…and much more

The things we found out probably not new to some of you. Rather than uncovering surprising results, the report aims to describe workflows and motivations and to serve as a point of reference. This can be particularly useful for people who had no previous exposure Wikidata and/or GLAM institutions’ work and its context.

The research thus focussed on describing motivations, activities and problems. While the data gathering was often  like a conversation, the research methods were based on qualitative research methods and design ethnography – thus they supplement our other ways of learning from the community, like direct personal exchange or interacting on talk pages.

We hope that the report is useful and interesting for you. Many thanks to all the people who helped in creating the report, particularly the participants from GLAM institutions who showed and explained to us how they use Wikidata.

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