[Libs-Or] FW: Linked Open Data/Wikimedia and Indigenous collections

[Heather Pitts]

FYI

From: American Indian Library Association [mailto:AILA at SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU] On Behalf Of Mark Puente
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2017 11:31 AM
To: AILA at SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU
Subject: Linked Open Data/Wikimedia and Indigenous collections

Colleagues,

Of possible interest to many on this list is an emerging project from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) but led by staff at the York University Libraries related to indigenous collections, seeking to to create a model process of community-librarian/archivist/curator-scholar collaboration using Wikidata to create structured data related to said collections and communities in North America. A fuller description of the project is found below my email signature (or I can attach).

There will be a planning meeting for this project held following the Liberated Archives forum on Saturday, July 29th from 5:15 pm until 7 pm at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR. This project will also be proposed as a topic for the "unconference session" at the forum, 2-5pm that afternoon. Our planning meeting will be held in room B112 of the Oregon Convention Center.

If you know of anyone attending SAA or in the Portland area who might be interested in this project, please pass the word on to them. It would be great if they could let me know by Monday, July 24th if they plan to attend so that we'll know who and how many to expect. If you are unable to make the meeting but are interested in contributing to the project or just tracking its development, please let me know that as well.

I am happy to pass on any questions about this to the project leads at York University.

All best and I hope to see some of you in Portland.

Mark A. Puente
Director of Diversity and Leadership Programs
Association of Research Libraries
21 Dupont Circle, NW
Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
(202)296-2296<tel:(202)%20296-2296>
mpuente at arl.org<mailto:mpuente at arl.org>
http://www.arl.org/diversity/
http://www.arl.org/leadership/



Advancing social justice, community collaboration, and modeling inclusive descriptive practices in the LAM, Wikipedia, and Wikidata communities through linked data for archival and special collections


Across the library, archive, and museum (LAM) community, a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice has led the LAM community to reflect on areas where bias and inequality exist in description. A project of the Association of Research Libraries and led by York University Libraries is looking for partners to create a model process of community-librarian/archivist/curator-scholar collaboration using Wikidata to create structured data related to indigenous collections and communities in North America.


The archival community and the wider LAM sector are at a critical juncture in global advocacy and heightened awareness for diversity and inclusion. The events at Standing Rock and the Final Report<http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=890> from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada have lent new urgency and responsibility to cultural heritage institutions to form different responses to and understandings of descriptive and metadata practices. By bringing deep content expertise and discoverability principles to the most available and accessed information resource in the world, Wikipedia and its sister projects, ARL Libraries are well placed to play a powerful role in promoting visibility of culturally diverse content while advancing research and development in linked open data (LOD) and renewed examination of cultural perspectives in archival practice. Furthermore, participants in the project express a commitment to working collaboratively with communities to both recognize and model alternate knowledge structures and communities of practices to challenge inherently hegemonic relationships and structures.



Goals for the project include 1) create pathways for community participation and agency in the description of archival documents, 2) encourage alignment between the development of structured data within the LAM community and social justice work, and 3) the creation of referenced structured data that can be used to connect reliable sources with topics to help justify “notability” in Wikipedia in order to redress a known diversity gap in Wikipedia’s coverage. To maximize exposure of linkable structured data, this project will collaborate within communities to use Wikidata as the global, openly licensed knowledgebase where the data can be deposited, queried and reused.



This project will focus on creating inclusive LOD in archival and manuscript collections to animate relationships among people, and in particular the stories of underrepresented groups, with several related goals in mind.



·  First, partnership with these groups is essential to creating culturally competent metadata to describe the collections, expose and extend the collections’ reach on the network, and connect to related collections.

·  Second, librarian and archivist engagement with researchers, students, and community members who use these collections is necessary for the work of not only scholarship and pedagogy, but also the work of decolonization as we move to establish new descriptive practices.

·  Third, by contributing linked data to Wikidata, a global Wikimedia project, research libraries can, by virtue of their unique position as custodians of rich archival collections, help address the “diversity gap” in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This initiative is intended to both address the known diversity issues in Wikipedia and increase the availability of usable structured data related to library collections on the web.



We are hoping to work closely with the archivist community to find pathways for collaboration and community participation in the work of social justice.
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