OCLCOCLC RESEARCH RESEARCH REPORT REPORT Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase Lessons Learned from Project Passage Jean Godby, Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Bruce Washburn, Kalan Knudson Davis, Karen Detling, Christine Fernsebner Eslao, Steven Folsom, Xiaoli Li, Marc McGee, Karen Miller, Honor Moody, Craig Thomas, Holly Tomren Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage Jean Godby OCLC Research Karen Smith-Yoshimura OCLC Research Bruce Washburn OCLC Research Kalan Knudson Davis University of Minnesota Karen Detling National Library of Medicine Christine Fernsebner Eslao Harvard University Steven Folsom Cornell University Xiaoli Li University of California, Davis Marc McGee Harvard University Karen Miller Northwestern University Honor Moody Harvard University Craig Thomas Harvard University Holly Tomren Temple University © 2019 OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ August 2019 OCLC Research Dublin, Ohio 43017 USA www.oclc.org ISBN: 978-1-55653-135-4 DOI: 10.25333/faq3-ax08 OCLC Control Number: 1110105996 ORCID iDs Jean Godby https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0085-2134 Karen Smith-Yoshimura https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8757-2962 Bruce Washburn http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4396-7345 Kalan Knudson Davis https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1032-6042 Christine Fernsebner Eslao https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7621-916X Steven Folsom https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-5769 Xiaoli Li https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5362-2151 Marc McGee https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5757-1494 Karen Miller https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9597-2376 Craig Thomas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4027-7907 Holly Tomren https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6062-1138 Please direct correspondence to: OCLC Research [email protected] Suggested citation: Godby, Jean, Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Bruce Washburn, Kalan Knudson Davis, Karen Detling, Christine Fernsebner Eslao, Steven Folsom, Xiaoli Li, Marc McGee, Karen Miller, Honor Moody, Craig Thomas, and Holly Tomren. 2019. Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/faq3-ax08. CONTENTS Executive Summary .........................................................................................................................8 Introduction .....................................................................................................................................9 Barriers to adoption of linked data in the library resource-description workflow .................... 10 Project Passage: The OCLC Research Linked Data Wikibase Prototype .................................... 11 The terms of the pilot ..................................................................................................................12 The pilot study participants ........................................................................................................13 How this report is organized .......................................................................................................15 An Overview of the MediaWiki/Wikibase Platform and OCLC Project Prototypes ...................... 15 A Wikibase article, page, or “entity” ...........................................................................................15 The Wikibase entity ecosystem ...................................................................................................18 MediaWiki and Wikibase .............................................................................................................18 The Triplestore, SPARQL Query API, and the SPARQL Query user interface ...........................19 Applications that use the MediaWiki/Wikibase environment and the SPARQL Query service: OpenRefine and the Passage Explorer ...............................................19 Data import with PyWikibot and the Passage Retriever ........................................................... 20 The baseline dataset ....................................................................................................................21 Three phases of user-centered development and testing......................................................... 22 Phase 1: Introducing Wikibase, evaluating the initial dataset, promoting SPARQL queries ..........................................................................................................................22 Phase 2: Implementing requested features, testing constraints, and promoting the Explorer ............................................................................................................. 23 Phase 3: Enlarging the set of participants, developing documentation, holding office hours, and testing the Retriever ........................................................................ 25 A robust software foundation .................................................................................................... 27 Studies of Resource Description in Passage ................................................................................. 27 Use cases in library metadata creation using the Wikibase editing interface .......................... 27 Works, translations, and Chinese-language descriptions ......................................................... 29 A translated work of philosophy ...............................................................................................30 Wikibase “person” and “place” entities in Chinese .................................................................. 35 A person: Sun Yat-sen ......................................................................................................... 35 A place: Bianliang .................................................................................................................37 Visual resources .........................................................................................................................39 A historical map ......................................................................................................................... 39 Four image objects .................................................................................................................... 43 Establishing a reference with uniquely identifying data ................................................... 46 Defining and naming events ............................................................................................... 46 Building a context for interpretation ...................................................................................47 Archives ......................................................................................................................................49 A musical work associated with an event .................................................................................. 51 Creating and Editing Items in Passage ..................................................................................... 53 Summary of use cases and first impressions ............................................................................. 57 Lessons Learned and Reflections .................................................................................................. 57 How Passage differs from other linked data projects in the library community ....................... 57 Seven lessons learned ................................................................................................................59 Reflections and perspectives .....................................................................................................64 The transition from human-readable records to knowledge graphs as a paradigm shift .................................................................................................................... 64 New tasks ............................................................................................................................. 64 Tasks that become obsolete .............................................................................................. 65 What is still necessary ......................................................................................................... 66 Best practices are still important .........................................................................................67 Librarians will still uphold the values of authoritativeness and quality ............................ 68 Reinventing crowd-sourcing ..................................................................................................... 68 Interoperability with Wikidata and other sources of linked data ............................................. 70 Local Wikibase instances .................................................................................................... 70 Direct collaboration with Wikidata ..................................................................................... 71 Looking Forward ............................................................................................................................ 73 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 75 Notes .............................................................................................................................................. 76 FIGURES FIGURE 1 Structural components in the Wikibase editing page, Charlie Kritschmar (WMDE) [CC0], from Wikimedia