Wikidata and Scholia for scholarly profiles: the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy pilot project

Abstract

During recent years, cultural heritage institutions have become increasingly interested in participating in open knowledge projects. The most commonly known of these projects is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Libraries and archives in particular, are also showing an interest in contributing their data to Wikidata, the newest project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikidata, a sister project to Wikipedia, is a free knowledge base where structured linked data is stored. It aims to be the data hub for all Wikimedia projects. The Wiki community has developed numerous tools and web-based applications to facilitate the contribution of content to Wikidata and to display the data in more meaningful ways. One such web-based application is Scholia which was created to provide users with complete scholarly profiles by making live SPARQL queries to Wikidata and displaying the information in an appealing and effective manner. Scholia provides a comprehensive sketch of the author’s scholarship. This presentation will demonstrate our efforts to contribute data related to our faculty members to Wikidata and will provide a demo of Scholia’s functionalities.