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< GLAM‎ | Newsletter‎ | May 2020‎ | Contents


Special story

Content partnership category - your help is needed

By Romaine

Background

Wikidata Loves Commons
Wikidata Loves Commons

Linked data becomes increasingly important in the world. In the Wikimedia movement it started many years ago with identifying Wikipedia articles about the same topic in different languages and connecting them all together (the In other languages section in de sidebar). Articles are also connected with the other platforms like Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. In Wikidata all these topics are available and having them linked to many external databases and websites, and in Wikipedia authority control is available in articles to identify the topic on other databases and catalogues. (info)

Why this is important? Well, have you ever been to Singapore, Goiania/Guyana, Granada/Grenada, Sydney or Auckland/Oakland? Which one? From time to time it hit the news that people end up in the wrong place, see this article for some examples. As many subjects have the same or similar names, as well as pseudonyms, identifying the right one is needed. I digress a bit, back to the topic.


In many GLAM partnerships institutions donate images from their collections to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. On the file page of these images a template is added that says that the image was donated by the institution. This template adds automatically a tracking category so that all the images and other files donated by the institution itself are added to the same category. This Commons category often has as format Category:Images from <name institution> or something like that. (Many of these categories are added to Category:Files from content partnerships.) This tracking category is important for metrics purposes, like for example how many times images from an institution are used in articles.

To be clear, besides this automatic categorisation of the images in a tracking category that indicates they are donated by the institution, images also need to be categorised (manually) in various subject categories. Like for example by author and by type of work (paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, ...).


Since 22 May 2020 we have on Wikidata a new property that makes it possible to identify which category on Wikimedia Commons is the official category in what images (and other files) are added that are donated by the institution itself. This property allows us to connect an institution to the files that come from it.


How can I help?

To be able to know which tracking category belongs to which institution, this (only once) needs to be manually added to Wikidata for each institution. There your help is needed.

  1. Go to the Wikidata item of an institution that donated images (and/or other files).
  2. Look up the tracking category on Wikimedia Commons in what all these donated images are present.
  3. Add this category name (without Category: prefix) to the Wikidata item about the institution by using the property content partnership category (P8252).

Thanks!


Some examples:


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