White Paper (Draft): “ARL, Wikimedia, and Linked Open Data”; Open for Comments Through November 30

From Judy Ruttenberg at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL):

In June 2018, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) charged a task force to look at Wikidata. The task force emerged from several years of discussion between ARL and the Wikimedia Foundation on where the two communities can effectively collaborate. The focus on Wikidata and Wikibase came from two points of alignment in particular: interest in linked open data for both library discovery systems and Wikipedia, and advancing a diversity and inclusion agenda in the cultures of both libraries and Wikimedia.
In practice, this meant (1) focusing on Wikidata as a potential repository for libraries’ linked open data, and (2) that a significant use case driving the formation of the task force was a mutual interest between libraries and the Wikimedia community in creating culturally competent descriptive metadata, in collaboration with communities whose lives, collections, and relationships are being described. When the task force was convened, it became clear that Wikibase (the infrastructure) and Wikidata (the community) should also be explored explicitly in the context of ARL’s commitment to open, equitable, and inclusive scholarly communication.
Members of the task force presented elements of this work at the WikiConference North America in October, and the task force is pleased to circulate this draft white paper for open community commentthrough November 30.
Please review and provide comments within the document, or by email to Judy Ruttenberg (judy@arl.org).

ARL Task Force on Wikimedia and Linked Open Data Members
Stacy Allison-Cassin (York)
Alison Armstrong (Ohio State)
Phoebe Ayers (MIT)
Tom Cramer (Stanford)
Mark Custer (Yale)
Mairelys Lemus-Rojas (IUPUI)
Sally McCallum (Library of Congress)
Merrilee Proffitt (OCLC Research)
Alex Stinson (Wikimedia Foundation)
Staff Liaisons:
Mark A. Puente (ARL)
Judy Ruttenberg (ARL)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Open Access