names, places, and relationships in their collections—as widely as possible to the extent desired by the communities. Linked data facilitates semantic interoperability with related materials. York chose Wikidata as the place to store that original structured data because it is open, non-proprietary, flexible, community-oriented, and growing in adoption and use internationally. Finally, by contributing to the metadata hub underlying Wikipedia, the York project would increase the visibility and representation of Indigenous people and collections in Wikipedia in a way that addresses what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “ways that have excluded or marginalized Aboriginal peoples’ cultural perspectives and historical experience.”21
Much of the conversation between ARL and Wikimedia at their 2016 summit centered around diversity and inclusion challenges within the Wikimedia community, which are reflected in the content of Wikipedia and often grounded in the self-fulfilling prophecy of “notability.”22 Several readers of this paper pointed out similar inequities in Wikidata, with respect to data about people, for example, but others noted that the different notability criteria, and the community of editors, distinguishes Wikidata as a place of greater opportunity than Wikipedia for inclusion of communities. Within the Wiki community writ large, librarians who are active Wikimedians are also among the community’s staunchest critics, and serve as advocates for other library professionals to remediate some of its social problems.
Wikidata is a multilingual project, supporting labeling and items in hundreds of languages, all stored in a single repository. A community of approximately 18,000 active editors from around the world work to create, enhance, and validate Wikidata’s data. Many of these editors also have experience as editors of Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, but many specialize in Wikidata, and the project has developed a distinct editorial community of its own, which also attracts contributors from outside the Wikimedia community.
