component parts (for example, dates, works, creators), leverages authority files and uniform resource identifiers (URIs), highlights the relationships among those components, and aims to transcend individual databases and put “information where people are looking for it—on the web.”27 LOD provides the potential for greater interlinking between library collections regardless of where the collections are physically housed or virtually hosted, and enables machines to connect related items across platforms. Deploying LOD applications in libraries has been a complex task involving developing the entirety of the infrastructure needed to create it. This complexity has primarily restricted LOD activity to large, well-resourced institutions, often with external financial support.
Wikidata offers software and an application framework in Wikibase, as well as user-friendly editing tools,28 that put experimentation and implementation of linked open data within reach of more libraries. According to a 2018 survey of international linked data implementers in libraries, Wikidata has become “the #5 ranked data source consumed by linked data projects/services.”29 Many in the international research community, including in libraries, are focused on community-owned infrastructure30 and robust metadata31 to facilitate open scholarship practices,32 and this white paper takes a close look at Wikidata and Wikibase through that lens.
Through Wikidata, libraries can use their expertise in the creation of structured data and resource description in an open, reusable, and globally interoperable environment. And as a crowd-sourced and open effort, Wikidata—a community and a knowledge base—both challenges libraries’ traditional practices around authority control and at the same
