Alice Kibombo explores how librarians can use structured data

by by the Whose Knowledge?

Jessica Horn and the need to center languages of struggle from the African continent

Intro: Welcome feminist troublemakers, friends, and allies to the Whose Voices Podcast, the audio explorations of Whose Knowledge’s tech and knowledge justice work. Are you looking for global majority feminist perspectives on internet infrastructures, anti-caste and anti-capitalist approaches to tech and what a truly multilingual indigenous and queer internet could look like? Join us as we guide you through an audio journey of deconstructing power structures that underpin how we exist on and offline. So tune in, turn up the volume, and let's ignite the flames of change together because when we ask “whose voices?”, the answer is clear. Ours. In this season, on Whose Voices, we're in conversation with incredible activists, community builders, and change makers, providing a space to discuss how we can reimagine and redesign the internet together. This year's season is focused on decolonizing structured data with interviews carried out during Wikimania Singapore 2023 and a pre-convening we held to dive deeper into these systems. Structured data is at the core of how the internet, as we currently know it, works. These are pieces of information organized in such a way that they can be easily read, understood, and processed by machines. Through these systems, massive amounts of data get sorted out, organized, and classified in relation to other pieces of data Whose voices inform these specific regulations, traditions, and epistemologies?

Kelly Foster: My name is Kelly Foster and I am so happy to welcome Alice Kibombo in Kampala. Hi Alice.

Alice Kibombo: Hello, Kelly. How are you? This is Alice Kibombo from Kampala, and I'll be with Kelly today on the Whose Voices podcast. Away from everything else or the platforms that you know me at or in, I am a librarian in my 9-5 also taking time to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms and I'm especially active on English Wikipedia on Wiki data that deals with structured data as well as Wikisource that deals with archival texts.

Kelly Foster: And what kind of library, can you tell us a little bit more about the kind of library that you work in?

Alice Kibombo: Yes, it is a special library. I work for a cultural organization and it's quite a mouthful, but I'll still say it as it is. It's the Goethe-Zentrum Kampala/Ugandan German Cultural Society (UGCS), and it was founded in 1989 to foster cultural relations between the Federal Republic of Germany as well as Uganda and starting out as a cultural organization, it had a small library and then when we got in partnership with the Goethe Institute, it then expanded its services to being a language school and the library was also expanded.

Kelly Foster: And how does structured data figure in your day-to-day work as a librarian?

Alice Kibombo: On a scale of one to 10, 11.

Kelly Foster: Can you take us through some examples of how structured data is reflected in the type of work that you do in the library?

Alice Kibombo: In my day-to-day work, I'm dealing with it at 11 or 12 or anywhere between 10 and 15. The thing with structured data is it's pervasive. You are dealing with it even when you do not know that you are dealing with it. If we're to look at it in the basic day-to-day skills. So if you have let's say a library catalog or a list of borrowers, or a list of holdings, anything to do with information, there are some things that are going to be crucial for you to collect and not just collect but structure them in a manner that is easily readable and recognizable to the casual onlooker as well as to a technically qualified person.

Kelly Foster: We were in Singapore to expressly, that the theme around the pre-conference was around decolonizing structured data. It would be great to understand a bit more about what you think is the necessity or the potential for decolonizing how we think about structured data.

Alice Kibombo: One of the things that I've observed when it comes to working with structured data is the language. Most of the platforms with which we work, especially when we are putting in wiki data, let's say the library management systems and in the Wikimedia movement, Wikidata, they will only allow for input in a certain language or if then you have the option of putting or adding an entry in your language, the software is flagging it for spelling errors. It doesn't take into account the phonetics, the linguistics, the spellings, and the sounds of your particular language. And for that reason, a native speaker who is technically enabled but does not want to read this in English or any of the big romance languages, is not able to sufficiently benefit from that experience and they'll have to be driven to other sources.

Then when it comes to the hardware and the software that we use, that is also one of the biggest challenges where you will receive a donation and it will only work under certain circumstances. For example, mobile phones, which can only render - it's smart - but it cannot render it in a language or in a format that is easily recognizable. You have to have some higher level of software.

Kelly Foster: Yeah, I absolutely agree on both of those counts. I think especially with regards to the technical, and the other thing for me is the “structured” part of the structured data is who is making the decisions about the structure, so who is making decisions about…

Alice Kibombo: Who decides what entity should be there, who is deciding what the format should be, how it should be arranged, what if I have missing details, does this disqualify the entity from qualifying for this? We see those things every day.

Kelly Foster: Yeah, and very oftentimes, the people who are designing those databases or those “knowledge graphs” as databases are starting to be called, are again coming from some very different cultural contexts where, I dunno, there might not be enough characters in the name or just the decisions around how identity is expressed or even how what is seen as being important just aren't things that are included in how these databases are often designed. And that's for me, I think a really big.

Alice Kibombo: I think I particularly take issue with the ones that do not allow for native spellings of people's names because when you give an anglicised version, you've bastardized. This is a completely different entity actually.

Kelly Foster: How do librarians in Uganda, are there any workarounds already?

Alice Kibombo: There are a number of workarounds, but they depend on the individual and not necessarily on the individual. So you'll find that with very many information workers, especially those who are involved with records, if their core responsibility is to input this data, they are not going to be looking particularly at the local version of the name. And it's not possible within very many institutional means. That's possible outside here in the private world and also in let's say platforms like Wikidata. I'm going to speak about the case of Luganda. Luganda has its own alphabet and it has some unique letters and because we are not able to render them on a keyboard, we always write them phonetically, like this is how it'll sound. Or when you write this alphabet, this is the sound that comes up. There are things in the curriculum right now that are not exactly problematic, but you realize that they are a colonial inheritance and nobody has questioned them before. Because I mean if the system works or even if it's broken down, maybe we don't have the goodwill.

Kelly Foster: So what are the conversations with others in this area around structured data and librarians and librarianship?

Alice Kibombo: There are very many conversations, so I'll just touch briefly on the number of conversations that we had. So in around November of 2022, AfLIA received a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation to teach African librarians about structured data in the context of Wikidata. It's not that African librarians did not know about structured data. They deal with it every day, but many were not exposed to the concept of the principles of Wikidata. And it also provided for at least four wikimedians from the community to be able to teach librarians, taken into a deep dive of “what is wikidata?” especially and how is it connected to databases, to linked data, to structured data, and then engaging with it in terms of what are some of the topics that you see that are missing on Wikidata. And we had some very interesting results in there. And then it moved on to how participants could then engage with the wider community when it came to their perceptions and concerns about Wikidata or their further involvement. Just to be very optimistic, we assume that a combination of their previous knowledge about structured data as well as the information and experience they now have with Wikidata is going to help them serve their communities better or even broaden their insights into what structured data is.

Kelly Foster: So what's the future? What is the potential to make change? Was there any, I don't know if you left from Singapore with any particular optimism about some of the conversations that we've had at the decolonizing structured data pre-conference or the library post-conference?

Alice Kibombo: I left Singapore extremely optimistic and frustrated. I don't know what the term is. I might not be able to make monumental changes, but I have platforms where I can actually speak about these things. I have a network that I can call on and say, “listen, I want to speak to this audience about A B, C, D, E, can you please come and help me? Can we do this presentation together?” Those are things that I'm extremely optimistic about. Now, during the pre-conference, the Whose Knowledge pre-conference, there is an idea, a very practical idea that I saw. I think it was facilitated by Mariana Fossatti, an offline understanding of structured data. That was something that occurred to me that it was a very, very smart way of explaining structured data in an offline environment. Because we tend to think that structured data is actually only online. No, no, no, no. Now when it came to what frustrated me, I said, well, who am I going to talk to these things about when I go back home, I'm going to be speaking Greek!

Because the thing with these experiences is you travel, you are exposed and you see these things and let's not lie, you can't come back home and be the same because you've seen things, but who are you going to talk about them with? They don't have to appreciate you, but just who are you going to engage at this kind of level?

Kelly Foster: I know you've been involved with a lot of things this year. It'll be great to hear about some of the things that you've been involved with. Thinking about Singapore and Wikimania in Singapore, is there anything else that you'd like to put on record as to what you've been doing this year?

Alice Kibombo: I was really, really, really proud to have two classes graduate. As a number, may or may not know, I have been serving as a wikimedian-in-residence with AfLIAand my co-activity was actually to teach and not just teach, but teach African information workers on how they can engage with particularly two platforms, Wikipedia and Wikidata.

So I'm really proud to say that at least two cohorts graduated and let's give it time and see the signs and wonders that our participants are going to be performing in their communities. Yes, signs and wonders.

Kelly Foster: Thank you so much for this incredible conversation we've been through, I've covered a lot from thinking about decolonizing structured data to discussing. I've learned an awful lot and your work is incredibly inspiring. I'm looking forward to hearing about where you might be and the work that you're going to be doing next year in 2024. Thank you so much for speaking to us about your work. We appreciate you sharing your time and your experience and your knowledges with us. Thanks again, Alice.

Alice Kibombo: You are very welcome. And I would also like to thank Whose Knowledge? for giving me the opportunity to be able to share some of the work that I do and some of the ideas that I may have, but also provoking thoughts around decolonizing structured data. Thank you very much.

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Note: Alice refers to four public libraries in Uganda. The correct number is 14.