around the world can apply their extensive knowledge to articles and lists, at their own discretion and convenience. Catalogers are also subject experts but will likely be expected to work on materials purchased by other librarians. Wikipedians’ volunteer status allows them relative freedom in choosing topics to contribute. While librarians generally must justify metadata created during their work time to stakeholders, Wikipedians can investigate topics and create lists on subjects of their choice. For the analysis of Wikipedia lists, reference librarians stated that patrons sometimes requested works by African American creators, which gave the project more credibility when composing the grant request. It is also unlikely that the project would have proceeded beyond the theoretical phase without grant funds to hire a subject expert in African American history.
Wikidata and Future Work
There is consensus among institutions that the future of this reciprocal relationship with data will be very advantageous and valuable as the catalog moves to new forms of discovery in libraries (Bartholmei et al., 2016). In 2019, the Association of Research Libraries released a white paper by a task force of library professionals and expert Wikidata users with recommendations for librarians to use Wikidata to advance discovery of their collections, faculty, and institutions. Many cataloging systems do not produce linked data and cannot make data available as open linked data. Research libraries may lower this barrier with participation in the Wikidata community and infrastructure (Association of Research Libraries, 2019).
While the project under discussion used a list from Wikipedia, Wikidata offers a low-barrier, high-result method for creating and using linked data in libraries. It makes data not only visible but also reusable as linked data. In a 2016 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) discussion paper, Stephan Bartholomei and others noted “the potential of Wikidata to draw linked open data and linked open data authorities together across the world’s languages and many different ontologies and taxonomies has enormous potential to support researchers around the world” (Bartholmei et al., 2016).
