Wikidata Workshop

This half-day workshop will equip attendees with foundational technical knowledge on using Wikidata as an authority identifier for people and name records. Collecting institutions, particularly museums and archives, are increasingly exploring the applications and potential benefits of using linked data to document cultural heritage (Davis and Heravi, 2021; Hawkins, 2022; Hyvönen, 2012; Martin, Sistruck, and Young, 2022). In fact, current development work on ArchivesSpace aims to build a plug-in for Wikidata, which functions similarly to the Library of Congress Name Authority Files plug-in (Milbrodt, 2025). Our workshop will first introduce attendees to linked data broadly and Wikidata foundations. To demonstrate the research and archival applications of Wikidata, we will then overview two case studies that draw on Wikidata. These case studies document use of Wikidata to promote ethical access to archival collections: 1) The (In)Visible Women Project, which pilots Wikidata as an authority identifier to disambiguate names across Smithsonian collections; and 2) The Linking Anthropology’s Data and Archives Project (LADA), which explores the potentials of linked data for increasing ethical access to Indigenous archival materials in part through Wiki edit-a-thon events (see Sorensen et al., 2023). Next, we will move to discussing Wiki editor etiquette, demo making a Wikidata person record, and discuss when editors might choose to not make a record for a given person. We will end with open editing time where attendees can shift into a hands-on session and practice making records with a list of names we have researched and circulated with ample time for attendee questions. Our workshop aims to build technological skills by introducing students and faculty to Wikidata from both researcher and archival practitioner perspectives, equipping them to contribute to future linked data projects.

Davis, E., & Heravi, B. (2021). Linked Data and Cultural Heritage: A Systematic Review of Participation, Collaboration, and Motivation. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 14(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3429458

Hawkins, A. (2022). Archives, linked data and the digital humanities: Increasing access to digitised and born-digital archives via the semantic web. Archival Science, 22(3), 319–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09381-0

Hyvönen, E. (2012). Publishing and Using Cultural Heritage Linked Data on the Semantic Web. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-79438-4

Martin, K., Sistruck, H., & Young. (2022). Using Wikidata Identifiers to Enhance Agent Discovery. https://blog.rockarch.org/dimes-agent-pages-enhanced

Milbrodt, Natalie. (2025). Rapid Fund/Wikidata-ArchivesSpace GLAM plugin. Wikimedia. Retrieved from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Rapid_Fund/

Wikidata-ArchivesSpace_GLAM_plugin_%28ID:_23096591%29 (last accessed: 11/5/2025).

Sorensen, A. H., Lee, S., Marsh, D. E., Fenlon, K., & Punzalan, R. L. (2023). Reviving anthropology’s past: Digital archival access and ethical collaboration with Indigenous communities. Anthropology Today, 39(6), 11–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12847

Amanda H. Sorenson
Amanda Sorensen is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies. Her doctoral research focuses on the sociotechnical factors that shape museum collections information systems through time. She holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia. Recently, Amanda worked as the data manager for the (In)Visible Women Project at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

Dr. Diana Marsh
Dr. Diana Marsh is an Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation in the College of Information Studies and an affiliate faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Marsh’s research asks how new technologies and decolonizing movements are changing the ways heritage institutions share information with communities and the public. Her work draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods to better understand the discovery and use of archival collections – particularly for the communities represented in them. Her recent work has appeared in The American Archivist, Archival Science, Archivaria, and Archival Outlook.