Enhance the Discovery and Interoperability of Culturally Rich Information: the Chinese Women Poets WikiProject

Traditionally, special collections such as culture and heritage collections and their name authority data were cataloged using local cataloging standards with limited data interoperability. The library community has questioned for a number of years how to increase the accessibility and visibility of cultural heritage information stored in centralized databases. Wikidata, a global and open knowledge repository of structured data serving as a hub for linking resources, has emerged as one of possible solutions to library data silo issues. A group of Chinese American librarians from several institutions formed a WikiProject team: Chinese Culture and Heritage group in 2020 to study Wikidata. The group hoped to explore the potential of Wikidata, contribute to the diversity of data in Wikidata which has been increasingly utilized in libraries’ discovery systems, and seek collaboration opportunities. Its primary focus is to create and enhance Wikidata items that showcase Chinese culture and heritage information. This poster will present an overview of the Chinese Women Poets Wikiproject, the first project the group has embarked on, that uses OpenRefine and PyWikibot to enhance over 4,000 Chinese women poets’ names in Wikidata. In addition, the presenters will discuss the challenges and the benefits of the project as well as their future work.