Events displayed in timezone: Europe/London
- This event has passed.
Wikidata and Wikibase – Curriculum Transformation in the Digital Humanities (Hybrid Seminar)
Wed March 5, 2025 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm GMT
Join us for an afternoon of talks exploring Wikimedia in the curriculum, Scottish history and historical data (accused witches and religious change in early modern Scotland) and opening up the collections of the National Library of Wales!
Wikibase is the underlying platform that powers Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikidata, and as an open source platform, it allows users to create their own version of Wikidata with their own field names while still being able to connect to and leverage data from Wikidata. As such, it offers more quality control and bespoke opportunities for collections and research dataset holders.
Data skills for all!
As part of our ongoing mission to support our open knowledge and data skills commitments, this HYBRID seminar ( REMOTE participation available!) will build on prior learning and past seminars hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society (CDCS) in 2019.
We see this seminar as our next logical opportunity to support teaching and learning at the University at a time of curriculum transformation. The University has developed a framework for future skills in the curriculum to include data skills for all. This seminar will showcase a number of case studies of how Wikipedia and Wikidata have been included as curriculum elements in teaching and the impact that can have on students working on large and open data sets.
Jason Evans, Open Data Manager at the National Library of Wales, will expound on how the National Library has shared its collections as linked open data to Wikidata over the last eight years (including the opportunities and benefits of doing so) AND will also showcase their new SNARC Wikibase (Semantic Name Authority Repository Cymru) to ensure they can leverage the vast amount of complementary data in Wikidata through federated queries but also now have both a controlled vocabulary and access control for their authority records.
Dr. Chris Langley, The Open University, is a historian working with Wikibase to create a database of the General Assemblies of Scotland following his Wikidata work on the Mapping the Scottish Reformation project.
SCHEDULE:
- 3:00 pm – 3:10pm: Welcome from Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.
- 3:10 pm – 3:25pm: ‘Wikidata in the Curriculum’ – Ewan McAndrew will preface our two guest speakers with a general introduction to student work with Wikidata assignments including the Map of Accused Witches in Scotland project and Tower Block Archive.
- 3:25 pm – 3:35pm: ‘Mapping Religious Change in Early Modern Scotland’ – Dr. Chris Langley (The Open University) will introduce the ways in which Wikibase Cloud can be used to structure historical data. In particular, the talk will explore how to use Wikibase and LeafletJS alongside textual sources relating to seventeenth-century Scotland.
- 3.35 pm – 4.00pm: ‘Wikibase for Name Authority at the National Library of Wales‘ – Jason Evans (National Library of Wales) on the modest goal of creating a knowledge graph of all Welsh cultural heritage data. Learn how NLW’s Wikibase is helping them take their first steps. The talk will highlight the benefits of using Wikibase alongside Wikidata to build a linked network of entities across multiple collections.
- 4:00pm – 4:10pm: ‘Wikimedia in Education: Booklet of Case Studies (v2.0)’ – Satu Kapiainen (Information Services, University of Edinburgh) will showcase the new edition of our booklet of 21 case studies of how Wikimedia is being used as a form of learning technology in UK education.
- 4:10 pm – 4:30pm: – Q&A with all the speakers.
- 4:30pm – 5pm:- Tea and coffee and general mingling/discussion.
- 5pm: Thanks and event close.
Zoom link for remote attendance
Wikibase for Name Authority at the National Library of Wales (Jason Evans)
With the modest goal of creating a knowledge graph of all Welsh cultural heritage data, learn how our Wikibase is helping us take our first steps. The talk will highlight the benefits of using Wikibase alongside Wikidata to build a linked network of entities across multiple collections.
Speaker bio
Jason Evans is the Open Data Manager and Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales. Working at the intersection of access policy, data science and digital engagement Evans aims to make cultural heritage collections more accessible and discoverable through new policy and practice.
Mapping Religious Change in Early Modern Scotland (Dr. Chris Langley)
This talk will introduce the ways in which Wikibase Cloud can be used to structure historical data. In particular, the talk will explore how to use Wikibase and LeafletJS alongside textual sources relating to seventeenth-century Scotland.
Speaker bio
Dr. Chris Langley is a historian of early modern religious culture, especially in Scotland: he wants “to understand how people in the past experienced religion and how it fit into their lives”. Chris uses digital techniques, including open linked data, to understand religious change. His current research project explores the Scottish General Assemblies between 1638 and 1653.
Map of Accused Witches of Scoland v2.0 – a student project 5 years in the making
Year on year, students on the Design Informatics MA/MFA programme derived meaningful learning experiences through engaging practically with data skills and Scottish accused witches to support course learning outcomes. Our open data Map of Accused Witches in Scotland project (2019) then helped surface data from the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, as linked open data and provided five student interns with rich learning opportunities to geolocate all the historic placenames mentioned and put the individual human stories behind the data on the map for the first time, allowing them to be explored as never before. For five years, this resource has helped raise awareness of, and discourse about, the Scottish witch trials (1563-1736) at a national and international level and been utilised by school pupils, teachers, researchers, authors, historians, journalists, and members of the public all around the world; demonstrating the interest in, and benefits of, such work.
Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, will provide a brief overview of the project’s creation and highlight the contributions of everyone involved.
Who is this event for?
Humanities students, Informatics and Computer Science students, the CDCS past attendees, AI researchers, Data researchers, attendees from our 100 strong launch event for the Map of Accused Witches v2 launch, Library and University Collections staff, National Library of Scotland metadata staff, Informatics staff etc.
Anyone interested in the possibilities of staff and students sharing data to Wikidata and/or creating their own collection/research database in Wikibase.
An open data future?
If our Map of Accused Witches project could be considered Open Data ‘Project A’ then ‘Project B’ has been the Dr. Chris Langley’s work on Mapping the Scottish Reformation site which explores the Scottish clergy during the 16th and 18th century: where they were employed, how they moved around, where they were educated and more.
Both the Map of Accused Witches and Mapping the Scottish Reformation projects demonstrated the usefulness for students & researchers of taking the hitherto de facto print resources, The Sourcebook of Witchcraft by Christina Larner and the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, for the exploring of the Scottish Witch Trials and the Scottish Reformation respectively and updating, improving and augmenting these resources as digital tools using linked open data on a sustainable platform AND providing students with much needed opportunities for learning of digital and data skills – both through practical coursework and through internship opportunities.
Both of these projects showcased their initial ideas in CDCS seminars in 2019. And both have moved on in the last five years considerably, especially given discussions on data quality, maintaining the data, controlling access to the data and the usefulness of high quality of data for LLMs/artificial intelligence.
So a final outcome would be to see Open Data ‘Project C’, ‘Project D’, ‘Project E’ etc. etc. to build on the learning from the Map of Accused Witches project and Mapping the Scottish Reformation and provide more opportunities for students to learn data skills through practical engagement with research and collections datasets… and with Scottish history.
