](https://reprexbase.eu/fu/index.php?title=Main_Page)
The `Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space` builds on a prior project that
unified all known music ever recorded or produced in Slovakia
(Ministerstvo kultúry SR and Open Music Europe 2023) together with a
Wikipedian-in-residence. Although Slovak music represents a relatively
compact cultural domain, the relevant information was scattered across
multiple public and private institutions, each with its own metadata
structures, languages, and access constraints. This earlier work
demonstrated that, even within a narrowly defined cultural area,
knowledge integration is complex and labor-intensive—but also highly
impactful when successful. By coordinating diverse stakeholders and
aligning their data practices, we created a shared knowledge
infrastructure that respected institutional contexts while enabling
broader discovery, reuse, and enrichment.
The `Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space` extends this approach into an even
more fragile and urgent domain: endangered linguistic and cultural
communities. In this case, we are not simply aggregating and harmonizing
fragmented open knowledge. We are engaging with *disappearing cultural
universes*—contexts in which the languages themselves (such as Liv or
Mari) are severely endangered, and the number of fluent speakers or
cultural custodians may be in the dozens. Here, the risk is not only
that knowledge may be lost, but that it may never have been documented
in the first place, or only in languages and formats inaccessible to the
communities of origin.
This dual challenge—of endangered knowledge *and* endangered
language—demands a more comprehensive model. Our platform must support
not only *language-independent conceptualisation* (e.g., structured
metadata in RDF), but also the *revitalization of language-bound
representation* (e.g., cultural descriptions written *in* Liv or Seto).
The same object—a song, a garment, a photograph—must exist both as
structured data and as culturally grounded, linguistically accurate
narrative.
While our commitment to small Finno-Ugric communities is personal and
specific, we believe the model we propose is broadly applicable. Many
cultural and scholarly domains—such as interwar Slovak modernism or
regional Sámi ethnographies—are also characterized by a small number of
experts, a high dispersion of sources, and a lack of critical mass for
traditional, crowd-driven knowledge curation. These are what we call
*high-friction knowledge spaces*: areas where the cost of collecting,
interpreting, and validating information is disproportionately high
because of institutional, linguistic, or epistemic fragmentation.
The Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space offers a blueprint for addressing
these challenges. It is designed as a **staging environment**,
compatible with Wikimedia’s platforms, where small communities can
collaboratively curate, translate, and validate their cultural
knowledge—on their own terms—before integrating it into the global
commons.
Our project idea started to develop on the Wikimedia CEE 2024 Meeting
when we discussed with Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian Wikipedians the
possibility to give a boost to participation of minorities from the
Finno-Ugric language group in Wikimedia projects. (Antal, Grochal, and
Varvantakis 2024)
While Wikipedia plays a central role in global knowledge sharing, it
also operates under general-purpose policies—such as notability
criteria—that can unintentionally exclude the perspectives, figures, and
artefacts of smaller communities. The narrower the cultural universe,
the more likely it is that meaningful individuals, events, or objects
will fall below these thresholds, despite their deep significance within
their own context.
To address this, our platform includes a curatorial layer—currently
called **WikiGLAM**—that allows the creation of *virtual exhibitions*
and *contextual collection pages*. These pages do not compete with
Wikipedia articles but instead complement them, providing a format where
cultural specificity and community storytelling can flourish, even when
individual items do not meet notability requirements. For instance, a
Wikipedia article might not accept a page for each Seto singer, but a
digital exhibit on “The Seto Singing Tradition” can present ten singers,
with biographical context, images, and audio recordings—all linked
through Wikidata and hosted via Wikimedia Commons. This curatorial model
rebalances the representation of cultural minorities without diluting
the editorial integrity of Wikipedia.
# Prototype for PPP Knowledge Incubation Into the Wikimedia Ecosystem
## Competency Questions: All Layers of the European Interoperability Framework Applied
To guide the design and implementation of the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing
Space, we define the following key competencies the platform must
address:
### Q1: Define the Scope of the Cultural Universe
The platform is not intended to replicate a general-purpose
encyclopedia. For communities like the Liv, with only a few hundred
remaining speakers, the informational needs center on the *preservation
of their specific cultural world*: geographic features bearing Liv
names, remaining Liv-speaking villages and buildings, garments, oral
traditions, folk songs, and the vocabulary needed to describe these in
the Liv language. Our system must support the creation and structuring
of a *domain-specific encyclopedic resource*, rooted in the cultural
priorities of the communities it serves.
The `Finno-Ugric Dataspace` should support domain-specific encyclopedic
content generation that reflects the *cultural worldview and linguistic
nuance* of the Livonian community, rather than defaulting to
general-purpose geographic knowledge as seen in standard Wikipedias.
This content becomes the foundation of a Livonian-language encyclopedic
resource—complementary to but distinct from global projects.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q1: generate structured entries
>
> *Can the system generate structured entries and multilingual
> encyclopedic descriptions of culturally significant Livonian
> geographical locations, using the Livonian Place Name Catalogue as a
> source, and provide historical variants in Latvian, Russian, and
> German where available?*
>
> From the [Livonian Place Name
> Catalogue](https://www.livonian.lv/en/publications/the-livonian-place-name-catalogue/),
> the place *Irē (Livonian)* / *Mazirbe (Latvian)* is one of the most
> significant locations in Livonian cultural memory. The system should
> be able to:
>
> - Represent the Livonian name (*Irē*), along with Latvian (*Mazirbe*),
> and historical Russian and German variants (*Мазирбе*,
> *Maserwieken*).
>
> - Link the place to its role in Livonian history and cultural revival
> (e.g., site of the Livonian House of the People).
>
> - Include geographical coordinates and administrative details.
>
> - Enable users to generate a short encyclopedia-style page or entry in
> Livonian, describing Irē’s cultural and linguistic relevance.
>
> - Link to associated artefacts, songs, photos, or oral histories from
> this location.
### Q2: Bridge Institutional and Linguistic Silos
Knowledge about stateless or minoritized communities—such as the Seto,
Mari, or Liv—is distributed across public and private collections in
countries with different national languages (Latvian, Estonian, Finnish,
Hungarian, Russian, German). These collections are managed under varied
knowledge organization models typical to GLAM institutions. Our platform
must support *cross-lingual and cross-institutional discovery*, enabling
users to locate and contextualize Seto or Liv heritage materials
scattered across multiple metadata regimes and languages.
The goal of the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space is to act as a
*cross-lingual, cross-domain discovery layer*, allowing communities and
researchers to access cultural heritage materials scattered across
institutions and described in different vocabularies and languages. This
enables *community members, even without formal archival or linguistic
training*, to meaningfully engage with their heritage.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q2 Can the system enable a user—regardless of their language proficiency—to discover and access bibliographic records, archival descriptions, and museum artefacts?
>
> *Can the system enable a user—regardless of their language
> proficiency—to discover and access bibliographic records, archival
> descriptions, and museum artefacts related to traditional Seto
> clothing from the 19th and 20th centuries, even when those records are
> stored in different institutions and described in Estonian, Russian,
> or German metadata schemas?*
>
> A user is researching *Seto traditional women’s clothing*, including:
>
> - The *silver brooches and layered aprons* worn during ceremonial
> events;
>
> - Garments documented in *photographs or field sketches* from
> 19th-century ethnographic expeditions;
>
> - Mentions in *ethnographic bibliographies*, published in Estonian or
> German;
>
> - Museum entries\* in databases like MuIS (Estonian Museums
> Information System) where items are tagged with terms like *“Setu
> rahvarõivad”*, *“Setu naise kostüüm”*, or *“женская одежда сето”*.
>
> The system should:
>
> - Recognize synonyms and multilingual terms (e.g., *Setu* = *Seto*,
> *naise rahvarõivad* = *women’s folk clothing*);
>
> - Normalize metadata differences across domains (e.g., MARC for
> bibliographies, ISAD(G) or RiC for archives, CIDOC CRM for museum
> artefacts);
>
> - Return a harmonized set of entries with linked metadata;
>
> - Optionally generate a multilingual summary of the findings and
> enable further semantic enrichment.
### Q3: Translate Information into Structured, Interoperable Knowledge
Our system must be able to convert both structured (e.g., datasets,
catalogue entries) and unstructured (e.g., books, photos, oral
histories) information into *semantic, RDF-based knowledge
representations*. To ensure cross-domain compatibility, we adopt a
composite data model drawing from established ontologies: DCTERMS
(libraries), Records in Contexts (archives), CIDOC CRM (museums), and
copyright ontologies (for streaming platforms and contemporary media).
For example, a museum photograph of Seto traditional clothing must be
described in a language-agnostic, conceptually robust format that links
garments, places, people, events, and creators.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q3 Can the system extract structured RDF-based statements from mixed-format cultural heritage records?
>
> *Can the system extract structured RDF-based statements from
> mixed-format cultural heritage records—such as a museum photograph
> with a descriptive title and date—and represent them using
> interoperable, language-independent vocabularies that support
> integration across library, archive, and museum domains?*
>
> Example objects: `MuIS Record:` [Setu mehed Võmmorski külas Setomaa
> vallas (1913)](https://www.muis.ee/museaalview/610034)
> `Title (Estonian):` *Setu mehed Võmmorski külas Setomaa vallas*
> `Date:` 1913
> `Institution:` Eesti Rahva Muuseum (Estonian National Museum)
> `Item type:` Photograph
> `Language of metadata:` Estonian
> `Collection domain:` Museum (but relevant to archives and cultural
> ethnography)
>
> From this item, the system should derive:
>
> - There exists a *photograph* as a *physical/visual object*.
>
> - The photograph was *created in 1913*.
>
> - The photograph *depicts Seto men* in *Võmmorski village*, in the
> *Setomaa region*.
>
> - Since the photo is of people in 1913 and is not marked “nude,” it
> *implicitly depicts traditional Seto male clothing*.
>
> - The image is part of a *museum collection*.
>
> - The location and people depicted have *cultural and ethnographic
> significance*.
``` r
@prefix crm: 
Expected features
- ✅ `Data grounding`: Every part of the sentence can be mapped back to
a specific RDF triple or identifier.
- ✅ `No hallucination`: The output does not introduce facts not present
in the data model.
- ✅ `Domain-appropriate naturalization`: The sentence respects cultural
terms (“Seto men”, “Võmmorski village”) and avoids overly technical
phrasing.
- ✅ `Reference transparency`: The institutional source (ERM),
identifier, and URI are clearly included.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q4 Can the system convert structured RDF-based knowledge to culturally appropriate, and verifiable sentences in natural language?
>
> *Can the system convert structured RDF-based knowledge—linking people,
> places, dates, and artefacts—into clear, culturally appropriate, and
> verifiable sentences in natural language, such as Livonian, Seto,
> Mari, or English, grounded in identifiable knowledge items and their
> provenance?*
>
> To offer *community members, editors, or citizen curators* a tool
> that:
>
> - Selects a set of RDF nodes (e.g., one photo, one person, one
> location)
>
> - Uses predefined or AI-augmented linguistic templates for generating
> narrative
>
> - Outputs *fully traceable text* in multiple target languages
>
> - Allows human validation or post-editing by native speakers
>
> **Example Workflow** (based on Q3 TTL output):
>
> **Structured Input (summarized):**
>
> - There is a photograph (`ex:photo_610034`)
>
> - It depicts a group of Seto men (`ex:seto_men_group_1913`)
>
> - It was taken in 1913 (`ex:photo_creation_event_1913`)
>
> - In Võmmorski village (`ex:voemmorski_village`)
>
> - It’s part of the Estonian National Museum collection
>
> - With item ID: `ERM Fk 213:172`
>
> - Permanent link: 
To goal of or Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space offer legally respectful,
semantically rich representation of cultural materials sourced from
*non-institutional domains*—especially those that are digital-first,
grassroots-curated, and culturally vital, but fall outside traditional
GLAM pipelines. It must make this data *linkable and referenceable*,
even if full reuse is not permitted—thus reflecting the true complexity
of the heritage landscape.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q5 Can the system document, enrich, and share information about materials while respecting intellectual property rights, platform-specific terms of use?
>
> *Can the system document, enrich, and share information about
> community-curated cultural materials—such as playlists of contemporary
> Mari, Udmurt, or Samoyedic music—while respecting intellectual
> property rights, platform-specific terms of use (e.g., Spotify API
> rules), and the data-sharing preferences of private contributors or
> NGOs, and still enable integration with open knowledge platforms like
> Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons where legally and ethically possible?*
>
> **Example: The Hõimulõimed Music Collection**
>
> - A Set of playlists curated by the *Hõimulõimed association*
> includes:
>
> - Contemporary Mari folk-pop tracks available via *Spotify*
>
> - Experimental Udmurt and Samoyedic music hosted on *Bandcamp*
>
> - Unreleased or privately circulated tracks contributed by local
> musicians or families
>
> **System Responsibilities:**
>
> 1. **Respect platform licensing**
>
> - For Spotify, adhere to [Spotify’s Developer
> Terms](https://developer.spotify.com/terms/) when pulling metadata
> via the API
> - For Bandcamp, respect artist-defined permissions (e.g., embeds
> allowed vs. not)
>
> 2. **Respect NGO & community rights**
>
> - Hõimulõimed might retain curatorial or community-sourced contextual
> information
>
> - Metadata (e.g., language, artist background, cultural function of
> the song) should be attributed to them, with a Creative Commons or
> custom community license as applicable
>
> 3. **Semantic alignment with archival and Wikidata models**
>
> - Describe each track using elements from `DCTERMS`, `FRBRoo`, or
> `Schema.org` (e.g., `dcterms:creator`, `schema:inLanguage`,
> `schema:genre`)
>
> - Link playlists as curated thematic collections (e.g.,
> `schema:isPartOf` → “Contemporary Mari Folk Sounds”)
>
> 4. **Access control**
>
> - materials unavailable for full reuse (e.g., non-commercial Spotify
> tracks) can be *indexed*, not embedded
>
> - For Wikimedia, only materials with compatible licensing (e.g., CC
> BY-SA) are directly transferred to Commons or Wikidata
## Competency Questions: Involving Wikipedians and the Wikimedia Ecosystem
### Q6: Integrate Contemporary and Non-Traditional Cultural Expressions
In many cases, the most vibrant and visible expressions of cultural
identity are not found in traditional heritage institutions, but on
commercial platforms and personal networks. For example, playlists of
Mari folk-punk, Udmurt folktronica, or Seto death metal circulate
primarily through Spotify and YouTube—not museums or archives. Our
system must be able to *recognize, document, and link to these
contemporary cultural artifacts*, treating them as part of the evolving
knowledge base. This means supporting metadata ingestion from platforms
like Spotify, retaining links to their rich descriptive ecosystems
(e.g., genre, lyrics, release context), and providing tools for
community annotation, translation, and contextualization.
 |
The following collections contain musical works that are almost always sung in the given language: Khanty Mansi Musical Works Collection; Samoyedic Musical Works Collection; Livonian Musical Works Collection; Veps Musical Works Collection ;Saami Musical Works Collection; Komi Musical Works Collection; Hungarian Musical Works Collection; Finnish Musical Works Collection; Mari Musical Works Collection; Udmurt Musical Works Collection; Estonian Musical Works Collection; Erzya Moksha Musical Works Collection The following collections as playlist contain sound recordings of the musical works, you can listen to them on Spotify. Khanti Mansi Playlist; Samoyedic Playlist; Livonian Playlist; Veps Playlist; Saami Playlist; Hungarian Playlist; Finnish Playlist; Mari Playlist; Udmurt Playlist; Estonian Playlist; Komi Playlist; Erzya Moksha Playlist. |
](https://et.wikisource.org/wiki/Eesti_Loodusmuuseum/N%C3%A4itus/M%C3%BCstiline_%C3%BCrgmeri/ENG)
The `Finno-Ugric Dataspace` should allow and support the creation of a
*WikiGLAM-style virtual exhibition page*, as developed by the Estonian
Wikipedia, with embedding of Commons-hosted images and videos; linking
each item to its *Wikidata entity* (e.g., a costume, a festival, a
village); bilingual or multilingual narrative (e.g., Seto, Estonian, and
English); Attribution to community curators, knowledge holders, and
institutions, and a clear URI for citation and long-term access.
> [!NOTE]
>
> ### Q8 Can the system support the creation of curated digital exhibitions?
>
> Can the system support the creation of curated digital
> exhibitions—similar in form to the [Müstiline
> ürgmeri](https://et.wikisource.org/wiki/Eesti_Loodusmuuseum/N%C3%A4itus/M%C3%BCstiline_%C3%BCrgmeri/ENG)
> page on Estonian WikiGLAM—that present culturally significant people,
> objects, and practices (such as Seto traditional costumes) through
> narrative, multimedia, and thematic storytelling, even when these
> subjects do not meet individual notability criteria for Wikipedia
> inclusion?
>
> Our curator, or a museum curator wants to document the **evolution of
> Seto women’s traditional clothing** from the 19th century to the
> present with the inclusion of citizen scientists and Seto activists
> with the following content, including:
>
> - Photographs of garments from museum collections and family archives
>
> - Descriptions of how garments were worn, made, and passed down
>
> - Personal recollections or quotes from Seto women about their
> significance
>
> - Explanations of the symbolic meanings of specific colors or
> embroidery
>
> - Biographical notes on seamstresses or dancers who wore these clothes
>
> Individually, these elements may not qualify for standalone Wikipedia
> pages—e.g., a single apron design or the life story of a local
> seamstress. But together, they form a *culturally rich narrative* that
> deserves preservation and visibility.
# Policy Alignment and Ethical Governance
While the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space introduces technical
innovations in data modeling and interoperability, its deeper aim is *to
restore governance of cultural knowledge to the communities it
concerns*. For communities like the Liv, Mari, or Seto—whose cultural
heritage is widely scattered and whose languages are endangered—the
ability to access, review, and represent their own cultural record is
often constrained by external cataloguing practices, linguistic
barriers, and institutional gatekeeping.
Our project reimagines data governance not merely as compliance with
standards, but as a process of empowerment. We use policy frameworks
such as the **European Interoperability Framework (EIF)** and the **Data
Governance Act (DGA)** not as goals in themselves, but as tools to
support a deeper ethical objective: enabling communities to reclaim
agency over how their knowledge is curated, contextualized, and shared.
### Making Interoperability Meaningful
The EIF is typically used to guide the design of digital public services
across EU member states. We apply it in a new context: community-facing
knowledge infrastructures for small-language and niche cultural domains.
By aligning legal, organizational, semantic, and technical layers, we
enable knowledge to flow across institutional and national
borders—making it legible and actionable for the communities it
describes. For example, we analyse how a traditional garment might be
described differently in archival and library metadata, and we use that
understanding to design interoperability that reflects both
institutional logic and community meaning. (Curry 2020; EBU and Gaia-X
2022, p16; Nagel and Lycklama 2021)
### Making Governance Participatory
The DGA creates legal pathways for *data altruism* and *data
intermediation*, allowing privately held data to be shared for the
public good under new governance models. We build on this by offering a
platform where community actors can act as curators, reviewers, and
contributors, even when they are not formal institutions. Our system
respects provenance, attribution, and usage rights—while ensuring that
*data about communities is never decoupled from the communities
themselves*. This aligns with the DGA’s vision of lawful, ethical data
sharing, but also extends it toward participatory cultural stewardship.
### From Infrastructure to Oversight
Ultimately, we see interoperability and governance frameworks as
*enablers of ethical oversight, and frameworks of making AI-supported
systems like ours trustworthy with real human control*. Small and
underrepresented communities must be able not only to *access* what is
known about them, but also to *critically evaluate and revise* that
knowledge. They must be able to question categorizations, restore
missing context, add language-specific nuance, and share knowledge in
the forms and formats they choose. Our staging environment makes this
possible by integrating structured data, human-readable language
generation, and review workflows that center community consent.
In this sense, the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space is not just a
technical platform—it is a prototype for *community-led knowledge
governance* in the digital age.
# References
Antal, Dániel, Michal Grochal, and Christos Varvantakis. 2024. ‘Building
a Music Data Sharing Space with Wikibase’. Zenodo.
.
Curry, Edward. 2020. ‘Dataspaces: Fundamentals, Principles, and
Techniques’. In *Real-Time Linked Dataspaces: Enabling Data Ecosystems
for Intelligent Systems*, 45–62. Cham: Springer International
Publishing. .
EBU, and Gaia-X. 2022. ‘Dataspace for Cultural and Creative Industries.
Position Paper. v.2.0’. Gaia-X.
.
Ministerstvo kultúry SR, and Open Music Europe. 2023. ‘Memorandum o
porozumení o využití výsledkov analýz otvorených politík v kontexte
slovenského kultúrneho a kreatívneho priemyslu a sektorových verejných
politík v spolupráci s konzorciom pre výskum a inovácie s názvom
OpenMuse. \[Memorandum of Understanding on utilizing the Open Policy
Analysis results of the OpenMuse Research and Innovation Consortium in
the context of Slovak cultural and creative industries and sectors’
public policies\]’.
Nagel, Lars, and Douwe Lycklama, eds. 2021. ‘Design Principles for Data
Spaces. Position Paper. Version 1.0.’ Open DEI.
.