Wikibase as a Data Sharing Space: Connecting Rights, Communities, and GLAM through Federated Infrastructures
Negotiating moral, data protection rights copyright and its neighboring rights to connect GLAM institutions and private data owners
Abstract
Our talk demonstrates how Wikibase can act as a staging area and a federated data hub between Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and trusted institutional or private databases. We discuss how rights management, provenance tracking, and community governance make it possible to include materials that are not yet fully open or require special permissions. The Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space (FUDSS) and the Wikimuseum exhibition model illustrate how endangered languages and regional collections can be documented, shared, and later federated back to Wikidata and Commons.
In our use scenario, Wikibase Suite provides a federated data-sharing space between Wikimedia projects, Europeana, and other trusted partners.
From the perspective of Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, it serves as a staging area and alternative incubator for datasets that are still under review, have mixed rights status, or originate from specialised community archives.
Key Ideas
- Federation: connects open and restricted databases while preserving provenance.
- Rights management: allows data to be public domain, under Creative Commons, or shared via local “use policies” such as non-commercial only.
- Knowledge stewardship: supports community-led peer review for small or specialist domains that fall outside general Wikimedia governance.
Examples
- The Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space integrates recordings, images, and linguistic data for Livonian, Võro, Seto, and Mari communities.
- The hudobnadatabaza.sk aims to provide access to all music ever made in Slovakia, weather in print sheets loanable in libraries, webshops in CD or sheet format, or song streaming on Spotify.
- The Wikimuseum exhibition model allows GLAM institutions and citizen scientists to co-curate collections without physically moving artefacts.
Next Steps
- Align our Wikibase Ontology with the Wikidata:WikiProject Ontology/Cleaning Task Force to provide better mapping of cultural objects, permissions, duties and rights related to their use.
- Improve our exchange mechanism with Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.
- Design better quality checks for the data.
Livestream recording
You can watch the presentation here:
