Angela Yon and Eric Willey

“ There is consensus among institutions that the future of this reciprocal relationship with data will be very advantageous and valuable as the catalog moves to new forms of discovery in libraries (Bartholmei et al., 2016) . In 2019, the Association of Research Libraries released a white paper by a task force of library professionals and expert Wikidata users with recommendations for librarians to use Wikidata to advance discovery of their collections, faculty, and institutions. Many cataloging systems do not produce linked data and cannot make data available as open linked data. ”

“ In the analysis of Wikipedia lists, the subject expert began their search in Google Books but also utilized interviews found in library databases to conduct their research.
The volunteer nature of Wikipedia also makes it an excellent source of editors with rich and varied subject knowledge. Domain experts from around the world can apply their extensive knowledge to articles and lists, at their own discretion and convenience. Catalogers are also subject experts but will likely be expected to work on materials purchased by other librarians. ”

“ Historically marginalized creators often turned to publishing their works in formats other than monographs. Wikipedia lists can be useful in locating creators and works that may not have individual bibliographic records in the library catalog. ”

“ Librarians, archivists, and museum professionals are increasingly realizing the value of using and contributing information to Wikipedia through projects such as edit-a-thons and the 1Lib1Ref project. As the amount of knowledge in Wikipedia and Wikidata grows, the benefits to libraries in partnering with Wikimedia projects to enhance their own bibliographic records and catalog search results also increase. ”

“ Users of both systems face difficulty in creating complete and comprehensive lists of members of specific demographic groups. It was discovered that two authors with works in the local library catalog were not on the List of African-American writers but have Wikipedia pages. Benjamin Griffith Brawley was a prominent African American author and educator, and several of his books were standard college texts in the early twentieth century. Phillip Hayes Dean, an African American playwright, also has a Wikipedia page but was not on the List of African-American writers. ”

“ Typically, two separate traits would be described using two different terms, one for ethnicity or culture and a second for nationality. The term “African Americans” is in the ethnic/cultural category but also describes a nationality. Therefore, the term “Americans” will also be included in a record. ”

“ A similarity between the two systems is that both Library of Congress and Wikipedia require citation of evidence to show why a person is described using an ethnic or racial group in some instances but not in others. ”