Wikidata workshop for librarians

Lately I've been spending time working with and contributing to Wikidata, the Wikimedia Foundation project to build a database of structured date licensed under the CC0 license. And I like what I've seen: Wikidata contains a sizable amount of data describing entities that I care about; contributing and correcting data is straightforward; editors are expected to provide references supporting any statements that you make; and the entire dataset is queryable via a SPARQL endpoint (with good uptime, no less!)

Building on some of my recent investigations into Wikidata, I was tasked with leading a workshop on editing Wikidata at last week's Wikipedia/Canadian Music preconference for the CAML 2017 conference. We put together the preconference to "train the trainers" who plan to run Wikipedia and Wikidata editathons across Canada in October with the goal of increasing the visibility of Canadian music in Wikimedia Foundation projects. Rather than rehash one of the existing, rather generic, Wikidata workshops, I created material tailored for an audience of librarians and archivists focused on music, musicians, and music festivals.

In the hopes that others may find my materials useful, I offer my slides and the rough notes (on which the slides were based) under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.

In the near future, I also hope to link to the video that James Mason captured of the workshop; the participants raised a number of questions that led to fruitful discussions about Wikidata that enriched the workshop. I was fortunate to have a great group of workshop participants!