Wikipedia:GLAM/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa/The whole GLAM package/Make Wikidata edits

Before you re-export your record data, you want to get Wikidata sorted. Now that you’ve decided on your records and images you can build a list of items you need to update and get QIDs for.

Before making bulk Wikidata edits, it’s good to know how to do them manually too. This resource takes you through the process using scientific collectors as an example.

Guidelines for using Wikidata to mobilise information about people

What to look at
Go back and see what types of items you wanted to use. This might be creators or collectors, scientific names, locations, art movements, or kinds of objects depicted.

When looking over your data you might decide you want to focus on different types of Wikidata items. Talk it over as a team and think about any impact that will have on the time or effort it takes.

There’s probably a WikiProject that covers your topic, such as WikiProject Taxonomy, so look around. You’ll find guidance on how to pick important fields, use these Wikidata items in articles, and connect different items together.

Export data and check for Wikidata items
Checklist task: Review supporting data

Before you load images, you want to make sure their supporting information is in Wikidata. You do this by exporting the relevant information, putting it into a new OpenRefine project, and reconciling that with Wikidata to see if you can find matches. This will tell you if you need to create new items or add extra data to the ones that already exist.

Make lists of the people, scientific names, and other associated records that are relevant to your selected records and images.

Export a spreadsheet for each type of associated record. For example, you can do one for all the creators, and another for the organisations. If you already have Wikidata QIDs for them, add those as well.



Make a new OpenRefine project for each spreadsheet, and start reconciling to find existing Wikidata matches.

How to use OpenRefine with Wikidata

Detailed guide to reconciliation

When you’ve made matches, it’s a good idea to add them to your collections database so you can use that connection again.

You should now know which records have a match in Wikidata and which ones are going to need new items.

Prepare and load your Wikidata edits
Checklist task: Prepare and load Wikidata edits

To load your updates and new Wikidata items, you need a schema – this is a conceptual data structure that you will set up within OpenRefine to put each bit of information in the right place.

Using a schema in OpenRefine

Your schema doesn’t need to cover every bit of information you may have in your system. Instead, you want to look at existing Wikidata items and data models and pick out just what’s going to be useful.

Remember, information in Wikidata is structured as statements, so your schema will need to be structured that way too. You need to pick a Property that helps describe some aspect of the item, and decide on a field that will fill in the appropriate value.

Look through Wikidata’s WikiProjects to find guidance about how to model different kinds of items.


 * WikiProject Taxonomy tutorial
 * WikiProject Music guidance
 * WikiProject Historical Place guidance

Re-export your data with just the fields you need for your edits and new items – the most important thing is to include the QIDs you found so you can easily match them up again.



Do one more check of your data, add your schema within the project, and make your edits!

When done, review your changes and don’t forget to add the QIDs for new items into your collections database.

Next up: Load images and collections metadata