Interwiki links promote Wikidata and Sister Projects

This blog post is a growing documentation of projects, methods, ideas, communities, links, references¹, impact and outcomes of our work with interwiki links at SLUB Dresden², a contribution to Wikimedia event Wikidata and Sister Projects. Sessions will take place online only between the 29th May – 1st June.

Wikidata and Sister Projects event is an online event focusing on how Wikidata is integrated to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. During 4 days of discussions, workshops, sessions and social events, a broad range of benefits, challenges, existing and potential integrations of Wikidata will be covered. This event offers a space for editors of all experience levels and all Wikimedia projects.

Paolo Piccinini, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Saxorum

Since 2018 Saxorum is a web portal and a weblog for research, projects, results and developments in Saxon regional studies. The item in Wikidata for the blog saxorum.hypotheses.org is (Q61483181).³ Almost each Saxorum blog post is described by an item in Wikidata. Hence we can query all illustrations of Saxorum blog posts embedded by Wikimedia Commons, retrieved using Wikidata: https://w.wiki/Qo7 + Wikidata query for all main subjects: https://w.wiki/8pa. Find Saxorum blog posts in the Regional bibliography of Saxony (SäBi online)⁴. In Wikidata yet 2,363 items link to Regional bibliography of Saxony (Q61729277).

Saxony in travelogues of the late Middle Ages and early modern times

A Database of Digital travelogues for Saxony⁵: Special:WhatLinksHere/Q105102869.^{6 7} Queries for digitised travelouges:⁸

• all travelouges: https://w.wiki/4yae
• all travelouges with all plac: https://w.wiki/4xcK
• travels “via Leipzig” (including all other places): https://w.wiki/4xcN
• travels “via Leipzig” führten (noted in the reports): https://w.wiki/4yah
• map of visited places: https://w.wiki/4xcS
• map of visited places with a link to the digitised source: https://w.wiki/4yZt

Wikisource with Commons + Wikidata

Cataloging ‘Die Gartenlaube’

‘Die Datenlaube‘ is a citizen science project for open cultural data. Since 2008 a growing community has been transcribing “Die Gartenlaube” in Wikisource, i.e. a total of around 18,500 articles from the first German mass-circulation newspaper from 1853 to 1899. This large-scale project is an example of the potential of voluntary commitment for library activities for to mass digitisation products: scans, full texts, transcriptions and their use, remix and linked context. See (Q61943025#1343) for project reports and other related sources and in Commons Category:Die_Datenlaube for additional publications about ‘Die Datenlaube’ and its topics.

Boetticher Citing Paintings of the Nineteenth Century

After years of art-historical study, he published Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte (Nineteenth-Century Paintings, Contribution to the History of Art) in two volumes between 1891 and 1901, which includes 50,000 paintings by German painters, and painters active in Germany. This comprehensive publication is used as a standard reference for art auction houses. (…) ⁹

Andreas Wagner in Dresden is editing all volumes of Boetticher in the German Wikisource since 2022 plus specific Qids in Wikidata one by one for each article, linking them to their specific ‘human’ Qids as main subject and ‘described by source’ in this individual Qids:

• Items of artists, encyclopedia (and other) articles linking ‘Malerwerke’, WhatLinksHere/Q72628185
• Provenance Loves Wiki Conference, Kurs:Provenance_loves_Wiki_(2024), slides: 10.5281/zenodo.10569040
• Blog post regarding cited illustrations in ‘Die Gartenlaube’ and in other periodicals, 2023: Boettichers „Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts”, Kunstbände und Illustrierte zitieren, um alte und neue Datenberge linked open zu verknüpfen

Multilingual content

Gartenlaube articles have been translated then and now – collected internationally in Wikisource. We can use Wikidata for multilingual metadata of translated editions of literary works published in different languages in different Wikisources in order to catalogue and even link them together with citation data, for example The Maiden from Afar by Friedrich Schiller: (Q122231586#P2860).¹⁰

Digital Editions

The library and archive of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ Leipzig (HMT Leipzig) would like to make transcriptions of the documents of former students of the HMT Leipzig between 1843 and 1918 available. Teachers, students and other members of the conservatoire are listed in the CARLA database. Their GND-IDs are and will be linked in Wikidata and FactGrid (Item:Q538709) soon. See the inscription and study certificates of Johanna Maria Scheuffler, 1859–1946 (Q133454688#P227), a piano teacher and composer at the Leipzig Conservatory.¹¹

The German Historical Institute Paris library would like to make parts of its old and special collections visible and make this content freely available to the public on the Internet, enriched with high-quality image and metadata for annual reports of the German girls’ home and the educators’ and teachers’ home in Paris for the years 1898-1902. We support the DHIP team online with tutorials for transcriptions and interwiki links in Commons, Wikisource, Wikidata and Wikiversity.

Spoken Wikisource + Commons + Wikidata

Since December 2022 adding and editing sounds to the Spoken Wikisource – German Category has been fun. A side sister project of Dresden Historical Society and ‘Die Datenlaube’ testing and than using the SLUB Podcast Studio for in place DatenlaubeJam Sessions. We embedded .ogg files in Wikisource documents and in the specific Qid in Wikidata. See: Dresden by Joachim Ringelnatz 1927 plus (Q19187542#P989).

Wikiversity + Wikidata = OER

My teaching of Wikimedia related methods and educational practice openly relies on Wikiversity pages used for linking examples, illustrations, metadata and opportunities to edit or correct something while presenting or discussing it. Mostly I use Wikiversity for open educational ressources on ‘Interwiki Projects and Friends’. You can cataloge each of your OER in Wikidata and than display and improve this metadata with Scholia: https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q56880673.

FactGrid + Wikidata

We started to edit FactGrid testing to catalog the recipes from ‘Die Gartenlaube’ from 1898. Matthias Erfurth than developed some queries to link FactGrid:Qids with relevant Wikisource articles or personal pages of ‘Boetticher artists’ and their individual Qids in Wikidata. This LOD idea and editing work is still not complete.

Mixed Methods and Open Educational Practice

Linked Open Storytelling for Interwiki Projects & Friends

Research Data Management

Jens Schubert (ORCID 0000-0002-0534-3710) wrote his master’s thesis “Die Pelzgewerbehäuser in der Leipziger Innenstadt” in 2003, which has since been published in Zenodo (zenodo.5879476) and with Qucosa (urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-774327), can be found in the SäBi (PPN 1786851830) and thus in the SLUB catalogue and in library networks. Wikidata (Q110656441) bundles the various identifiers and the Commons category in which 106 floor plans, building views and details and drawings of buildings in Leipzig can be found in Category:Die_Pelzgewerbehäuser_inder_Leipziger_Innenstadt,_Jens_Schubert. Further scientific works by Jens Schubert described in Wikidata can be displayed via Scholia: https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q110677660.¹²

1Lib1Nearby aka xEditsXnearby

1Lib1Nearby is a digital method of using Wikidata to explore the local area and maintain open cultural data everywhere – not only for librarians, #1Lib1Ref. Discover and use the Wikidata special query Special:Nearby as often as possible to explore your surroundings – at home, at your holiday destination, along the travel route or on the way to work! A well developed Nearby is exciting for digital normads, hostels, hotels or tourist information. They could recommend Nearby as a tool for (us) holidaymakers on their next trip or when new guests arrive. See: https://scholia.toolforge.org/topic/Q97624528 and the Sister Project Blog How to edit nearby.

Hackathon is always (Tuesdays) – Hackathon ist immer

‘DatenlaubeJam‘ is the digital weekly project team meeting of the “Datenlaube” since 2020.¹³ Library staff, Team Datenlaube, staff and members of the Dresden History Society, a Wikisource administrator and other local researchers join in on Tuesday mornings to talk informally for half an hour about open cultural data and plan projects. This goes beyond “Die Gartenlaube” and relates in particular to Saxonica, historical sources about Saxony. Participants are between 30 and 70 years old: data-oriented nerds, Wikimedians, historians, computer scientists, mothers and fathers, local historians, literally middle-aged and “old white men” as well as cultural scientists – all citizen scientists, i.e. citizen scientists in changing roles with diverse perspectives.¹⁴

WikiRemembrance

WikiRemembrance is a project for all those who, as employees and volunteers at memorial sites, as teachers at schools or elsewhere, impart knowledge about the period of National Socialism in Germany and encourage others to reflect. Many of these activists ask themselves whether and how they should use online platforms such as Wikipedia, or whether they should only use their own channels on Instagram, for example.

We contributed to the bar camp in aufhof Hanover, to the publication¹⁵, to the documentation of the project in 2023 and to the final presentation 2024 with interwiki links and metadata in Wikiversity, Wikidata, Commons, in blogposts at Hypotheses.org and on site.

Own Metadata for own Projects, Research and Science Communication

Own metadata for own blogposts – Bibliographies with open data and Wikidata

Linked Open Storytelling (Q66631860#P973)

• Approaches of linking open data by storytelling
• Storytelling with Linked Open Data
• Opening data and stories by telling and linking them

Reporting and telling stories using linked open data puts and connects the content, e.g. research, and its metadata into elements of project documentation, of storytelling and public presentations. Blog posts and pingbacks, academic articles, posters and presentations, their Qids and citiation data represent outputs, open knowledge and its relations. Linking them for purposes of research data management ‘on the road’ instead of ‘end of pipe’ is a way to share and to gain visibility and additional linked context. Linked Open Storytelling (LOST) is a catch phrase for doing so linked open by default.

‘The Data Arbor’: Open Citizen Science with Linked Open Storytelling in Unlocking the ‘Garden Arbor’.

Trickle Down Datenlaube

#TrickleDownDatenlaube

Future links

Wikimedia movement is strong in connecting communities, editors, topics, knowledge, data, ideas… & version histories. [[Do we still need a Qid for the concept Version history in Wikis? Can’t find one.]]. What about links and interwiki links on a local and regional base: personal ties corresponding to interwiki projects in GLAM institutions nearby? How could we cultivate Rabbit Holes as a common Kulturtechnik ‘in einem soziokulturellen Kontext’ in Open GLAM institutions and Open Citizen Science initiatives? [[call for edits: (Q1791868)]]

A regional Open GLAM Lab for Saxony

Rabbit Holes

How can we cultivate Rabbit Holes (Q112610206) and similar ways of working and methods so that connections (and communities) between digital tools of the wikiverse become clear: interwiki links, their function, meaning and power for open Interwiki and Sister Projects!?

Advent im ‘Rabbit Hole’, für und mit dem inneren Nerd

---

1. Wikidata & Wikicite: (Q134569866#P2860) of this documentation is linking references. [↩]
2. SLUB: Research > Citizen Science > Wikiverse, https://www.slub-dresden.de/en/research/buergerwissenschaften-citizen-science/wikiverse [↩]
3. Wikidata displaying 345 items linking to (Q61483181) on May 24th 2025, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Q61483181, shortened URL: https://w.wiki/EH3v [↩]
4. Saxorum weblog in ‘Sächsische Bibliografie online’ (SäBi): https://swb.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.304/SET=3/TTL=1/FAM?PPN=1669259102 [↩]
5. Winfried Müller, ISGV: Sachsen in Reiseberichten des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Fremdwahrnehmung und Selbstdarstellung eines Kulturraumes, 2000–2012, https://www.isgv.de/projekte/archiv/sachsen-in-reiseberichten-des-spaeten-mittelalters-und-der-fruehen-neuzeit [↩]
6. Martin Munke: Historische Orte mit offenen Daten: HOV + Wikidata, August 16, 2019, https://saxorum.hypotheses.org/2775 [↩]
7. Christian Erlinger: Sächsische Ortsdaten in der Linked Open Data Cloud: Teilautomatisierte Anreicherung und Analyse der HOV-ID in Wikidata, October 5, 2019, https://saxorum.hypotheses.org/2917 [↩]
8. Martin Munke: Von der gedruckten Bibliografie zum offenen Datenset. Sachsen in Reiseberichten des Spätmittelalters und der Frühneuzeit. Herrnhut im Wikimedia-Universum – Normdaten und Wikidata, Dresden, SLUB Textlab. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10554645 [↩]
9. Wikipedia: Friedrich Heinrich von Boetticher, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Heinrich_von_Boetticher [↩]
10. Wikisource.de: Die Gartenlaube/Übersetzungen, https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_Gartenlaube/%C3%9Cbersetzungen; Friedrich Schiller’s Das Mädchen aus der Fremde in Die Gartenlaube, 1893, p. 496, and in Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1797, p. 17–18 [↩]
11. Jens Bemme: CARLA, Johanna Maria! Die Leute gucken schon, March 22, 2025, https://nearby.hypotheses.org/1920 [↩]
12. See Forschungsdaten und Methoden für Prachtwerke mit Wikimedia Commons, OSL blog, December 11, 2023, https://osl.hypotheses.org/9553 [↩]
13. Wikiversity: https://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/DieDatenlaube/Notizen [↩]
14. Jens Bemme, Juliane Flade and Caroline Förster: DatenlaubeJam – Hackathon ist immer (dienstags). In: Gemeinschaften in Neuen Medien. Digitalität und Diversität. Mit digitaler Transformation Barrieren überwinden!? : 25. Workshop GeNeMe‘22 Gemeinschaften in Neuen Medien, Dresden, 06.–07.10.2022, URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-856376, S. 164 ff., 2022, DOI: 10.25368/2023.71 [↩]
15. WikiRemembrance – Erinnerungskultur digital und partizipativ: Eine Handreichung, Hannover : Technische Informationsbibliothek, 2024. DOI 10.34657/13796 [↩]
16. International GLAM Labs Community: Open a Glam Lab, September 2019, https://glamlabs.io/books/open-a-glam-lab/ [↩]
17. Jens Bemme: Open a GLAM Lab? Als Wikimedian in Residence zwischen SLUB, Staatsarchiv Leipzig und Geschichtsverein Dresden, BiblioCON, 2024, https://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/BiblioCON_2024/open_glam_lab [↩]

---

---