Grants:Project/Mary Mark Ockerbloom/American Craft Journals on Wikidata
Project idea
editWhat is the problem you're trying to solve?
editWhat problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project.
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In the American craft movement independent studio artists work with traditional craft materials and/or practices for pottery, jewelry, fabric arts, woodworking and metalworking. American craft and craft artists are underrepresented in Wikipedia and Wikidata. The lack of information on Wikidata perpetuates this field’s invisibility.
American craft developed in the early 1900s as a successor to earlier European craft movements. A small number of craft publications chronicle the field. In 1943 potter Aileen Osborn Webb founded the American Craft Council, a non-profit educational organization to support craftspeople and cultivate appreciation for their work. She also established the major magazines Craft Horizons (1941-1979) and American Craft (1979-). Other major craft publications focus on specialist areas, such as Studio Potter (1972-) and Metalsmith (1980-, Society of North American Goldsmiths).
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Mariska Karasz, Detail of wall panel "Alchemy", from Craft Horizons -
Norm Sartorius, Conquistador -
Jan Yager, Tiara of Useful Knowledge
There is a Wikipedia article on American craft as a movement, but no article for the magazines Craft Horizons, American Craft or American Craft Inquiry. A search for "Craft Horizons" returns nothing on Wikidata and 95 results on Wikipedia. They are evenly divided between mentions of the magazine (one on the American Craft Council page), and citations of articles published in the magazine. A search for “Metalsmith” on Wikidata returns 60 results, of which 23 are for people who are metalsmiths. There is no Wikidata item or Wikipedia article for the publication Metalsmith. A search for "Studio Potter" on Wikidata returns 25 people, but nothing about the magazine. On Wikipedia, “Studio Potter” redirects to an article on Studio pottery. The same search finds Wikipedia articles about nearly 200 studio potters, some of which cite sources from the magazine. A search for the area of work “Art jewelry” on Wikidata returns items corresponding to Wikipedia articles for the subject Art jewelry and for the nonprofit organization Art Jewelry Forum.
Long-term projects like Art+Feminism and Women in Red focus on increasing representation of women on Wikipedia, using items from Wikidata to suggest topics, but coverage of artists is still sparse. The Wikipedia Category:Women in craft has 12 sub-categories. Wikipedia knows about 310 “Women textile artists” and 199 “Women potters” but only 44 “Women metalsmiths”, 16 “Women woodcarvers” and 10 “Women stone carvers” worldwide.
What is your solution to this problem?
editFor the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem.
We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing.
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A small number of publications, of high interest to researchers, document the history of American craft and craft artists. By partnering with one or more of the organizations publishing these magazines, I propose to gain access to archival metadata and to create Wikidata entities to document the publication history of this field and the topics involved. Archival metadata can be used to identify, expand, and create entities for published articles and for artists and other subjects of those articles. These Wikidata entities could be linked together, and could link back to published sources online for these publications, where available.
So far the approach of adding journal publications to Wikidata has been used primarily for information in scientific journals, but it is equally applicable to craft journals. Craft has the advantage of being a relatively small domain in comparison to scientific fields such as chemistry or physics. Representing major craft journals in Wikidata is a tractable problem.
Project goals
editWhat are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually.
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The goal is to increase visibility and usability of information from craft publications, by representing metadata about a major publication as linked open data in Wikidata. Making citations visible as linked open data in Wikidata will fill a content gap and make information accessible both to Wikipedia editors creating and expanding content and to researchers using Wikidata. This can create a long-lasting framework of basic information about the craft field, which people worldwide can expand and explore.
Project impact
editHow will you know if you have met your goals?
editFor each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:
- During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
- Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)
For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (i.e. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents).
Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
1. The outputs for this project can be defined in terms of:
- Data partnerships: the numbers of publishers and journals that are represented
- Data uploads: the numbers of magazine articles, authors of articles, artists, and other related subjects of articles that are created or expanded in Wikidata.
- Event partnerships: Organizations, events, people and work using the data uploads.
I anticipate that the first 9 months of the project would focus on forming a data partnership, obtaining metadata, and preparing and uploading Wikidata. At least one data partner and one journal would be involved, with the potential to include more as time allows. The last 3 months of the project would focus on event partnerships for use of the data, and reporting of the project to stakeholders in the Wikipedia and craft communities.
DATA PARTNERSHIPS: The first step is to identify at least one data partner and obtain metadata for at least one major journal in this field. Preliminary discussions suggest this is achievable. I have approached the American Craft Council Library & Archives and their librarian is interested in the project. The ACC journal Craft Horizons would be a highly desirable initial journal, given its breadth of focus, historic value, and online availability. There is potential to expand to other journals and data providers in this or subsequent projects. However, the addition of multiple partners and publications will be “stretch goals”, whose feasibility will be determined in large part by the amount of time required to obtain data and ensure data quality.
DATA UPLOADS: The core of this project will be the creation of Wikidata entities. The majority of my time would be spent gathering, extending, transforming and quality-checking the metadata provided by the data partner. It is expected that a major part of the work will be ensuring that data to be uploaded is of high quality. Archival metadata can be used to identify, expand, and create entities for published articles, for their authors, and for artists and other subjects of those articles. Ideally each article would have subject information indicating the artists or the types of craft work discussed in the article. These Wikidata entities could be linked together, and could link back to published sources online where those are available. The priority will be to develop a rich network of information. The quality of the metadata that can be obtained, and the ease with which articles can be related to subjects, will be determining factors affecting the scope of the project.
EVENT PARTNERSHIPS: Once information has been added to Wikidata, it will become possible to partner with other groups to organize events that will use that information to further develop Wikipedia and Wikidata. Timing of such events would be dependent on the event partners involved.
Wikidata items for artists could be used to generate lists of possible topics of interest for Wikipedia editors who want to improve or create new Wikipedia articles. We could use Wikidata to generate lists of craft artists and to identify people working in specific craft areas.
Wikidata items for magazine articles could be searched to create lists of references on Wikidata for use in writing about topics. Wikipedia editors could use this information to find and cite sources as they write Wikipedia articles. They could use Wikidata to detect the artists who are featured most often in the journal, who are more likely to be considered notable by Wikipedia.
Project groups on Wikipedia are good candidates for event partners. Women in Red features themes related to women for a month at a time and generates many of their to-do lists from Wikidata. They are open to suggestions for themes, and “Women in Craft” would be a suitable theme for them. More specific topics around fields of work could also be possible. I have worked with them over a period of years as a Wikipedia editor, and am confident that they would be happy to partner with this project.
Art+Feminism has a broad mandate of working on articles about women artists. Its events generally occur in or near March, in cooperation with galleries, museums and archives. Art+Feminism also generates to-do lists of articles from Wikidata. Their lists should automatically include the women craft artists that this project adds to Wikidata, even if they do not specifically emphasize craft as an area of work.
As a Wikipedian in Residence at the Science History Institute (2013-2020), part of my job was to work with local organizations who were interested in Wikipedia. I continue to work with local people and groups as a co-organizer of the monthly online Philadelphia WikiSalon. I have led events for Art+Feminism, Ada Lovelace Day, and other areas of interest, and worked with Philadelphia arts organizations and libraries including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of the Arts. These groups might be interested in holding online or (eventually) in-person events to take advantage of this data.
It might also be possible to partner with a university class whose students could help to fill out Wikidata information about artists or other subjects, write Wikipedia articles, or use Wikidata for research. Such events would have to be fitted to specific classes and curricula. The challenge would be to find a class through WikiEdu, or through local universities.
I am confident that I could set up one or more events where data developed in the pilot could be put to use. Organizations whose content is planned far in advance, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, might need to be approached early in the project. Events would likely be held online, which could make it possible to partner with Wiki affiliates and physically distant organizations like the Smithsonian or the National Museum of Women in the Arts which have a history of Wikipedia engagement. Most local events would require minimal time and physical resources to arrange. Focusing on craft for a month with Women in Red would almost certainly be possible. Art+Feminism 2022 events would certainly use our data.
2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)
Making citations of articles from craft publications visible as linked open data in Wikidata will make information accessible to Wikipedia editors and portray relationships for researchers to explore in an internationally-used database. Having a robust collection of data in Wikidata relevant to the history of craft will aid greatly in the creation of new content in Wikipedia by providing Wikipedians with citation information and links to articles to support that content.
The creation of linked open data on Wikidata will enable researchers to access related information and pose research questions about subjects and types of subjects. This would be of great value to the craft research community. Development of this information in Wikidata would enable researchers to look at questions like "What artists were most written about in each decade?" "How did the gender/ethnicity/fields of work of artists change over time?" "Where did the artists live?" We aren't be proposing to do that research, but our project would make it possible.
This project could also be a model for partnering with other communities whose area of specialization is documented in a small number of published journals.
3. How will you capture this information?
Metrics (Outputs): Overall scope
- Number of data partners involved (at least 1)
- Number of journals represented (at least 1)
Metrics (Outputs): Indicators that materials were created (before/after, over time?)
- Number of Wikidata items added for magazine articles
- Number of Wikidata items added for authors of articles
- Number of Wikidata items added for artists who are subjects of magazine articles
- Number of Wikidata items added for other subjects of magazine articles
- Number of statements added across all Wikidata items edited or created?
- Can we measure the extent to which data is interlinked?
Metrics (Outcomes): Events (3 required metrics + 2 metrics of choice)
- Total participants, not including organizers (required)
- Number of newly registered users (required, see Magic Button)
- Number of content pages created or improved, all projects (required)
- Number of individuals involved (includes organizers)
- Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects
Metrics (Outcomes): Indicators that materials are used by editors could include:
- Number of new Wikipedia pages created for project’s Wikidata items (before/after, over time? change isn’t necessarily due to this project)
- Number of citations of journal articles from target journals on Wikipedia pages (before/after, over time? Could use other journals for comparison)
Metrics (Possible partner outcome: we could not track this but our data partner might be able to)
- Google analytics data showing traffic to journal articles on data partner’s website. (before/after, over time?)
I am not aware of ways to measure research use of Wikidata items, but any research that occurs would be thanks to the project, given the current absence of Wikidata representation.
Do you have any goals around participation or content?
editAre any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, we ask that you look through these three metrics, and include any that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable.
As discussed previously, once Wikidata has been expanded, I would plan one or more events using the new information. It would be possible to partner with initiatives such as Women in Red and Art+Feminism or with organizations such as the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and to hold online events focused around the area of American craft art and artists. Ideas for events could include expanding new subject entities that have been added to Wikidata, connecting subject entities with articles, and promoting the editing and creation of Wikipedia articles related to artists and other subjects.
Metrics (Outcomes): Events (3 required metrics + 2 metrics of choice)
- Total participants, not including organizers (3 metrics, required)
- Number of newly registered users (3 metrics, required, see Magic Button)
- Number of content pages created or improved, all projects (3 metrics, required)
- Number of individuals involved (includes organizers)
- Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects
Based on experience, I would expect an editing event to involve 10-20 total participants, plus several people putting on the event. On Wikipedia, I would expect an average of 1 page per person to be edited (some editors work on several, most focus on one, and some are new and may not manage any editing or only set up an account).
Project plan
editActivities
editTell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project? Activities:
1. Establish partnership with data provider. Approach publications like American Craft or Metalsmith about sharing journal metadata.
2. Obtain metadata for journal. I will work with the data provider to see how hard it is to extract data and to determine whether I can pull data from their website, or if they have to generate it for me. We would do several small-scale trials to ensure that the data is good quality and will meet project needs. We would then organize bulk downloading of the data that I would be working with for the rest of the project.
3. Clean citation metadata and use it to create Wikidata entities for articles. Items will be created and expanded in Wikidata using tools such as QuickStatements (csv) and OpenRefine.
4. Assess subject information available for articles and identify possible subjects for creating Wikidata entries. An initial subset could be artists who are identified as the primary subject of a magazine article. If it is difficult to extract subject terms from the article metadata, another approach to generating subject entities might be to use a dictionary or structured vocabulary as a basis for creating entities for subject terms for this field. If hand-curation of selected articles and identification of subjects are needed, this could be a possible area for community engagement with artists, librarians, and Wikipedians.
5. Connect subject entities and article entities.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 as time allows for the first 8-9 months of the project.
7. Track and report metrics throughout the project. I propose to use a single-use account for this project, to enable me to track impact independent of any other Wikidata and Wikipedia editing I may do. It may also be desirable to create a project for Wikidata items, for use in queries. The Wikidata Query Service, SPARQL Recent Changes, and possibly more elaborate data visualization tools, could be used to provide metrics that indicate the outputs.
8. Partner with the Wikipedia, Wikidata and Art craft communities, both to involve them in events utilizing this data and to inform them about this project, as described. Most of this work would occur in the final 3 months of the project.
Budget
editHow you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!
- Principal Investigator’s salary, for one year, $60,000 USD.
- Metadata honoraria, $13,000 USD. This money would cover honoraria as needed for specialist work in importing and exporting of metadata, possibly involving multiple people at different times. It should be recognized that the data partner's main contribution is their data. They may have limited staff and those staff may already have full-time responsibilities. Having the ability to pay a librarian or IT specialist a stipend for work that they are doing in addition to their normal work for the data partner is highly desirable. Asking people to indicate the amount of time worked might be one way to determine the appropriateness of such reimbursement.
- Event honoraria and other event costs, $2,000 USD. This estimate assumes multiple events, with speakers invited to talk about content and collections, and the possibility of at least one in-person event involving food or travel, COVID permitting.
- Total amount requested: $75,000 USD.
Community engagement
editHow will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve at various points during your project? Community input and participation helps make projects successful.
This work is of interest to the Wikipedia, Wikidata and Art craft research communities, all of whom potentially benefit from its completion. It will be important to engage on Wikidata throughout the project. All three communities may find it of interest once a significant amount of Wikidata expansion has occurred.
1. Inform the Wikipedia and Wikidata communities about this project, through participation in groups such as WREN (Wikimedians in Residence), the Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group, WikiCite and Wikidata:WikiProject Periodicals; through Wiki-based publications such as the Signpost and This Month in GLAM; and through participation in Wiki conferences. There is the potential to involve the community in data- and content-related events later in the project, as noted previously.
2. Inform the Art craft communities about this project through publications of data partners and others. I believe there will be strong interest on the part of data providers in informing the art craft community about this project and the potential for using Wikidata for craft research. It may be possible to report on this work in partner publications, through other craft organizations, and in scholarly journals.
Get involved
editParticipants
editPlease use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.
- Mary Mark Ockerbloom: Principal investigator, former Wikipedian in Residence at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia (2013-2020). Co-organizer and co-host of the online Philadelphia WikiSalon. Experience on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata. Experience planning and leading events in collaboration with the local arts community and others. Experience in working with metadata organization and data extraction.
Other people who may become involved in this project, some of whom might recieve stipends, include:
- Doreva Belfiore -- Wikipedian, Co-organizer and co-host of the online Philadelphia WikiSalon, librarian and metadata specialist with experience in bulk data extraction, manipulation, and uploading. Possible technical advisor, assistant, stipendiary.
- Jan Yager -- Wikipedian, Artist, American craft content expert, strategist. Jan came to an Art+Feminism event in 2015, where I helped her to start the Betty Cooke article. I realized later that Jan was a significant artist. In 2019 I created the Jan Yager article and approached her about releasing images of her work on Wikimedia Commons. This led to discussions of ways to expand coverage of craft arts. Jan has helped to form this proposal by brainstorming ideas, providing valuable suggestions about significant journals in the field and helping to establish contacts with others in the American craft community. Advisory.
- Beth Goodrich -- Wikipedian, Librarian for the American Craft Council Library & Archives (ACC). Possible data partner, American craft content expert, stipendiary.
- Possible IT professional at data partner, if needed for data extraction. Stipendiary.
Ths list would expand as more data partners and event partners are involved.
Community notification
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Endorsements
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