Research:Understanding GLAM professionals’ contributions to Wikidata

Contact

UT Austin

Duration: 2024-May – ??

This page documents a research project in progress.
Information may be incomplete and change as the project progresses.
Please contact the project lead before formally citing or reusing results from this page.

Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, otherwise known as GLAMs, host a wealth of knowledge, data, and records that have been invaluable for humanities, scientific research, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Amidst GLAMs’ efforts to broaden the impact of their collections, Wikidata has become a promising venue for GLAM professionals to share their records with the public and the web. The open nature of Wikidata means that anyone who wishes to contribute can do so and, thereby have opportunities to collaborate and co-create entries with volunteer contributors and GLAM professionals on the peer production site. However, there are differences in practices and motivations of GLAM contributors from volunteer contributions due to many factors. We propose an interview study of GLAM contributors on Wikidata to better understand GLAMs’ relationship and differences with individual volunteers, and to inform the design of tools for GLAMs. We want to understand the motivations behind GLAM professionals contributing to Wikidata. We also want to understand what practices GLAM professionals engage with when contributing to Wikidata and how they assess the impact of their contributions toward achieving their objectives.

Context

About Wikidata

Basic information about Wikidata can be found here.

Anticipated Contributions

Methods

Through a qualitative interview study, we aim to understand the motivations of GLAM professionals' contributions to Wikidata. We also aim to identify what practices GLAM professionals engage in when contributing to Wikidata and how they assess the impact of their contributions towards achieving their objectives. We aim to recruit 25~30 contributors who have experience editing Wikidata for a 60-minute semi-structured interview. Questions will focus on contributors' editing activities, their assessment of the impact of their contributions, and if applicable, querying Wikidata. Wikipedia editing experience is not mandatory in this research.

Recruitment

Anyone interested in working on this project could fill out this enrollment form and contact the research team for any questions.

Individual message template:

Subject: Invitation to participate in a research study on GLAMs’ use of Wikidata

Do you work in a GLAM organization? Do you contribute to Wikidata or query records on Wikidata as part of your work? If so, we would love to hear from you!

We are a team of researchers at UT Austin, researching why and how GLAM professionals use Wikidata in their jobs. Your insights and experiences are vital to our research and our efforts to support contributions to open knowledge bases.

Please fill out this enrollment form to let us know your availability. If you are selected to participate, we will arrange a video call and ask you some questions about your Wikidata use and the call should last around 60 minutes. You will receive a $30 Amazon gift card after the call, as compensation for your time. Learn more about the study in this Research Information Sheet.

Interview Structure

1. Background information (reconfirm if already mentioned in the enrollment form).

2. Overview of Wikidata use in participant's organization.

3. Contributing to Wikidata.

4. Querying Wikidata (skip if the participant does not Query Wikidata.)

5. Tackling edits and measuring impacts.

6. Miscellaneous questions

Timeline

2024.07 IRB Review

2024.07-2024.08 Recruitment and Interviews

2024.08 - 2024.09 Data Analysis

Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research

It's very important that researchers do not disrupt Wikipedians' work. Please add to this section any consideration relevant to ethical implications of your project or references to Wikimedia policies, if applicable. If your study has been approved by an ethical committee or an institutional review board (IRB), please quote the corresponding reference and date of approval.

After submitting this study(IRB ID: STUDY00006291) to Institutional Review Board at the University of Texas at Austin, the IRB determined that this study meets the criteria for exemption from IRB review on July 15, 2024.

Confidentiality

The records of this study will be kept private. In any sort of report we might publish, we will not include any information that will make it possible to identify a subject. Research records will be stored securely in a University of Texas at Austin owned BoxDrive and only the research team of this project will have access to the records. The recording data(only audio of the interview will be kept) will be used for data analyzation and only the research team will have access to the data. All data and transcription will be stored for a maximum of three years.

Voluntary Nature of the Study

Participation in this study is voluntary. If you decide to participate, you are free to not answer any question or withdraw at any time.

Participation

If one is a Wikidata editor and would like to participate in this study, he/she could fill in this enrollment form here to provide a little bit of background information and set up an interview.