Wikidata, biographical lives, and linked infrastructures of women’s work 1870-1950

Abstract 

The rise of Wikidata represents a quiet revolution in knowledge infrastructure. This paper enquires into this knowledge base as an infrastructure at the centre of contemporary knowledge ecosystems. Rather than read Wikidata at scale, this paper employs a particular frame through which to explore the ideologies Wikidata has adopted and reproduces. This frame is Beyond Notability, a knowledge base that seeks to document women's work in archaeology, history, and heritage between 1870 and 1950 through original archival research. Beyond Notability draws on and responds to the Wikidata data model, and this paper emerges from our experiences interacting with Wikidata to produce linked data biography. In foregrounding the tensions between historically specific phenomena and classificatory logics, our work stresses the value of using practice-based ontology development to investigate large-scale knowledge infrastructures. 

Speaker Biography 

James Baker is the Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. A historian by training, he works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. He is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar, and a Trustee of the Programming Historian (Charity Number 1195875). 

Prior to joining Southampton, he held positions of Senior Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab, Digital Curator at the British Library, and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. 

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[Image description: James Baker Project Deep Dive. Image for Beyond ‘Notability’: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage in Britain, 1870 – 1950]