Wikidata's linked data for cultural heritage digital resources: an evaluation based on the Europeana Data Model

Wikidata is an open data source with many potential applications. Our study aims to evaluate the usability of Wikidata as a linked data source for acquiring richer descriptions of digital objects within the context of Europeana, a data aggregator from the cultural heritage domain. Specifically, we aim to crawl and convert Wikidata using the standard approaches and operations developed for the (Semantic) Web of Data, i.e. using technologies like linked data consumption and RDF(S)/OWL ontology expression and reasoning. We also seek to re-use existing “semantic” specifications, such as conversions to and from generic data models like Schema.org and SKOS. We have developed an experimental set-up and accompanying software to test the feasibility of this approach. We conclude that Wikidata’s linked data is able to express an interesting level of semantics for cultural heritage, but quality can still be improved and a human operator still must assist linked data applications to interpret Wikidata’s RDF.