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Test Wikibase instance for the Almeda project

This Wikibase sandbox is for playing, experimenting, learning about the functionalities, possibilities and limitations etc. of Wikibase, and knowledge sharing activities resulting from these learnings. It is maintained by Ursula Oberst, as a tool for experimentation, learning, skill-building, knowledge sharing and consultancy about Wikibase for the Almeda community and as well as other 3rd GLAM parties.

African Literary Metadata (Almeda)

African informal literatures, such as such as spoken-word poetry, street theatre, Facebook novels, TikTok poetry and other online genres are rarely catalogued and therefore exist outside of any structured metadata system. These informal, ephemeral and not-for-profit literary and oratory cultural forms are very popular on the African continent but highly invisible globally.

The EU-funded Almeda project aims to develop and publish a metadata scheme specifically designed for these informal literary materials. The model will allow African-language genres to inhabit their own categories, rather than having to be forced into European literary ontologies. The project is going to get started in Wikidata and will most probably move to Wikibase.cloud or Wikibase at a later stage. The case studies for the project are realized by a team of African and European researchers.

For the project page on Wikidata see https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_African_Literary_Metadata

Credits

In June-July 2022 the national library of the Netherlands (KB) created and configured a test instance on Wikibase.cloud. They created a presentation in which they share their experiences and first impressions of unboxing, setting up, configuring and tweaking their Wikibase.cloud test instance. Their documentation was tremendously helpful for the Almeda for getting started with setting up a test instance in Wikibase.cloud. Thank you very much Olaf Janssen!

Quick links

Properties

• All properties
• Add a new property

Examples of items

Persons

• Q1 - Kataru Yahya

Poems

• Q2 - My Heart in another Language

SPARQL

Setup

• It is posssible to query the test instance via https://almedatestwikibase.wikibase.cloud/query/

Queries

• See examples of SPARQL queries - also available via the dropdown menu "Examples" on https://almedatestwikibase.wikibase.cloud/query/. NB: At present there is only one example: Overview of items (Qs) in this Wikibase with their Labels, Descriptions and Aliases, both in SW and in EN