Wikiversity:Fellow-Programm Freies Wissen/Einreichungen/Zerschlagenes Geschirr - Archäologische Quellen in Wikidata/Abstract

Abstract, eingereicht am 15.02.2021 für die Tagung der European Association for Archaeologists 8.-11.09.2021 (EAA 2021)

Wikidata and the Wikimedia Universe as a platform for citizen archaeologists

In Germany, metal detectorists and voluntary archaeologists need to register with the federal state they want to work in and need to receive permissions to survey certain areas. As Heritage Management is federalised in Germany, different laws and regulations are enforced in each state. Data and finds by citizen scientists are recorded by Heritage Management and entered into their archives, where they „disappear“ from the public's eye. In this talk I will present the project „Zerschlagenes Geschirr - Archäologische Quellen in Wikidata“ („Smashed Dishes – Archaeological Sources in Wikidata“) funded by the Wikimedia Foundation within the Open Science Fellow Program (http://smasheddishes.squirrel.link). It aims to enable and empower citizen science by showing volunteer archaeologists how to use the Wikimedia universe to publish their data to the wider public as well as to archaeologists.

The Wikimedia universe provides the image storage Wikimedia Commons and the structured knowledgebase Wikidata. Especially Wikidata can be tricky to use for people which are unfamiliar with data management at all. The project therefore aims at creating easy-to-use workflows and guidance and to train volunteer archaeologists in how to use them. As a first step, a suitable data model in Wikidata needs to be designed. For this aim decisions need to be made which will be mediated between volunteer archaeologists and Heritage Management to specify what kind of data citizen archaeologists are able to and should enter, such as type of classification and precision of geographical information.