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GLAM/Newsletter/June 2018/Contents/Sweden report

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Sweden report

SMVK upload; Swedish National Archives; Wikidata connects Swedish people / archives using Wikidata tool hub; Topographical register at the Swedish National Archives; LIBRIS XL - Bibframe 2.0 and open linked data

SMVK upload

In June we finalized the upload of more than 1,700 images from different Swedish expeditions with the Swedish ethnographer Erland Nordenskiöld. All those expeditions were in South America. We also included one expedition in Africa with Eric von Rosen and Robert Fries. This batch is part of a cooperation with the National Museums of World Culture. It is the the second batchupload in 2018 and the fourth in total that includes pictures from the National Museums of World Culture in Sweden. The Swedish Cordiller-Chaco Expedition was made in 1902-03 and went to Argentina and Bolivia, The Swedish Expedition in 1904-1905 was to Peru and Bolivia, The Hernmarck Expedition in 1908-1909 was again to Argentina and Bolivia, The Swedish Expedition to Bolivia was in 1913-1914, The Swedish Expedition to Panama and Colombia was in 1927. The Swedish Rhodesia-Congo Expedition was in 1911-1912.

The images depicts a wide variety of scenes and objects. Many of them contains the multitude of local and international people involved in the expeditions in everyday situations in South America and in Africa in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the photos could also be classified as "behind the scenes" shoots from the expeditions. Many of the images are unique and some of the places visited and some groups of people that the expeditions encountered had never been photographed before. An example is the Aikanã.

In general, a large number of the images are quite poorly described in regards to what the image actually depicts and would therefore need manual categorization and description. Help from the community would therefore be highly appreciated!

  • Eric von Rosen with rifle, The Swedish Cordiller-Chaco Expedition (1902-1903).
    Eric von Rosen with rifle, The Swedish Cordiller-Chaco Expedition (1902-1903).
  • Lake Titicaca, The Swedish Expedition (1904–1905).
    Lake Titicaca, The Swedish Expedition (1904–1905).
  • Chácobo-men. The Hernmarck expedition (1908–1909).
    Chácobo-men. The Hernmarck expedition (1908–1909).
  • Aikanã-man standing on one leg. The Swedish Expedition to Bolivia (1913-1914).
    Aikanã-man standing on one leg. The Swedish Expedition to Bolivia (1913-1914).
  • Bolivian soldiers, The Swedish Expedition to Bolivia (1913-1914).
    Bolivian soldiers, The Swedish Expedition to Bolivia (1913-1914).
  • Kuna-woman spinning. The Swedish Expedition to Panama and Colombia (1927).
    Kuna-woman spinning. The Swedish Expedition to Panama and Colombia (1927).
  • Man standing in Canoe, lake Bangweulu. The Swedish Rhodesia-Congo Expedition (1911–1912).
    Man standing in Canoe, lake Bangweulu. The Swedish Rhodesia-Congo Expedition (1911–1912).

Swedish National Archives

At the end of 2017 the Swedish Government decided that all digital collections from the Swedish National Archives will be freely available. This means that we now have about 100 million pages of e.g. church books.

The following activities in Wikipedia has been initiated or will start soon:

Wikidata NAD property P5324

This Wikidata property contains the ID number of an archive at the Swedish National Archives. We will start connecting Parishes of the Church of Sweden with its archive d:Wikidata:Q615980 ==> that people interested in genealogy will have the possibilities to navigate the archives from a map of Sweden generated by Wikidata with links to the abt 2,500 archives that contains church books.

SVAR Swedish Archives.

The vision is that we also should link personal archives, company archives and major evens like the en:1912_Summer_Olympics in Stockholm with objects in Wikidata. Together with the webhub tool we can see that Wikidata can be a hub connecting cultural information in Sweden in a new way (see below).

The Swedish National Archive is an old institution and in 2018 celibrated its 400 years anniversary. During those 400 years they have gathered about 30,000 km of archives shelves (pdf).

Wikidata connects Swedish people / archives using Wikidata tool hub ....

Some people say we spend about 70% of our time searching for information. Below how we can use a new Wikidata tool called hub it use Wikidata as a hub finding same as relations...

TORA - Topographical register at the Swedish National Archives

This week some people from Wikipedia in Sweden had our first meeting with the TORA project. The TORA project has expressed an interest to link to Wikidata and in Wikidata we have created a TORA property P4820. We are right now trying to understand how the Wikipedia community can add value to this project and we are also doing some data cleaning in Wikipedia before we will take the next step. The Tora project is defined as a Topographical register and is a linked data project concerning historical settlements in Sweden.

The current status is that TORA has about 30,000 spatial coordinates referring to settlement units such as villages, hamlets, single farms, manors and towns, have been excerpted on basis of the following source materials:

  1. Large-scale maps from the 17th century: In principle, all settlements in Sweden mapped by land surveyors during the 17th century are included in TORA.
  2. The illustrated topographical survey of Sweden – (Sweden past and present)
  3. Medieval written sources and cadastres (): All settlements in Sweden, documented in medieval written sources and later registers until c. 1570, are continually identified and described by the research group Det medeltida Sverige (Medieval Sweden) at Riksarkivet. Many of these have already been assigned to coordinates (see above). Those not found on 17th century maps have been assigned to coordinates using later maps. At present about 6,600 settlements units have been added (ongoing).
  4. Sources and reference books about manors: The database Sveriges herrgårdar (www.svenskaherrgardar.se) (Manors in Sweden) contains information about 3,500 manors in Sweden. Basically all have been matched with coordinates in TORA (ongoing).

Another interesting aspect of this is that also the National Library of Sweden - LIBRIS XL will have references to TORA ==> it will be possible to use references from TORA to find what books is related to a place.

See also a longer presentation in English of the project video at 23 min.

LIBRIS XL - Bibframe 2.0 and open linked data

This month the Swedish Library released the first version of a new Library system that is based on Bibframe 2.0 and open linked data. How this will impact Wikipedia and Wikidata we will see but we are planning to do some activities together with the National Library. Project manager for the activities will be André Costa.


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