GLAM/Newsletter/June 2020/Contents/Taiwan report

This Month in GLAM – Volume X, Issue VI, June 2020

Taiwan report

Research Case of the White Paper Cooperation Writing Between Taiwan Gallery and Wikidata Taiwan

In 2020, Wikidata Taiwan and Shin Leh Yuan Art space^[1] co-started a research case, “The imagination of constructed art archive: take historical data of Shin Leh Yuan Art Space as a case study”, was the first ever “self-initiated” research case by Taiwan community and it aims to create a well-knitted Wikidata white paper for certain principle. This research case is the biggest achievement of our community in the first-half of 2020, below we will briefly introduce the content of this research case.

[1] Shin Leh Yuan Art Space, one of the most representative and also the longest exist alternative art space located in Taiwan (founded in 1995). Because the member artists’ dedication on the discussion between different principle and its potential of rallying different art organization, we can, in this collaboration, not only play as the technician but also as a actual participant entering the discussion.

Background

Creating a proper white paper for Wikidata is the top priority for Wikidata Taiwan community. Due to Wikidata’s international nature, some translation issue often emerge while people are contributing to the platform and cause some uncertainty in the process. In 2019, the community, we, realized that though the Wikidata server as a great attraction to many institutions in Taiwan, the lack of a proper standardized operation procedure to follow often leads to difference to the international community norm, consequently undermined our reliability. Therefore, a well-tailored white paper which servers as a authorization that can be referred will greatly improve the environment of Wikidata, thus, improve the accessibility of Wikidata. However, a complete white paper which cover every aspect and every principle is too much to be established in once, therefore we decided to take it steps by steps, principle by principle.

Shin Leh Yuan Art Space is having its 25th anniversary in 2020. They are hopping , by the help of Wikidata, to organize, open and share its stories and data all by once to the public. And this create the perfect opportunity for two community to cooperate writing a Wikidata white paper.

How

There are three main stages in the process:

Input all the information and data from Shin Leh Yuan:

Follow the already existed tutorial document of Wikidata to upload and trying to find out what are causing issue during the process. And according to the reports start the discussion of correction.

Using CDWA(Categories for the Description of Works of Art), DC(Dublin Core)^[2] as reference to clarify the Wikidata tutorial document:

Due to the international nature of Wikidata, different language might have different lexical gap in between. Therefore, by using CDWA, DC, etc. as reference, can not only help us trying to clarify the ambiguity cause by the translation but also improve Wikidata’s compatibility to other regulations.

Hosting public conference, invite experts in the principle to discuss the Wikidata’s usability:

By discussion with different principles allowing us to gather different opinions from different points of view, enable us to discover the possible blind spots and thus helping us stacking another brick to the foundation to the white paper.

[2] CDWA and DC are both international approved regulation of the art and culture principle. The Chinese translation of both is done by Academia Sinica Special Project team. More info at: CDWA V2.0 中文元素一覽表、國家圖書館詮釋資料規範(DC)

Issues and Solutions

Already we have entered 250 titles of Shin Leh Yuan relative artists and exhibitions into wikidata and discovered some issues:

The lack of important concept in Wikidata: take exhibition as example, within current wikidata structure, there are no concept of “ Adviser ”, “Co-organize”, etc. after some further research we found out that might be cause by lexical gap between English and Chinese culture. However, these concept is quite important in Taiwan exhibition context.

The structure of Wikidata is differ from other archives or information archiving devices, and will require some degree of logic translate while inputting the data. The exact know-how is still under heavy development and it will be one of the main focus of the white paper.

The issues listed above will be discussed with professional librarians and archivists before October.

Goal

Achieved

249 new Entries, 305 edited.
4 conference, and covered four different topics: art critique, museum technology, data authorization, and aboriginal culture. More than 100 people participated and over 3000 viewed online. (dated 22th, June, 2020)
Cooperate with 5 local artist organization.