New Library Carpentry Lesson: Introduction to Wikidata
Introduction
We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Governance Committee has approved an addition to our extended curriculum: Library Carpentry Wikidata.
This lesson provides an introduction to Wikidata for Librarians, covering the underlying structure of Wikidata; its interface and connection to other Wiki projects, as well as how to create, edit, and search Wikidata objects.
This lesson has been moved from Alpha to Beta status, meaning that it has been developed and tested by the lesson authors and it is now ready to be taught by other Carpentries Instructors. For further information about what the different status of lessons are please read The Life Cycle of Lessons pages in the Carpentries handbook.
To cite the lesson please use the following text:
- Konrad Förstner, Rabea Müller, Till Sauerwein (2018). Library Carpentry: Wikidata. Version [unversioned]. https://librarycarpentry.github.io/lc-wikidata/
What the Lesson Covers
The lesson takes learners from their very first look at Wikidata to confidently creating and querying data. It is structured into five episodes. We begin with an introduction to what Wikidata is: a free, collaborative knowledge base that stores structured data, and how it connects to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. From there, we move on to the underlying concepts (items, properties, statements, qualifiers, and references), which form the data model that makes Wikidata both machine-readable and human-editable.
The core of the lesson is hands-on editing. Learners create and develop Wikidata items themselves, add statements and references, and then progress to more advanced editing techniques, including approaches for importing data at scale. The final episode introduces querying: learners write their first SPARQL queries using the Wikidata Query Service, opening the door to exploring and reusing the wealth of linked open data that Wikidata offers.
No software installation is required. A web browser, an internet connection, and a free Wikimedia account are all learners need to follow along.
Why Wikidata, Why Now
Library Carpentry already has a strong curriculum for cleaning and manipulating library data, including lessons on tools like OpenRefine and MarcEdit. What has been missing is a pathway from that work into the open web. Understanding Wikidata allows this community to bridge the gap between familiar aspects, such as structured metadata and cataloguing, and how to contribute to a global, open knowledge base.
The role of Linked Open Data has long been a conversation in libraries and archives, however, the technical implementation has meant that this topic often felt abstract or technically out of reach. This lesson changes that by teaching learners how to query, edit, and see results immediately — making it one of the most accessible entry points to the wider linked open data ecosystem.
Who This Lesson is For
The lesson is aimed at librarians and other information professionals with little or no prior experience with Wikidata. Like all Library Carpentry lessons, it assumes no programming background: the SPARQL episode starts from zero, and all editing is done through the regular Wikidata web interface.
Librarians are, in many ways, the ideal Wikidata community. Their expertise in metadata, authority control, and structured description maps directly onto Wikidata’s data model. Conversely, Wikidata offers libraries a way to make their knowledge visible and reusable as linked open data. The lesson is designed to make this connection explicit and give learners the confidence to contribute.
The format works well in a range of contexts: as part of a Library Carpentry workshop, as a standalone half- or full-day training, in onboarding programmes for library staff working with metadata, or as professional development for teams exploring linked open data. Since only a browser is needed, it is equally suited to in-person and online teaching.
Lesson Development
The idea for the lesson dates back to 2018, when we perceived both a need and an opportunity: librarians could use Wikidata as a resource to support their daily work, while their information skills could in turn improve the quality of data in Wikidata itself. The first design session took place at WikiCite 2018, and development then continued within the team at ZB MED, the Information Centre for Life Sciences.
A major milestone was CarpentryCon @ Home in 2020, where we ran a lesson sprint and presented the lesson in the Lightning Talks. The sprint brought together two valuable perspectives: newcomers to Wikidata, who showed us where explanations were still missing for people encountering the platform for the first time, and developers, who helped us redesign the episode on automated data import. You can read more about that stage of the journey in our blog post from 2020.
Since then, the lesson has been taught in pilot workshops, migrated to The Carpentries Workbench infrastructure, and continuously refined based on instructor and learner feedback. With the approval of the Library Carpentry Governance Committee, it has now moved from Alpha to Beta status and is ready to be taught by instructors beyond the original author team.
Call to Action
We invite Carpentries Instructors to teach the new lesson and provide feedback via the repositories Issues page. For those who are new to contributing to Carpentries lessons, please read the contribution guide. We are also actively seeking additional Maintainers for the Wikidata Lesson - if you are interested in actively contributing and maintaining this lesson, please contact the repository Maintainers, who are listed in the lesson repository. If you have any other ideas about designing future Wikidata lessons for Library Carpentry, including what modules should be included, please get in contact with the Library Carpentry Governance Committee. We would be happy to engage with you!
Lesson Author Biographies
Rabea leads the Data Science and Data Literacy Training department at ZB MED. She has been a Carpentries Instructor and Maintainer since 2020, a Carpentries Trainer since 2021, and serves as a Carpentries Community Coordinator for the DACH region.
Till works as a Bioinformatician at ZB MED and is involved in the NFDI Base Service Knowledge Graph Infrastructure. He is a Carpentries Instructor and Maintainer and has been teaching for 10 years.
Konrad is a Professor for Data and Information Literacy at ZB MED - Information Center for Life Sciences and TH Köln. He is a Carpentries Instructor and Maintainer, and previously served as a member of The Carpentries Board of Directors.