Wikimedia UK is proud to be collaborating on a new project exploring how Wikidata and Linked Open Data can help create a more connected digital infrastructure for the UK’s cultural heritage sector.
The project forms part of the National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) Prototype, a two-year initiative funded through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)and delivered by Towards a National Collection (TaNC) in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Working alongside the N-RICH team and project lead Navino Evans, Wikimedia UK will help explore how Wikidata could act as a shared connective layer between cultural heritage collections, data services and research infrastructures across the UK. Many cultural organisations already use Wikidata to enrich individual collection records. This project goes a step further by testing whether Wikidata can help different systems and services connect with one another, making information easier to discover, understand and reuse across institutional boundaries.
For Wikimedia UK, the project strongly reflects our commitment to open knowledge and to supporting the cultural heritage sector to make collections more accessible, connected and useful. Wikidata’s open, collaborative and machine-readable model offers significant potential to help institutions build links between people, places, organisations, events, objects and ideas, while placing UK collections within a much wider global knowledge ecosystem.
The project will test real-world workflows, data models and linking approaches, while also examining challenges around metadata, licensing, technical interoperability and long-term maintenance.
Its outputs will include a Wikidata interoperability blueprint for UK heritage infrastructure, a Wikidata-compatible metadata framework, and practical guidance for organisations looking to incorporate Linked Open Data into future systems and services.
The findings will contribute to the wider N-RICH Prototype and help build evidence for what a more open, interoperable and sustainable national digital research infrastructure for cultural heritage could look like.