Wikidata: A Free Collaborative Knowledge Base

2013 Workshop / Monday 29 July, 2013

In this talk, Markus Krötzsch introduces Wikidata, a rapidly growing free knowledge base for structured data within Wikipedia. Designed to provide a single, definitive source of structured data for use across (and beyond) all language editions of the free encyclopaedia, Markus starts by describing the purpose and growth of the database, before going on to explain its implications for biographical and prosopographical research, both by providing a definitive, open source, third-party reference point for person entities (linked out to other authority files) – of which there are already nearly one million – and by allowing users to affiliate to these entities a wide range of structured, community vetted person ‘properties’.