The relationship between Wikidata and the National Namespace

Abstract

The study examines the possibilities and benefits of the National Namespace–Wikidata integration based on examples from Hungary and other countries. Through the existing integration of Wikidata–Virtual International Authority File and Wikidata–Petőfi Literary Museum, the author approaches the issues of growth of visitor numbers, information exchange and voluntary human resource potential, exploring the possible ways of implementation and pointing out expected gains. It is shown that linking to Wikidata allows National Namespace identifiers to appear in Wikipedia entries, thus generating significant reader access for the project. For public databases, Wikidata offers access to a wide range of valuable international identifiers (VIAF, ISNI, Library of Congress, etc.) and entities, while they can contribute authoritative data to Wikidata‘s expansion and the internet services that rely on it (e.g. Google search, virtual assistants). The structure and operation of Wikidata is described, highlighting the similarities with and differences to the National Namespace. In his summary, the author emphasizes the importance of exploiting the potentials of these two projects in co-operation.