Wikidata and authority files

This article aims to providing a comprehensive overview of the possible interactions between Wikidata and authority files, which can be classified into two main categories: firstly, the methods of reconciliation between Wikidata items and authority records; secondly, the ways in which the Wikidata community can improve Wikidata items using the authority records to which they link, and in which the cataloguers can improve their authority records using the Wikidata items that link to them, in a collaborative perspective. The purpose of this overview is optimising existing workflows and encouraging to establish new ones, so as to foster the reciprocal improvement of Wikidata’s and authority files’ data. The last part of the article describes a few major collaborations between Wikidata and authority files of national and international relevance, and the main attempts to use Wikibase (Wikidata’s software) as a platform to store authority files.