Wikidata as a Reconciliation Anchor: Curating Data for Long-Term Preservation

To remain useful, data destined for long-term preservation requires careful metadata curation, enrichment and interlinking with existing Linked Open Data, such as authority files. At the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities’ digital repository, ARCHE, Wikidata has proven a reliable anchor for finding and identifying missing identifiers for all types of named entities and a valuable source for controlled vocabulary collation. This article presents case studies from ARCHE and three of its aggregators – Kulturpool, CLARIN, and ARIADNE – that harvest metadata from ARCHE and include Wikidata in their post-processing workflows. The case studies highlight the advantages of using Wikidata and reflect on weaknesses and when and how data curators can correct, enrich, or add to Wikidata, thereby strengthening repository practice and contributing back to the open community.