DARIAH-EU WG DHwiki was formally launched in November 2024, when the initial group members defined the group’s mission. Since then, the group has developed into a space for exchange, collaboration, and shared reflection on the role of Wikimedia-based infrastructures in Digital Humanities and GLAM contexts.
In a context where GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) and research data are expected to be open and FAIR, an increasing number of projects rely on deploying software and infrastructures provided by Wikimedia (Foundation, its affiliates, communities and related initiatives). Wikimedia emerged as an essential infrastructure of open (cultural) knowledge. We are witnessing more and more fruitful collaboration between DH researchers, GLAM institutions, and members of the Wikimedia movement. This Working Group is a bridge between these three backgrounds, and it understands its work as a contribution towards Open Science and the Commons.
This focus on building bridges has guided the WG from the beginning. It first meant creating stronger links between the members themselves. As they come from different professional and institutional backgrounds, the group has been learning from one another and gaining a clearer sense of each person’s experience, needs, and perspectives.
This variety became particularly clear during the group’s first in-person activities. In June 2025, members met at the Wikimedia Deutschland Headquarters. Shortly afterwards, the group was presented at the DARIAH Annual Event in Göttingen (slides). As a first outreach activity, we then organised a full-day workshop at the ADHO conference in Lisbon in July 2025, where we could shed light on Linked Data in the Wikibase ecosystem from a variety of angles. These encounters helped consolidate the group internally while also making its work more visible to broader communities.
The group shares a core focus on MediaWiki-based database solutions, particularly Wikibase. While the most prominent application of this software solution is Wikidata, the broader ecosystem comprises multiple instances that can be federated with varying degrees of granularity. The platform is increasingly recognized as a robust, open, and sustainable infrastructure for cultural heritage and digital humanities, significantly enhancing data interoperability, discoverability, and long-term preservation.
Through its commitment to openness, technical interoperability, and community-centred governance, Wikibase can become a widely adopted component within global linked open data ecosystems. Previous work has identified Wikibase as a powerful and valuable tool for librarians and LOD (Godby et al, 2019), and the DHwiki documentation pages list a range of Wikibase instances of the DH and GLAM domains. Emerging research data infrastructures, such as data spaces, enable new ways of publishing and accessing research data according to key aspects such as transparency, trustworthiness and security. Other platforms, such as Galaxy Community Hub and the European Collaborative Cultural Heritage Cloud which is anchored and aligned with the Wikimedia Foundation in terms of the principles of Open Science and Digital Commons, will promote inclusion and democratise access to knowledge and digital assets for citizens and researchers. Wikibase can play a relevant role in these new data infrastructures, not only as a data source but also as a collaborative and participatory environment to create knowledge bases according to both international standards and needs of diverse communities.
Map: Where current DHwiki members have studied and are or have been working (Wikidata query)
By embedding Wikibase into their emerging infrastructures, institutions can unlock new possibilities for research, public engagement, and collaborative knowledge building, while retaining control and sovereignty over their data. For assessing the success of Wikibase as a knowledge infrastructure, institutions should define measurable KPIs aligned with their strategic goals, enabling clear impact measurement toward funders and financing institutions. This aspect, critical for demonstrating the value of open infrastructures, remains underexplored in existing literature on Wikibase implementations.
While the technical dimensions of FAIR principles are well aligned with Wikibase capabilities, these should be complemented by CARE principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) (Carroll et al, 2020) to ensure that data stewardship is human-centred, ethically grounded, and attentive to Indigenous and marginalised community needs. Current literature on Wikibase has yet to fully emphasise its potential contributions to the human and ethical dimensions of data stewardship, highlighting an opportunity for further exploration and alignment with global ethical frameworks.
The WG is working to address several aspects that are essential for a sustainable, ethical, inclusive, and impactful approach to data stewardship with Wikibase in Digital Humanities. These include:
the compilation of a specialised bibliography on Zotero and on DHwiki Wikibase;
the provision of training materials and examples of use to facilitate the adoption of Wikibase as a tool for data publication and reuse; the WG is currently working on a set of Wikibase documentation pages;
the continued collection of requirements regarding Wikibase and related tools, in terms of features and user experience, with a focus on DH and GLAM-related use cases;
contributions to the further development of Wikibase and related tools within the respective communities;
the exploration of the integration with existing and emerging data research infrastructures in the EU.
In a short time, DHwiki has grown from a shared interest into a collaborative group with a clear purpose. What started as a process of getting to know one another’s work and experience is gradually becoming a more stable effort to support a wider community of practice.
By building connections between research, GLAM, and Wikimedia communities, the Working Group aims to strengthen the role of open and collaborative LOD infrastructures in Digital Humanities. We invite DARIAH community members to contribute to the production of documentation and training materials, by sharing their requirements and adopted solutions when working with LOD. For more information, please check out our Wikibase instance, and contact us.
