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  1. Home > Articles & Issues >
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  3. Adding Every Arabic ...
Article

Adding Every Arabic Periodical Published Before 1930 to Wikidata: Moving the Scholarly Crowd-Sourcing Project Jarāʾid to the Digital Commons

Till Grallert ORCID (1)
(1) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
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Open on Zenodo
Submitted on
November 14, 2024
Accepted on
April 22, 2025
Published on
July 23, 2025
Last modified on
August 28, 2025
Volume 1
Workflows
Metadata-based workflows
DOI
10.46298/transformations.14749
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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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Adding Every Arabic Periodical Published Before 1930 to Wikidata: Moving the Scholarly Crowd-Sourcing Project Jarāʾid to the Digital Commons

Till Grallert ORCID (1)
(1) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Abstract
English
This paper documents the contribution of comprehensive bibliographic data on all Arabic periodicals published before 1930 to Wikidata, the largest public and open knowledge graph. The dataset originated with the scholarly crowdsourcing project Jarāʾid and comprises information on more than 3,000 periodicals, about 2,700 editors and almost 350 holding institutions. As a living union list of Arabic periodicals, the dataset alleviates the infrastructural weaknesses of library catalogues and discovery systems, as well as the epistemic violence of knowledge ecologies. The move to Wikidata addresses the socio-technical shortcomings of our original approach by making the dataset available in a FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and five-star Linked Open Data environment. In addition, the platform provides multilingual interfaces and robust user management and version control, which significantly improves the usability and maintenance of evolving datasets. The paper details workflows and data models and demonstrates the reusability of our approach in other contexts with a second dataset of periodicals from the Ottoman Empire. Finally, the paper shows how the move to Wikidata generates continuous engagement with wider Wikimedia communities that significantly broaden our knowledge about periodicals and their holdings.
Arabic
يوثق هذا البحث مساهمة البيانات الببليوجرافية الشاملة لجميع الدوريات العربية المنشورة حتى عام 1930 في ويكي بيانات (Wikidata) ، أكبر رسم بياني معرفي حر ومفتوح. نشأت مجموعة البيانات من مشروع “جرائد” لتعهيد المعلومات الشاملة الجماعي عن تاريخ الصحافة العربية وتتضمن معلومات عن أكثر من 3,000 دورية، وحوالي 2,700 محرر، وما يقرب من 350 مكتبة وأرشيف ومجموعات أخرى. باعتبارها قائمة اتحادية حية للدوريات العربية، تعالج مجموعة البيانات نقاط الضعف الهيكلية لفهارس المكتبة، وأنظمة الاكتشاف بالإضافة إلى العنف المعرفي للنظم البيئية للمعرفة. تتناول الخطوة نحو ويكي بيانات أوجه القصور الاجتماعية والتقنية في نهجنا الأصلي عن طريق جعل مجموعة البيانات متاحة بشكل عادل وفي بيئة بيانات مفتوحة مرتبطة بخمسة نجوم. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، توفر المنصة واجهات متعددة اللغات وإدارة مستخدمين قوية وتحكم الإصدارات مما يحسن بشكل كبير قابلية الاستخدام وصيانة مجموعات البيانات المتطورة. يفصل البحث سير العمل ونماذج البيانات ويظهر إمكانية إعادة استخدام نهجنا في سياقات أخرى باستخدام مجموعة بيانات ثانية للدوريات من الدولة العثمانية ونُشرت باللغة التركية العثمانية. وأخيرًا يوضح البحث كيف أن الانتقال إلى ويكي بيانات يؤدي إلى مشاركة مستمرة مع مجتمعات الويكي الأوسع والتي توسع بشكل كبير معرفتنا بالدوريات ومقتنياتها في مكتبات.
Keywords
  • Arabic Periodicals
  • Linked Open Data
  • Wikidata
  • Union Catalogue
  • Digital Humanities
  • periodical studies
  • bibliographic data
Linked publications - datasets - software
  • Is supplemented by

    Grallert, T. (2024). Project Jarāʾid: Snapshot of bibliographic metadata from Wikidata for all Arabic periodicals published worldwide before 1930 [Dataset]. Zenodo. 10.5281/ZENODO.14875615

  • Is supplemented by

    Grallert, T. (2025). ProjectJaraid/wikidata-schemas: Initial release (Version v0.1). Zenodo. 10.5281/ZENODO.15460309

  • Is supplemented by

    Till Grallert. (2025). ProjectJaraid/wikidata-sparql: Initial release (Version v0.1). Zenodo. 10.5281/ZENODO.15460307

  • Is supplemented by
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14875614
  • Is supplemented by
    https://github.com/OpenArabicPE/convert_tei-to-bibliographic-data
  • Is supplemented by
    swh:1:dir:edf25f8537ef31256432f6ac6650af711904b9ce;origin=https://github.com/OpenArabicPE/convert_tei-to-bibliographic-data;visit=swh:1:snp:18194d304804bcd2ae2b4f10896da1475f2fec0a;anchor=swh:1:rev:21ed6f417db9468b890c2d69d06aab0b26fd7eed
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