Adapting Aspects of FRBR for Artworks in Wikidata

Abstract

Many prominent museums have made efforts to represent their art holdings within Wikidata, gaining exposure beyond those museums’ websites and adding data to an open web of knowledge. But what of artworks that are not entirely unique such as print or sculpture editions? Wikidata uses a linked data framework for describing and relating people, things, places, and concepts. The beauty of such technology is that unique identifiers bring together data about the same things and ideas regardless of language barriers or label inconsistencies. How does this function when two or more museums have instantiations of the same work? This presentation discusses ways of addressing the question above within Wikidata and outlines the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s current practices, which adapt and apply FRBR’s (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) conceptual model to represent artwork editions.

Keywords: Artwork editions, Wikidata, Linked data, FRBR, Sculpture