Ismael Olea — web personal

A Wikibase call for action at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2025

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Wikimedia Hackathon 2025.

This year I have again received a grant from the WMF to attend to the annual Wikimedia Hackathon, this year is in Istanbul. I’m very grateful to them.

Since 2024 I’m very interested in the Wikibase platform since we are using it at LaOficina and is a main topic for the DHwiki WG. I’m not going into details but, from the very beginning, my first thoughs of involvement in the hackathon are related with Wikibase. Specially the need of «productization» and reduce entry barriers for Wikibase adoption, at least in my personal experience. Lately I’ve been thinking in very specific goals I think could be done in the hackathon:

T391815 Wikibase Request for Comment: essential minimalist ontology
T391821 Wikibase Request for Comment: an inventory of Wikibase related artifacts
T391826 Wikibase Request for Comment: Wikibase Suite full multimedia proof of concept configuration
T391828 Wikibase Request for Comment: a method for portable wikibase gadgets

The point is, I can’t do this alone. I have beend working on most of these things for months, but still are finished. Many different skills needed, lack of experience on some of them, etc.

So, the goal of this post is to call for action other attendants at the hackathon to join to work on them. The most relevant required skills (from my lack of skills point of view) are about MediaWiki integration, configuration and programming. For T391828, the most important is to be familiar with MediaWiki gadgets and for T391815, some practical experience in setting up ontologies in Wikibase.

All the practical results will be offered to the Wikibase developers for their consideration.

If you are interested please reach me in Telegram or at your preference. I also would love to set up a Wikibase zone in the hacking space for people working with Wikibase, with these or other tasks.

So, I’ll see you soon in Istanbul o/

A RightsStatements ontology

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

At LaOficina we are currently working on a project to digitize family photographs and one of the challenges is the correct traceability of intellectual property. In this case we have encountered the difficulty of knowing the exact conditions of the received material, a situation that is not new and which is already addressed by the RightsStatements vocabulary, which includes 12 terms that are used, among others, by the Europeana community. Therefore, it is obvious that we need to add this vocabulary to our Wikibase Suite instance. By the way, as an exercise, I have taken the opportunity to compose it from scratch as an independent OWL ontology. It is very simple, but probably it has some conceptual flaws. If it is useful to someone, please use it without restrictions: righstatements-ontology.ttl

If you find something wrong please reach me.

This website now has GPDR friendly statistics

Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Now this website uses a simple statistics system which is GDPR compatible and privacy friendly. It uses Libre Counter which not need user registration neither configuration beyond adding some code like this:

<a href="https://librecounter.org/referer/show" target="_blank">
    <img src="https://librecounter.org/unique.svg" alt="GPDR friendly statistics" width="14" style="filter: grayscale(1);" title="GPDR friendly statistics" referrerpolicy="unsafe-url title="/> 
</a>

No cookies also.

Thanks Pinchito!

Small GLAM Slam Pilot 1 project update

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0200

This is a project update for the SGS Pilot 1 project. This is a WMF funded project (ID: 22444585).

They have been created two relevant places:

Phabricator: VerySmallGLAM · Workboard
Meta: Very Small GLAM

You can observe que are now using the coined term «Very Small GLAM». This will be the activity scope from now as we consider it short and and precise. The Small GLAM Slam denomination will be kept for the ID: 22444585 project.

What the Very Small GLAM term refers to? It identifies GLAM entities of very small size. How small? We got the inspiration from the concept of VSE (very small entities) coined for the ISO/IEC 29110 Series for software development entities up to 25 members. To set a focus we, a bit arbitrarily, chose the number 5 as «up to 5» members an institution or team working in GLAM. Very Small GLAM non circunscribes to Open GLAM, but Open GLAM would probably be the best approach or complement for this teams with not so much resources.

Wikimedia LEADS spin-off

An unexpected spin-off has been the conceptualization of the new initiative, Wikimedia LEADS (Learning Ecosystems and Ameliorating Data Space) when attending EU’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) funding call. The goal is to develop an advanced learning free/open data space and software ecosystem for the Wikimedia Movement.

Wikimedia LEADS first goal is to attend the GLAM Wiki learning needs. GLAM Wiki also shares a lot of commonalities with the Europeana community.

By extension, all practices, tools and many of the specific contents will be applicable to all other areas of the human knowledge.

Project’s activity areas

The SGS Pilot 1 is now structured in these work-packages:

WP1—IT system developed with the NAS killer concept with a free software stack for GLAM;
WP2—configuration for a locally installed Wikibase suite;
WP3—GLAM ontologies and vocabularies;
WP4—GLAM practices.
WP5—data import.

WP1—IT system, update

The selected operating system is UNRAID. The technical justifications are:

it’s a Linux distribution;
it features the ZFS file system, probably the best alternative for data preservation;
has a graphic administration interface
and run on any PC compatible hardware.

At this point the most important update about UNRAID is, since the grant approval, it changed their licensing model and fees.

Current project hardware details are:

a received a donated HP Z400 system, which happily includes an SSD disk;
procured 24 GB of ECC RAM, PC3-10600E, the maximum supported by the board.

In the next days we’ll buy the three HGST hard drives and other minor components for the firsts tests.

For the system configuration development phase, we’ll use another lend computer as a test server.

Software systems

This is a proposal of software architecture for a local installation of Wikibase in a GLAM context:

There is not advances to report about software.

WP2—Wikibase suite configuration, update

As we are not still familiar with the Wikibase ecosystem we are practicing setting up some instances in Wikibase.cloud. Also, we are starting to identify relevant Wikibase features. We are using wikibase.world as inventory of:

WP3—GLAM ontologies and vocabularies, update

Here we have the most juicy results for the moment. After a papers research we identified the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM) as an international reference model for museums. It’s more relevant when you find it’s being used as a reference for mapping or extending to other domains like CRMdig (digitalization) and CRMsoc (social phenomena and constructs), which are relevant for the «Memorias del Cine» archive. Very relevant is the availability of a CRM OWL ontology (non official, but apparently up to date) and some minor Wikidata mapping (https://w.wiki/9r$s, 24 items) Also, we identified the Records in Contexts–Conceptual Model (RiC-CM), whose ontology is also published in OWL format. RiC-CM is a reference for archival and we found initial works for CRM <-> RiC-CM mapping. The current mapping with Wikidata is anecdotal (https://w.wiki/9sAh, 4 items).

In the context of models of practices we are learning about SEMAT Essence. The formal specifications are expressed in text and in a UML metamodel file (.xmi). The concept of metamodel is practically equivalent to the LOD ontology. It took a while but now we know more about how to manage this XMI formats using Magic Draw. The plan is to import the ontology to Wikibase using the same tools than for CRM and related. We found the Essence «Package Competency» model is relevant for populating a map of competences/abilities for the Movement, as Wikimedia LEADS proposes.

For managing this information we are getting familiar with tools like Protégé, Fuseki, Magic Draw and some others.

A very happily discovery has been a couple set of tools for mapping and importing to Wikibase ontologies based in CIDOC-CRM. They are output of the projects SAF-Lux and GeoKB. We expect we’ll make intensive use of them or their derivatives.

An open question is, do we need to create a new Wikidata property for CRM identifier? Probably yes. I’m keeping some notes about ontologies for archival in my Wikidata user page.

WP4—GLAM practices, update

There is not so much real work on this side, since we are not ready to work modeling with Essence. But we are collecting some relevant bibliography for the project scope:

C. Matos, Manual práctico para la digitalización de colecciones para difusión digital, 2022.
A. Salvador Benítez, Ed., Patrimonio fotográfico: de la visibilidad a la gestión. en Biblioteconomía y administración cultural, no. 280. Gijón: Trea, 2015.
J. M. Sánchez Vigil, A. Salvador Benítez, y M. Olivera Zaldua, Colecciones y fondos fotográficos: criterios metodológicos, estrategias y protocolos de actuación, Primera edición. en Museología y patrimonio cultural. Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2022.
Collections Trust, Spectrum 5.1: UK Collections Management Standard, 2022.
Centro de Fotografía de Motevideo, Guía del archivo fotográfico, 2017.
L. Bountouri, Archives in the digital age: standards, policies and tools. en Chandos Information Professional Series. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing, an imprint of Elsevier, 2017.

WP5—data import, update

There have been not activity. We’ll start the data import when we have a first server operating.

Dissemination

Strictly focused in the SGS Pilot 1:

Wikibase workshop at the University of Murcia;
a poster session proposal for Wikimania: Towards a Very Small GLAM entities solution;
and some proposed activities for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024:
- Towards a Very Small GLAM entities solution, presentation;
- curate features for Wikibase, a hacking session;
- importing ontologies/vocabularies into Wikibase and Wikidata, another hacking session.

Related to Wikimedia LEADS:

a poster session proposal for Wikimania: Wikimedia LEADS a Learning Ecosystem and Ameliorating Data Space;
and a session proposal for the Wikimedia Hackathon: Wikimedia LEADS a Learning Ecosystem and Ameliorating Data Space.

What’s next

In the next days we’ll procure the pending hardware component to set up the server prototype. Then we’ll define the configuration and procedure to set up an UNRAID server instance ready for data preservation tasks. Then we’ll migrate the multimedia archive of «Memorias del Cine» to the server. The fun part of cataloging the archive in Wikibase would start as soon as we have an stable ontology model for digital archives.

Also, in May I’ll be attending the Wikimedia Hackathon in Tallinn and the AI Sauna in Helskinki. Reach me there in person if you are interested in our work.

PS: Adding references to WP5 (20240430).

Last activity in Wikimedia

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Just a little update about my activity around the Wikimedia Movement.

As said in this blog, I have been invited to guide a workshop on Wikibase at the Murcia University.

Also, I’ve sent two poster proposals for Wikimania 2024:

Towards a Very Small GLAM entities solution: This proposal proposes an activity line for empowering very small GLAM entities with limited resources to preserve and document cultural heritage effectively. It comprises:

the development an open-source GLAM suite and

recommendations on affordable, reliable hardware.

The suite includes:

software such as unRAID OS with ZFS for data preservation and

Wikibase and packaged software services.

Also a preload of metadata for museology (ontologies and vocabularies) and a technical information collection in the form of linked open data and documents.

The proposal outlines the project’s timeline, funding sources, and physical and online community involvement.

and

Wikimedia LEADS a Learning Ecosystem and Ameliorating Data Space: To create a free ecosystem and data-space for learning in the Wikimedia Movement. Ecosystem will extends the Movement with new classes of knowledge and addressing sustainability needs. With:

libraries of:

practices, modeled in Wikibase as Linked Open Data (LOD);

credentials, also modeled as LOD, based in ELM;

software extensions and services required for a working implementation in the Movement.

First will address the GLAM Wiki domain, producing incremental results ready to be adopted. This domain strongly intersects with the Wikimedia Movement. Furthermore, the methodologies, tools and many of the specific contents will be applicable to any other knowledge areas.

We have coined the term Very Small GLAM to refer the community of very small GLAM institutions: private, public, formal or informal, etc. It has not a rigorous definition, but you can think in teams of less than 10 members and reduced budget. So we’ll drop the bombastic term of «Small GLAM SLAM».

About Wikimedia LEADS, this is a new line of work also based in Wikibase to develop a Wikimedia ecosystem of models for Essence practices and microcredentials. It has been proposed for an European Union grant so it has no funding yet. This initiative interesects with Very Small GLAM as both focuses first in contents for the GLAM Wiki domain, as project driver.

Modelling protected areas talks

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Just keeping up to date with a talk I gave twice past year. I’m very proud of the work but never shared here neither in my Wikidata User:Olea page.

As a brief introduction, for some time I did a significant work importing to Wikidata the CDDA database of European protected areas as I found we have them completely infra represented. I have previous experience with historical heritage but this showed to be a harder work. I have collected some thoughts about lessons learned and a potential standarizing proposal for natural protected areas but never structured in a comprensive way until being invited to give a couple talks about this.

The first talk was in Lisboa, invited and sponsored by our friends of Wikimedia Portugal, in their Wikidata Days 2023. To be honest, my talk was a little disaster because I didn’t prepared the talk with time enough, but at least I could present a complete draft of the idea.

Then I have the opportunity to talk again about the same issue in the next Data Modelling Days 2023 virtual event.

My participation was sharing the session with VIGNERON, he talk about historical heritage and I did about natural heritage/natural protected area. For this session I was able to rewrite my proposal with the quality a communication requires. Now you have available the video recording of the full session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuCv_TnmzZQ

And my slides, that would be the final text of my intended proposal:

As a conclusion: yes, I should promote this in Wikidata, but the amount of work it requires (editions and discussions) is, for the moment, outside my interest for my freetime.

Misadventures modelling Andalusian heritage

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Related with the previous post, I have pending too to publish my notes about my experience importing, sorting and cleaning the descriptions of the rich Andalusian historical heritage. Our friends of Wikimedia Portugal invited and sponsored my travel to Lisboa to share my, sometimes sad, practical experience in their excellent Wikidata Days 2023 meeting.

I used this invitation as a motivation to finally compile all the experience I learned when importing the Digital Guide to the Cultural Heritage of Andalusia into Wikidata.

The presentation format is really suboptimal. To be honest I’m a bit tired of working a lot in slides with very short live (many times just one ocassion). But I still think the contents are useful enough.

Installing Linux with USB stick in a HP Z400

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Just for the record:

For our SMALL GLAM SLAM project we have received a donated HP Z400 Workstation. It’s has a Xeon CPU and can host 24Gb of ECC RAM, which seems appropiate for the project needs. But I found an annoying trouble installing Linux with a USB stick. It took me more than hour to search in the Internet for a solution. Now I just write here for the record and hoping the next one in this case could save precious time.

The tip is pretty simple: the Z400 HP BIOS doesn’t like booting Linux in USB sticks and the solution is upgrade the machine firmware with a «Linux BIOS» from HP o_O

The procedure:

go to the Z400 downloads page;
choose «operating system» Linux and «version» Linux;
at the BIOS section you’ll find the file to download to disk;
now prepare a USB stick formated as VFAT and copy the firmware file inside;
plug the stick in the Z400 machine, boot and open BIOS (press F10 key);
In the BIOS application choose [File]->[Flash System ROM]
then you’ll can select the firmware file from the USB memory and confirm the update process,
reboot and that’s all.

After that I could boot my Fedora USB stick and install without any other trouble.

Hope you’ll find useful.

Last activity in Wikimedia

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A fast update of thing happening to me in the Wikimedia Movement in the last weeks:

We asked for a WM Rapid Grant for a new project we have conceptualized at LaOficina: SMALL GLAM SLAM Pilot 1, to low entry barriers of software and practices adoption for very small GLAM organizations.
Also, I have been granted an scholarship to attend the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 event next May in Tallinn.
And, as part of my travel connection, I plan to attend the more informal GLAM + Commons + AI sauna in Helsinki. So, another Wikimedia GLAM overdose after the excellent Montevideo’s GLAM Wiki 2023 meeting.

I’ve draft the main tasks for the hackathon. They are very big in scope but they would be adjousted with the results of the Pilot 1. Here they are:

Lot’s of fun to come!