Launching N-RICH Wikimedia project

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Wikimedia project, part of the National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) Prototype. The N-RICH Prototype is a two-year investment in the UK’s world-renowned cultural heritage collections, made possible through funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund Preliminary Activity grant awarded to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The prototype is being delivered by the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme in collaboration with AHRC.

The new project is a collaboration with Wikimedia UK and will explore how Wikidata and Linked Open Data can connect data services and research infrastructures across the UK cultural heritage sector.

Many heritage organisations already use Wikidata to enrich individual collection records, while some data services use it to connect and contextualise collections within their own systems. This project will look beyond those uses, testing whether Wikidata can act as a shared connective layer between the services and infrastructures themselves. The aim is to develop a practical approach that can be used across the sector, making information held in different systems easier to discover, understand and reuse.

Wikidata is a free, collaborative knowledge base within the Wikimedia family of projects. It contains structured, machine-readable information about people, places, organisations, events, works and concepts, together with the relationships between them. These shared points of reference offer a way to connect cultural heritage resources across institutional boundaries and place them within a much wider body of knowledge about the world.

Navino Evans, Director and co-founder of Histropedia Ltd, will lead the project’s work on Wikidata and Linked Open Data. His experience includes the development of Histropedia, an interactive timeline platform built on Wikidata and Wikipedia, alongside Wikidata projects and data-import initiatives including UNESCO, the National Library of Wales and the University of Edinburgh. He brings extensive experience in data modelling, reconciliation, querying and the development of tools for exploring and visualising Linked Open Data. 

Navino will work closely with N-RICH Senior Researcher Anna-Maria Sichani, the N-RICH team, Wikimedia UK and the team delivering the N-RICH Digitisation Capability Pilot. Practical testing with representative cultural heritage data and services will examine the workflows, data models and linking strategies needed to connect different infrastructures. This will help establish where Wikidata can provide reliable connections and where technical, metadata, licensing or maintenance issues need to be addressed. 

The project will also explore how Wikidata’s model could be adapted or extended to better support cultural heritage and research needs, and consider opportunities to align with European and international data infrastructures. 

The work will produce three main outputs: a Wikidata interoperability blueprint for connecting UK heritage data services and infrastructures; a Wikidata-compatible metadata framework, developed with the Digitisation Capability Pilot team by assessing and adapting existing standards; and a practical guidance report with recommendations for incorporating Linked Open Data into future systems and services. The guidance report will be published through the TaNC Zenodo community. 

Navino Evans said:

“The N-RICH project is an important opportunity to test what a more connected digital research infrastructure for UK cultural heritage could look like in practice. Wikidata is uniquely placed to act as the connective layer because it is open, already widely used across the sector, and can connect collections through a rich network of people, places, events and concepts. The potential goes far beyond simply linking collections to one another. It can help reveal relationships and context that would otherwise be difficult to discover.”

The findings will feed into the wider N-RICH Prototype, providing practical evidence to inform the development of a national digital research infrastructure for UK cultural heritage.