SMWCon Fall 2014/SMW between OpenData, OpenGLAM, Linked Data and the Semantic Web

The talk shortly introduces Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) and it's open source extension ecosystem in relation to current topics like Open Data, WikiData, OpenGLAM and the Semantic Web.

Different use cases for SMW will be scetched including SMW as an (Open)Data hub: First, SMW produces Open Data. Open Data should not only be about re-saving spreadsheets as CSV documents, describing them with metadata and putting them on the web. In many cases, the content itself should be managed in new ways, e. g. in wikis. For wiki projects managing unstructured content is not enough, there needs to be the possibility to manage structured content as well. When using SMW Open Data will be available as a by-product, as many export formats including RDF and JSON exist out of the box as a result of the data structure set up in the wiki. Some showcases will be presented, e. g. the OGD cockpit is a way to set up a data catalogue of an organisation in preparation of their Open Data initiative and the historical Encyclopedia of the City of Vienna (with > 30.000 entries) is a OpenGLAM project producing Open Data as a result of the SMW approach.

Second, SMW consumes Open Data. As SMW is a possibility to create data structures inside a wiki it can use external data sources including Open Data and re-use the data in the wiki. A prominent example of this is NYCpedia being a data encyclopedia about New York City, putting together different Open Data sets in a single web portal.