This lightning talk will give an overview of a joint bibliography, implemented in Wikidata, of the early published writings of art historians Bernard and Mary Berenson. The Berensons were key figures in art criticism and the art market in the last decade of the 19th century and in the early 20th century. The rationale for this joint bibliography project is to address the collaborative nature of Bernard and Mary Bereson’s scholarship, bring more visibility to Mary, and engage in feminist art historiography and the broadening of focus from attributional art criticism to “cultures” of connoisseurship.
This talk will focus on the process of the project, which may be applicable to others embarking on similar projects as digital humanities researchers or on behalf of cultural heritage institutions seeking to donate their metadata to public platforms like Wikidata. One major topic of the presentation will be data modeling, particularly the granularity of the metadata available in shared library catalogs versus the needs of a scholar-specific bibliography. The presentation will suggest ways Wikidata can be used as a bridge to connect institutional metadata with metadata generated by scholarly research. Other topics covered will include data preparation workflows and tools, preliminary visualizations, and reflections on how communities of practice have facilitated work on this project.