One of the more advanced parts of the December presentation with myself and Kat Thornton at Yale University Library – Working with Siegfried, Wikidata, and Wikibase; was using the Wikidata identifier in Siegfried with a custom Wikibase.

Using a custom Wikibase with Siegfried is likely only going to appeal to a small few. Many folks’ file format development needs are not always going to be so great.

I try to characterize some of the potential benefits as:

• Enabling institution specific description of file formats.
• Including assessments and descriptions of formats and their location in your collections.
• The potential for characterization level identification of file formats, e.g. password protected Word documents.
• Creating other opportunities to explore file format modelling, such as modelling preservation action registry features (PAR), e.g. recording features of complex file formats and complex format representations that will trigger PAR workflows.

Ultimately, those doing a lot of file format analysis and signature development work may benefit from the feature. It may provide a useful workflow for pushing data to the PRONOM team or Wikidata.

I have tried to capture some of this in this short video explainer. The video also links out to our December presentation.

The documentation for running a custom Wikibase with Siegfried can be found on the Siegfried Wiki.

Thank you once again to the OPF for the opportunity to present back in December and all of the participants that showed interest.