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Maud Cunnington (part 1)

Posted on by Maddie Watson

In this blog post, Maddie Watson, a finalist Modern History and Politics student at the University of Southampton, introduces their work on Maud Cunnington as part of their Beyond Notability Internship, run by Southampton Digital Humanities. In this part, Maddie discusses their encounter with Maud via linked data and their exploration of her work as an archaeologist.

The second part of the blog can be read here.

I discovered Maud Cunnington on my first day working on the Beyond Notability Project in November 2023. She left an indelible mark on Wiltshire with excavations dating back to 1897, conducted alongside her husband, Ben Cunnington. Maud was used as an example when teaching me to create linked data, and I recognised that she lived in Devizes (my hometown). My interest was immediately piqued due to my curiosity about local history, as well as the evidence of her extensive work in archaeology. Before engaging with this internship, my academic background did not encompass any direct engagement with archaeological studies. Therefore, I was surprised by the extent of women’s participation in the field, exemplified by the data the Beyond Notability project have assembled about Maud, particularly given the considerable gendered barriers to achieving such involvement.

The Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.

As I delved deeper into the project and entered more data, I discovered places that Maud had excavated, lived, or worked at, that I also recognised. For example, her involvement with the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (WANHS) connected her to the Wiltshire Museum, where I spent much time as a child and now volunteer. To enrich the narratives of women active in archaeology, the Wiltshire Museum displays many artefacts unearthed by Maud, alongside her writing desk and information regarding her excavations.

Over the Christmas holiday, as I embarked on the journey to explore sites associated with Maud, I found myself traversing familiar paths of my childhood and teenage years. The places that were once a backdrop to my adventures gained a new significance, layered with her historical presence. Walking through these sites, I couldn’t help but feel a connection to both the past and present. The playgrounds of my youth now shared space with the echoes of an accomplished archaeologist who had left her mark on the ground I once explored with boundless curiosity. It encouraged me to reflect on Maud’s legacy, as well as how our experiences as women undoubtedly differed despite similarities in our academic disciplines.

As an intern, the journey of adding various women to the Beyond Notability database has been an enlightening process allowing me to compare the contributions of women in the archaeological field. Sharon Howard’s visualisations of Beyond Notability project data have greatly assisted with understanding general trends in categories of contribution, such as correspondence, excavations, and work. From this, I have been able to interpret how women’s contributions interlink. For example, Maud’s excavations between 1908 and 1930 were atypical, as according to the data we have assembled few women who partook in such activity during this period. However, for the same date range, the correspondence category suggests that women more commonly contributed to the field by reporting to and communicating with various archaeological committees.

Themes of gender, social standing, and personal tragedy unfolded as I examined Maud’s contribution to archaeology through the lens of three pivotal excavations: Oliver’s Camp (1907), All Canning’s Cross (1911), and Woodhenge (1926). Maud’s educated, middle-class background and marriage into an equally sheltered line of Wiltshire antiquarians made archaeology an accessible vocation in comparison to women of a lower socio-economic background. Particularly, her residence at 33 Long Street, Devizes, with its distinctive Georgian architectural features and central location, served as a tangible testament to her high social standing.

33 Long Street, Devizes. Previous home of Maud Cunnington.

Historian Julia Roberts quotes Maud’s nephew, Colonel R.H. Cunnington, to exemplify prevailing attitudes towards female participation in the field in the 19th and 20th centuries:

‘… a man ought to know any language or science he learns thoroughly: while a woman ought to know the same language and science only so far as may enable her to sympathise in her husband’s pleasure’ (Roberts, 2002, 47).

The prevailing perspective suggested that female participation in disciplines such as archaeology primarily held significance to humour her husband’s interests. Such limiting views fail to explain Maud’s unbounded enthusiasm for the discipline and highlight the lack of expectation for women to cultivate a personal interest in archaeology, as well as diminishing the recognition of their achievements. Maud became a member of WANHS in 1907, despite the members lists revealing very few women were involved alongside her. On the Beyond Notability database, only six other women are recorded as connected to WANHS at a similar time to Maud, and only three women are in the database as members of the society (though these numbers are skewed by archival research that has focuses on national bodies). The Beyond Notability project has unearthed a long-standing presence of women in the field who worked alongside their husbands. However, evidence of independent publishing suggests that these women were active participants contributing to the advancement of archaeological knowledge. Particularly, Maud’s publications underscored the fallacy of women’s involvement in the discipline to appease their husband’s interests.

Roberts contends that Maud’s accomplishments are overshadowed by her polarising personality, given that it countered traditional feminine values centred around domesticity and subservience. I find this to be an outdated argument, as Maud and the other women noted on the the Beyond Notability Wikibase are evidence of women of all classes engaging in roles outside of the home, therefore subverting the dominant ‘angel of the house’ narrative. Maud’s work faced continual dismissal by new male archaeologists, such as Alexander Keiller and Stuart Piggott, who found her difficult to work with due to differences in methods of record-taking and excavation.

Keiller began his involvement in archaeological work in 1922, while Piggott initiated his in 1927 on leaving school, a period spanning 25-30 years after Maud’s involvement commencing in 1897. Their dismissal of Maud is representative of a generational shift, though undoubtedly, these difficulties were exacerbated by Maud’s seemingly somewhat cantankerous personality. Overall, women had been active in archaeology for many years before Keiller and Piggott joined the scene in the 1920s, though it should not be discounted that attitudes towards women in the field were characterised by tolerance rather than genuine acceptance.

The second part of the Maddie’s blog on Maud Cunnington can be read here.

List of works consulted:

Historic England (1972) 33 and 33A, Long Street. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1263549?section=official-list-entry (Accessed: 6 February 2024).

Howard, S. (2023) ‘PPAs and change over time’, BN notes, 12 December. Available at: https://sharonhoward.org/bn/bn_notes/posts/ppa-2023-12-08/ (Accessed: 1 February 2024).

Moshenska, G. (2016) ‘Maud Cunnington’, Trowelblazers, 16 April. Available at: https://trowelblazers.com/2016/04/14/maud-cunnington/ (Accessed: 16 January 2024).

Roberts, J. (2002) ‘That terrible woman’: the life, work and legacy of Maud Cunnington’, The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 95, pp. 46-62.

Smith, B. (2000) The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Taylor, H. (n.d.) Six Groundbreaking Female Archaeologists. Available at: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/women-in-history/six-groundbreaking-female-archaeologists/ (Accessed: 16 January 2024).

Stories of Women and the Past: International Women’s Day 2024

Posted on by Debbie

A full day of reflections, information and ideas about women and how they explored the past, punctuated by four specially created stories.

This event was recorded and is available to watch here.

Since 2021, the team behind Beyond Notability, based at the Institute of Classical Studies at University of London and the University of Southampton in partnership with the Society of Antiquaries, has been working on recovering the names, lives, residences and (most importantly) work of women in the archives of the Society of Antiquaries and elsewhere. Taking inspiration from and drawing on this work, we present a day seminar on Storytelling, Inclusivity and (Re)Presenting Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage.

The Programme for the day is now available here and includes biographies of the people speaking. There may still be small changes:

StorytellingIWD2024_BeyondNotabilitiesFinalDownload

Four performances commissioned from storyteller Vanessa Woolf will interpret some of our research around some key women, such as Charlotte Stopes, themes, like folklore, and places, such as Hadrian’s Wall. Readings of these stories on the day will be followed by talks from and with academics, heritage professionals and creative practitioners on how they engage with the past and women’s work in these areas. The day considers storytelling through books, re-enactments, costume and interpretation in heritage sites and museums.

There will be presentations covering theatre and community, AI, the historic environment, museum displays, inclusive re-enactment and research-inspired art from Julia Pascal (Pascal Theatre Co.),  Catherine Clarke (Institute of Historical Research), Jo Badger (historical costume-maker), Pamela Franklin (Caribbean Social Forum),  Jennifer Wexler (English Heritage), Marie Basting (author), Emma Anderson and Bryony Renshaw (Silk Museum Macclesfield), Katy Drake and Kath Van Uytrecht (Society of Antiquaries Artists-in-Residence). Amara Thornton and Katherine Harloe (Beyond Notability / Institute of Classical Studies) will facilitate discussion and reflect on the process needed to engage creatively with the stories and women found in the archives the team has examined.

Join in the conversation online: #StorytellingWomen #IWD2024 #InternationalWomensDay #WomensHistoryMonth

On Arabel Moulton-Barrett

Posted on by Amara

By Amara Thornton (Co-Investigator)

I first came across “Miss Moulton Barrett” in the summer of 2020 as I started exploring the history of archaeology in the Caribbean. Her name was mentioned in connection to a late 19th century excavation at an estate called Retreat or Retreat Pen(n) in St Ann’s, Jamaica. Retreat had been owned by a “Mr Moulton Barrett” and “Miss Moulton Barrett” had conducted excavations there. I dug around for more information (online, it was during lockdown). I happened upon a digitised and text-searchable copy of Jeanette Marks’ 1938 book The Family of the Barrett: a colonial Romance, charting the family history of famous Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A sentence in this book stopped me in my tracks:

“[…] there was born to Charles John [Moulton Barrett, EBB’s brother] by a woman of colour, a child.” (p 612)

Another child followed a few years later. Two daughters, Eva and Arabel, both born to Charles John Moulton Barrett and Elizabeth Barrett. Both Eva and Arabel grew up at Retreat in the late 19th century. These two girls were the Mixed-heritage Jamaican nieces of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I wasn’t sure whether Eva or Arabel was the “Miss Moulton-Barrett” of the archaeological reports I’d been looking at. But as I pursued my enquiries, I contacted the staff of Eton College Collections where the Moulton-Barrett family papers are held. They informed me that the “Miss Moulton Barrett” I was investigating was most likely Arabel – in 1880 Eva married John Casserly (listed on their marriage certificate as a planter living at Oxford Estate, Trelawny). Even more thrillingly, in looking through the archive on my enquiry the Eton College Collections staff had discovered six letters (written from Jamaica by Arabel (“Bel”) Moulton-Barrett to a relative (Edward F. Moulton Barrett, or “Edward of Albion” as she addresses him). The letters held at Eton College were written between 1945 and 1953.  Arabel Moulton-Barrett was by then a very elderly woman, and one of Jamaica’s most celebrated women poets.

In the 1890s, during an explosion of archaeological work in Jamaica, the Jamaica Gleaner published a report on the discoveries “Miss Moulton-Barrett” had made during her informal excavations at Retreat Pen. This report included a short description in her own words. By this time, she had loaned some of the artefacts discovered for display in a well-publicised exhibition on Jamaica’s pre-Columbian past, held in late 1895 at the Institute of Jamaica.

We added “Miss Moulton Barrett” to our database early in the Beyond Notability project (find her entry here). Her engagement in archaeology reflects a wider colonial context which we are mapping (including women with ancestors appearing in the Legacies of British Slaveownership database, listed here). But Arabel’s story and her letters are also particularly intriguing for me personally, as a Mixed-heritage researcher with close family ties to the Caribbean. 

Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s engagements with archaeology also highlight an important element of the context of women’s work in archaeology, history and heritage in Britain: empire. As a team, we are continuing to discuss how best to reflect and incorporate this imperial context into the database that forms a key part of our research project.  Through the project we want our database to be a framework and a model for situating these historic engagements with archaeology, history and heritage in Britain (as we know it today) alongside similar work happening within the British empire broadly conceived.

The paragraphs that follow explore three aspects of Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s story: her family background, the context of her archaeological work (assuming that Arabel Moulton-Barrett is the same person as “Miss Moulton Barrett”), and her later life. I refer to the letters held by Eton College throughout the piece. Written at the end of her life, when she was reflecting on her childhood and her childhood home, they are a poignant insight into her memories. While she doesn’t discuss her archaeological work explicitly in the letters, she does reveal the special place Retreat Pen, her childhood home, held in her heart.

The Family

The Barrett family had been associated with Jamaica since the 18th century, holding plantations across several parishes, including St Ann’s and Trelawny. While some members of the family resided in Jamaica others like Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s paternal grandfather Edward Barrett, lived in Britain. Edward Barrett received thousands of pounds worth of compensation after the abolition of slavery. His son Charles John (known within the family as “Storm”), had moved from Britain to Jamaica to manage Barrett estates as a resident proprietor. These estates included Retreat Pen, “The Retreat”, the plantation between Brown’s Town, St Ann’s and Stewart Town, Trelawny. Arabel’s mother Elizabeth Barrett was herself a Mixed-heritage woman. Arabel noted in a letter (2 Feb 1945) that Elizabeth’s father was Charles John’s “uncle Sam”, making Elizabeth and Charles John cousins.  Arabel did not mention the name of her maternal grandmother, though she appears to have known her.

In the six letters held at Eton, Arabel discussed her parents’ relationship in some detail. She emphasised their love for each other and mourned the fact that they had been prevented from marrying. Almost defiantly she wrote

“I consider myself as more truly born of wedded parents than any other woman whose mother bears a wedding ring”

“Bel” Moulton-Barrett to “Edward of Albion” 2 February 1945

Arabel revealed that Charles John gave Elizabeth a house and land in Stewart Town, Trelawny, bordering St Ann’s to the west. She noted that Elizabeth had acquired an education on her own, and “had a nice little library – theology, travel, autobiography & poetry were all represented.” (2 Feb 1945) 

Arabel and her sister Eva were brought up by Charles John at Retreat Pen – “my beloved home” Arabel called it (7 March 1956). Of Charles John’s parenting Arabel stated

“He did the right and honourable thing acknowledging his two little daughters. No father could have done more than he did […]”

“Bel” Moulton-Barrett to “Edward of Albion” 2 February 1945

According to Jeanette Marks the girls were educated in France. Charles John, Eva and Arabel travelled to Britain in 1867; Arabel recalled her visit to her uncle by marriage Robert Browning at his home in London in one letter, describing his voice as “Deep – rich – full” (2 Dec 1952). By the 1870s financial disaster loomed. Charles John’s brother Septimus was heavily in debt. Arabel recounted how Charles John spent all of his money and sold all the family properties clearing Septimus’s debt to save the Barrett name (30 Apr 1950). According to the Jamaica National Heritage Trust’s 2019 Archaeological Impact Assessment, Retreat Pen was sold in 1893. The only part of the estate that was not sold was the burial ground – this, Arabel noted in a letter, “still belongs to me.” (5 April 1950)

Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s complex family history encapsulates both the context of sexual exploitation of Black and Mixed-heritage women by White planters during the era of slavery, and the lives of the resulting Mixed-heritage population in the period after slavery. Some of these Mixed-heritage descendants, including Arabel, led relatively comfortable lives with the time to devote to intellectual pursuits.

Archaeology, Tourism and Jamaica

It is not clear exactly when Arabel Moulton-Barrett undertook her investigations of the mounds at Retreat, though it took place before the estate’s sale in 1893. By this time interest in Jamaica’s pre-Columbian past had intensified, tied to the colonial government’s plans for increasing tourism to the island.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, Jamaica had as its Governor one Henry Blake, who had joined the colonial service from a post in the Irish Constabulary. Before coming to Jamaica, he had been Governor in the Bahamas and (briefly) Newfoundland. Henry Blake was married to Edith Bernal Osborne, an artist and writer with a deep interest in archaeology (find her entry in our database here).

As Governor, Henry Blake wanted to put Jamaica on the map, drawing tourism and other development opportunities to the island. He worked to facilitate a large-scale international exhibition held in Jamaica in 1891. Edith Blake also took part in this work. In addition, she was increasing her own collection of Caribbean antiquities, writing and publishing on the history and archaeology of the Caribbean, and conducting her own explorations of sites.

The Blakes were involved in the Institute of Jamaica, a learned society which by the mid-1890s had begun to encourage and lead formal archaeological investigations . In 1895, Institute of Jamaica curator J. E. Duerden organised the “Anthropological Exhibition”, borrowing artefacts from collectors in Jamaica and beyond for the display. In a volume of the Institute’s Journal Duerden recorded the efforts of these resident collectors and excavators, including Edith Blake and Arabel Moulton-Barrett.

Duerden’s report makes clear that Arabel Moulton Barrett’s exploration at Retreat Pen centred around two hills connected by a ridge. These had once been fields enslaved workers had farmed for their sustenance – among them, possibly, Arabel’s maternal ancestors. In her notes on the work, published in the Gleaner and reprinted in Duerden’s report, Arabel recorded that the ridge featured small mounds where pieces of pottery described in the Gleaner as “of the same type as the aboriginal examples obtained elsewhere”, the bones of coneys (a mammal similar to a rat), and pieces of shell were recovered at and just below surface level. It would probably have been estate workers, under Arabel’s direction, who dug below the surface on the ridge. The Institute of Jamaica subsequently organised further investigations of the site, and Duerden reported that the previous cultivation of this area by enslaved people had resulted in damage to the mounds in question. It is entirely possible that the enslaved population working in the fields before Arabel’s explorations had themselves discovered further evidence of Indigenous life. A West India Company soldier who collected ancient stone tools in Falmouth, Jamaica in the 1860s noted in a report that formerly enslaved people had first recovered many of these tools.

Later Life: Arabel, the Published Poet

The 1893 sale of Retreat Pen seems to have ended Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s archaeological investigations. Perhaps, as she no longer had access to the family property, there was no opportunity for her to continue her interests. And her father’s impoverished circumstances must have played some part. She stoically references her long-standing financial worries, which were eased to some degree by her father’s brothers after his death.  “I have had to work hard all my life” she noted “but work is good for body and mind.” (30 April 1950). By 1913 she was living in Kingston, and it was there that she won first prize in a poetry competition. Her poetic response to the competition’s set question, “If I Were Governor”, was printed in the Gleaner in December 1913.

Between 1919 and 1925 three of Arabel’s short stories were published in The Catholic World. During the 1920s, she became more involved in the literary scene in Jamaica, and her work was included in the 1929 anthology Voices from Summerland, published in London but representing the work of the Jamaica branch of the Empire Poetry League. She continued to be a part of the Jamaican poetry league through the 1930s and 1940s, her poems published in League “Year Book” anthologies of 1940 and 1941, alongside the verses of many others, including Tom Redcam, Astley Clerk, Lena Kent and Constance Hollar. Her poem “The Lost Mate” (published in Voices from Summerland) features in a 1950 Anthology of the poetry of the West Indies.

Impoverished and suffering with loss of vision towards the end of her life, she records in a letter in the Eton collection (30 Apr 1950) that a group of writers had clubbed together to send her badly needed funds. She died soon after the letter was written. I hope she is buried in the family burial plot at Retreat as she wished, “close to my beloved father” (5 April 1950).

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Stephie Coane, Michael Meredith and Laura Carnelos, Katherine Harloe and Debbie Challis. Text of Arabel Moulton-Barrett letters reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College.

References/Further Reading

Cuming, H. Syer. 1868. Proceedings of the British Archaeological Association. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 24 (4): 391-404.

Duerden, J. E. 1896. Jamaican Anthropology. Discovery of Aboriginal Shell Mounds in St Ann and St James. Jamaica Gleaner, 21 February, p 4.

Duerden, J. E. 1897. Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica. Journal of the Institute of Jamaica  2(4).

Green, Cecilia A, 2006. Hierarchies of Whiteness in the Geographies of Empire: Thomas Thistlewood and the Barretts of Jamaica. New West Indian Guide 80 (1/2), 5-43.

Institute of Jamaica, 1896. Annual Report on the Institute of Jamaica for the year ended  31st  March, 1896. Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica.

Jamaica Gleaner, 1913. ‘If I Were Governor.’ An Interesting Subject that attracted a good many competitors: Miss Arabel Moulton Barrett Secures First Prize. 13 December, p 7.

Jamaica National Heritage Trust Archaeological Division, 2019. Archaeological Impact Assessment, p 35.

Marks, Jeannette Augustus, 1938. The Family of the Barrett: A Colonial Romance. New York: The Macmillan Company.

McFarlane, J. E. Clare, 1945. The Challenge of Our Time: A Series of Essays and Addresses. Kingston, Jamaica: New Dawn Press.

Modest, Wayne, 2018. ‘A Period of Exhibitions’: World’s Fairs, Museums, and the Labouring Black Body in Jamaica. In Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest (Eds.). Victorian Jamaica. (pp. 523-550). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Moulton-Barrett, Arabel, 1919. ‘Melia. Catholic World, CVIII, 517-525.

Moulton-Barrett, Arabel, 1920. The Little Brown Bird. Catholic World, CX, 29-36.

Moulton-Barrett, Arabel, 1925. The Star-Child. Catholic World, 228-236.

Moulton-Barrett, Arabel, 6 letters to Lt Col E. F. Moulton Barrett, 1945-1953. MS 681 01 02 03: Eton College Collections.

Poetry League of Jamaica, 1940. Year Book of the Poetry League of Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: New Dawn Press.

Poetry League of Jamaica, 1941. Year Book of the Poetry League of Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: New Dawn Press.

ISNI: creating identifiers for women without them

Posted on by admin

In this guest blog, Catherine Senior & Pamela Johnson from the British Library’s Authority Control team introduce work on creating ISNIs (International Standard Name Identifiers) for women we’ve encountered during the Beyond Notability Project.

As members of the British Library Collections Authority Control team, the brief we were given was to create or amend ISNI records for approximately 600 women, to support the AHRC-funded ‘Beyond Notability’ project. These women – educated, knowledgeable, widely-read and sometimes widely travelled – were, in many cases, not given much recognition in their own lifetime.

The period which the project covers is roughly 1870-1950. It delves into the histories of women who were active in archaeology, history and heritage. Having created an ISNI record for each of them, or upgrading and adding to their record if they already had one on the database, we were able to supply an URL which will link to other data.

We describe our experiences of this piece of work below.

Catherine: I have found the project interesting, particularly as I am fascinated by nineteenth century history – most of identities I covered were from the late 19th century and early 20th. The women were highly educated, many having studied at University, yet the papers they produced were often read out at meetings by husbands or fathers – many were not allowed to use their own voice – which seems very alien to us. Quite a few of the women had lived abroad for part of their lives, involved mainly in archaeology, so they had obviously lived full and interesting lives at a time when you would expect women’s lives to be much more narrowly focused on the family.

One of the identities I looked at was simply described as “lady cataloguer” – the title of her paper had lived on, but not her name. I used prior knowledge of how I had tackled creating similar personal names, as a specialist cataloguer librarian, to decide how to cite the identity. It was fascinating to discover just how many women were involved in archaeology during this time period. It feels as though we have played a small part in unearthing some hidden history.

Pamela: Like my colleague Catherine, I found that some of the women did not read out their own papers. For example, Ellen K. Ware, also known as Mrs. Henry Ware, and when younger, as Ellen King Goodwin. In June 1886, Ellen Ware was elected an Honorary Member of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. She was also a member of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. At meetings of both these societies on different dates, papers that Ellen had written were read out on her behalf – on one occasion by a Dr. Hodgkin and on an earlier occasion by her father Bishop Goodwin. What we don’t know is – why? Why did Ellen not present her own papers? Was she not permitted, or did she not have the confidence to stand up in front of the assembled group, or was there some other reason? Fascinating, intriguing, and quite annoying for me as a 21st Century woman!

On now to Ethel Mary Colman from Norwich, who was vice president of the British Association in 1935, and even more excitingly, Lord Mayor of Norwich in 1923 – 24. She was not only the first woman to be Lord Mayor of Norwich, but the first woman to be a Lord Mayor of a UK city. I wondered, as I gathered Ethel’s facts together, what it must have felt like to achieve that.

And finally a quick look at Queen Victoria. As there was a considerable amount of existing metadata associated with her, I needed to add specific fields to tie the queen to the Beyond Notability project. I read on Queen Victoria’s Beyond Notability wikibase entry that she exhibited a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London; on another occasion she exhibited a Coronation spoon (topical!); was she there, did she attend the meeting, or did she just lend the exhibits?

The things we most enjoyed about the project were learning about the women and what interested them; their achievements and the limitations seemingly imposed upon them, and the chance to contribute to a fascinating project. We are both so happy that ISNI is a highly valued and useful identifier that plays a part in research. The ISNI data we created can be seen via the ISNI ID property on the Beyond Notability wikibase.

Catherine Senior & Pamela Johnson

On Friends and Friendships

Posted on by admin

By Katherine, Amara, and James (Project Investigators)

Constructing an ontology around relations between people is (relatively) straightforward when those relations are formal or familial: person X was taught by person Y, person A shared a house with person B, person P was the daughter of person Q. Where it gets difficult is when those relations are not familial, are less tangible, and we feel those relations are both significant and not unambiguously captured in our sources: for example, when two or more people appear to have been friends and that friendship appears to have been important to their lives.

Wikidata does not have a property for friendship, and as a project team we decided – after lengthy discussion and disagreement – that creating a property for friendship was unwise, because ‘friend’ is highly ambiguous. For example, ‘friends’ is used in ‘friends, Romans, countrymen’ to hail a group of people who are not necessarily friends, but rather to encourage those people to treat the speaker – or the institution they represent – as if friends. Similarly, the expression ‘friends of the British Museum’ is an organisational usage that describes a loose group of patrons, donors, and/or sponsors who are not necessarily ‘friends’ with the organisation but are rather well-wishers and/or supporters.

Wikidata – which Beyond Notability treats as a guide, though something short of a model – gets around this issue with the ‘significant person’ property, defined as ‘person linked to the item in any possible way’. That is, the property is used to define a range of relations that are significant to the subject: for example, between pi and William Jones (the latter named the former), Albrecht Dürer and Willibald Pirckheimer (the pair were noted correspondents), Hispano-Suiza and Marc Birkigt (the latter founded the former), 284 AD and Diocletian (the latter became Roman Emperor in 284 AD), Sarah Bernhardt and Betty Callish (they were friends).

For us, adopting this approach would have three disadvantages. First, it is non-specific, and a key rationale for creating our own knowledge base – rather than simply augmenting Wikidata – is to allow us to drill into the specificity of relations that our domain demands. Second, it is implemented in Wikidata without the requirement for evidence (to get technical, there is no property constraint for P3342 that requires a valid reference). Third, and more philosophical, is the emphasis on ‘notability’ (both of the subjects involved and of the relationships between those subjects), and the positional work that implies – notability thresholds depend on whosenotability counts and which relationships are considered to be significant. In a project seeking explicitly (it is in the title!) to go beyond notability, we have already resolved to always to make explicit that we are ascribing to people aspects of identity and self-image perceived by us in our interpretation of our sources. In turn, constructing our own notability thresholds for things like friendships between people – for, per Homosaurus “Connections based on affection and trust between two or more people” (and the various cascading private and public specificities thereof) – struck us, after much debate, as unwise.

So, what ascriptions or expressions of connections of this ambiguous kind are we encountering in our sources?

We know that Maria Millington Lathbury and Jane Harrison lived for some time at the same address – Chenies Street Chambers, a women’s residence in London. They were interviewed together in Pall Mall Gazette about lecturing work, and Harrison was described by Lathbury’s daughter in a published memoir as one of the “friends” who sought to help her establish her career as a freelance lecturer.

We know that Lucy Toulmin Smith wrote an obituary for Mary Kingsley, and Kingsley’s biographer, Stephen Gwynn, described her in his 1932 work as a “friend”.

We know that Agnes Conway dedicated her 1917 book to Jane Harrison describing her (in Latin) as a “beloved teacher” (“magistra dilecta”); and that Conway’s diaries reveal Jane Harrison was a hugely influential mentor for her for many years after she left Newnham College. For Amara, who has extensively researched Conway’s diaries, this amounts to friendship.

And we know that Anna Anderson Morton and Mary Brodrick ran a business together, travelled together, and were likely to have shared an address for part of their lives. Morton also arranged public appearances for Brodrick, announcements for which appeared in contemporary newspapers.

Based on our discussions, ontological observations, and analysis of evidence, our solution – for now – is to create the property ‘has personal connection to’. We plan to use this property to capture instances where evidence exists of non-familial and personal connections between people (beyond merely using the words such as ‘friend’ in a formal manner) and that is a more modest way of asserting connections between people that evoking ‘friendship’. For example, we have used this property to capture the personal connection between Ethel Henrietta Rudkin and Margaret Alice Murray as evidenced by Murray writing a foreword to a book written by Rudkin and by Murray having been noted as encouraging Rudkin’s work. This usage is then similar to Wikidata’s usage of ‘significant person’ in that its use is likely to be sparing – we don’t anticipate that every women in our knowledge base will have a ‘personal connection’ statement associated with them. However, it differs in placing an emphasis on the personal, and in not picking out ‘significant’ relations but rather trying to amplify the significance of other statements that suggest personal connections – in making ‘personal’ the evidence that links flatmates, colleagues in an excavation, or committee members.

#IWD23BeyondNotables

Posted on by Amara

By Amara Thornton (Co-Investigator)

On 8 March 2023, the Beyond Notability team and a some keen Wikidata editors braved the snowy weather for the International Women’s Day editathon at the Society of Antiquaries. The introductory talks were in the ground floor Meeting Room, which, as I discovered about 5 minutes before we began, contains a 15th-century wooden painted panel that once hung in Baston House, the childhood home of Elizabeth Branson, one of the women in our database. Branson sent the panels for exhibition at the Society in 1880 and donated them to the Society subsequently – both exhibition and donation are recorded in the Society’s minute books (and included in her entry on our database). As I mentioned briefly in my introduction it was a fitting location, therefore, for the start of our day!

James followed my short introduction to the project and the programme for the day with training on Wikidata editing. He used the Wikidata item for politician and former Speaker of the House of Commons Betty Boothroyd, who died late last month, to talk through creating and augmenting Wikidata. Both my introduction and James’s training were recorded, and are now available on the Society of Antiquaries YouTube account https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLDFsIEMz8.

Katy Drake introducing “Illuminating Knowledge” (2023) the print she has created with Kath Van Uytrecht. Photo: A. Thornton, 8 March 2023.

We then reconvened in the Library. Before editing began in earnest, artist Katy Drake gave a brief speech to introduce a new artwork hanging in the Society’s Library, which she has produced with artist Kath Van Uytrecht. It is a large print, inspired by the women included in the Beyond Notability database. Katy and Kath travelled to Sweden to create the print.

Katy has very kindly contributed some explanatory text: “Illuminating Knowledge” is a collaborative print re-imagining the Lamp of Knowledge, a 14th century bronze Sabbath lamp that is the emblem of the Society of Antiquaries London. Kath and Katy have included 164 shapes inspired by clay Roman oil lamps to represent the women associated with the Society from 1870 -1950. Rather than a single lamp emanating from one source, the lamps represent the network of women and the importance of their contributions. By representing each individual they give voice to women’s work previously overlooked. 

Editing commenced after Katy’s short talk, and our attendees drew on a selection of relevant texts which we had pulled together from the Society’s Library to begin augmenting Wikidata. All in all it was a most enjoyable and productive day, despite the weather.

If you weren’t able to make the event, not to worry! You can get involved in editing Wikidata to add women in our database at any time – just view the training session linked above and visit our Wiki project page to get started.

Introducing our International Women’s Day 2023 Wiki editathon

Posted on by Amara

By Amara Thornton (Co-Investigator, Beyond Notability)

We’re gearing up for our second International Women’s Day event next month. This will be a Wiki editathon, held both in person and online (book here!) at the Society of Antiquaries of London on 8th March 2023.

Following on from our collaborative Wiki editathon in December with the Victoria County History and the Women’s Classical Committee, we’re encouraging you to dive into our data once more and help us increase representation on Wikipedia and Wikidata of women active in archaeology, history and heritage. This time, we’re focusing on women who have entries in our database. We’ve built a project page on Wikipedia so we can see how Wikipedia and Wikidata entries for the women in our database grow and develop.

At present, we have over 500 women in the database. Some of them, like Ella Sophia Armitage, are already on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Others, like Sigridr Magnusson, are currently only on Wikidata. Many more, like Margaret Sefton-Jones, are not currently on either Wikipedia or Wikidata.

500 is a rather large number, so we thought we’d make things a bit easier by pulling together some smaller lists. These represent different areas of our database, different places, different activities, and different subjects.

Are you interested in folklore? Here is our list of women who were affiliated with the Folklore Society!

How about women who were freelance lecturers? Here is our list.

Or women who took part in excavations at Colchester? Another list!

And here is our list of women who were exhibiting a broad range of works in a variety of venues!

There’s something for everyone, we hope. So join us on 8th March – we look forward to seeing you there. If you want to take part online, we’re encouraging people working on Wikidata to take part from 8 March until the end of the month, as it is Women’s History Month.

Women of the VCH Wiki edit-a-thon

Posted on by Amara

By Amara Thornton (Co-Investigator, Beyond Notability Project)

The Beyond Notability project is collaborating with the Victoria County History and the Women’s Classical Committee for an online Wiki editathon on 15 December. Since its foundation the Victoria County History has employed women as researchers and writers of these important county-level histories. Some of the women working for the VCH are already represented on Wikipedia and Wikidata, but many of them are not.

Attendees of the Wiki editathon will be adding women VCH contributors to Wikidata and Wikipedia, and augmenting entries for women who are already included to reflect their association with the VCH.

There are 21 women who contributed to the VCH currently included in our Beyond Notability database:

Of these 12 (Graham, Taylor, Armitage, Sellers, Bateson, Chapman, Harris, Wood, O’Neil, Stokes, Toynbee and Lobel) are on Wikidata, and 9 on Wikipedia (Graham, Taylor, Armitage, Sellers, Bateson, Wood, O’Neil, Stokes, and Lobel).

The Women’s Classical Committee has been working on adding women working in classics (broadly conceived) to Wikipedia in monthly editathons. There were 5 women involved in writing about Romano-British archaeology for the Victoria County History:

  • Charlotte Margaret Calthrop  – Romano-British Berkshire
  • Sophie Shilleto Smith – Romano-British Buckinghamshire
  • Edith Murray Keate – Romano-British Leicestershire (co-authored with William Page), Rutland (co-authored with HB Walters), Staffordshire (with Page)
  • Margerie Venables Taylor – Romano British Huntingdonshire, Kent (with Francis John Haverfield), Oxford, Shropshire (with Haverfield)
  • Ella Sophia Armitage – Ancient Earthworks for Yorkshire 1 (co-authored with Donald Montgomerie, this includes Romano-British Earthworks)

Of these, 3 are on our database (Keate, Taylor and Armitage), but only Taylor and Armitage are represented on Wikipedia and Wikidata.

15 December 2022: Editathon Programme

Purpose of event

  • Create, improve and enrich Wikidata and Wikipedia entries for women connected to the Victoria County History project
  • Introduce attendees to editing Wikipedia and Wikidata.
  • Provide a supportive environment for learning and sharing.

Goals

  • Create/augment Wikidata/Wikidata entries for women contributors to the VCH
    • If extant, are Wikidata/Wikipedia entries tidy? And do the links work?
    • HARDER Are there missing links to key identifiers (ie WorldCat, Archaeology Data Service) in Wikidata entries.
    • HARDER use “contributed to creative work” property to add VCH work to women’s entries as in this one for Mary Bateson (see her contributing to the DNB) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6779021.
  • ONE PERSON TASK Augment VCH entry on Wikipedia to clarify staffing structure, including work of contributors as well as editors
  • Use Beyond Notability database as a trusted source for referencing in Wikidata/Wikipedia entries
Beyond-Notability-Edit-a-thon-for-upload-sourceDownload

Event Plan

3-3.20 Intro talks

3-3.05 Brief welcome (Amara)

3.05-3.10 Intro to VCH (Adam)

3.10-3.15 Intro to BN (James)

3.15-3.20 Intro to WCC (Victoria)

3.20-4.30 Training & Editing

Training on Wikipedia editing (Victoria)

Training on Wikidata editing (James)

Editing

Further Reading/References

Link to VCH Volumes online (not all volumes are available for all counties): https://www.history.ac.uk/research/victoria-county-history/county-histories-progress

Beckett, John, 2011. Writing Hampshire’s History: The Victoria County History 1899-1914, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club Archaeological Society 66.

Chapman, Adam and Townsend, Mike, 2022. Bringing the VCH Past to the Wikipedia Present. IHR Blog.

Elrington, CR (Ed.), 1990. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: General Introduction Supplement 1970-1990 (Oxford University Press).

Pugh, Ralph (Ed.), 1970. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: General Introduction (Oxford University Press).

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to Adam Chapman, Victoria Leonard, James Baker, Shani Evenstein-Sigalov.

Election of Women Fellows to the Society of Antiquaries

Posted on by Ammandeep

By Ammandeep K Mahal (Research Fellow) 

Since its foundation in 1707, The Society of Antiquaries has been a hub of archaeological, historical, anthropological and art research, all of which fell under the broad term – ‘Antiquary’. Members of the Society of Antiquaries are known as Fellows. In order to become a member, a person must first be elected by existing Fellows of the Society, and they must be ‘excelling in the knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other nations’ and be ‘desirous to promote the honour, business and emoluments of the Society’. Once elected, Fellows are able to use the Post-nominal letters – FSA (e.g. Dr Rose Graham, FSA).

As part of the Beyond Notability project, the team have been combing through the archives at the Society of Antiquaries. A set of documents that has enhanced our understanding of the Society’s fellowship are the ‘Fellows Lists’. These are a set of printed lists, kept in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries and were collated every year. Each year comprises a list of the full name, address and year of election for each ‘Fellow’. The Fellows Lists also provide an annual record of the Society of Antiquaries Council and Committee members as well as its Local Secretaries.

The Council were elected from the Fellowship and met to decide matters of policy, the Committees assisted the Council with the management of specific areas of the Society and were split into the following; Finance, Library, Executive and Research. Local Secretaries were designated for different regions. Their tasks were varied and included reporting on recent discoveries, locally published books or periodicals and threats to monuments. The Local Secretaries were also required to gather information on current excavations, collectors of antiquities, recommend artefacts for exhibition, and to supply the Society with rubbings of engravings found at monuments or on stones. Therefore, the Fellows Lists provide an insight into the management and structure of the Society as well as the roles of the Fellows within it. They also show that the Society was involved in activities beyond its walls. The Beyond Notability team will investigate the role of the Local Secretaries further and then aim to integrate this work into our database, where relevant.

Women started to be elected as Fellows of the Society in 1920, and one of the earliest examples we have is that of Rose Graham. Rose was selected by the Council of the Society of Antiquaries to be proposed as a Fellow in 1920. Once she was proposed, she was supported by existing Fellows and then elected as a Fellow. Rose Graham, interestingly, was also elected to the Council of the Society in 1926, something that was also reflected in the Fellows Lists.

As part of our research at the Society, the Fellows Lists were photographed every five years, from 1920 to 1950 (the timeframe of this project). From these photographs, I was able to collate a tally of the numbers of men and the number of women Fellows. The total numbers of men and women fellows in each year were then used to construct a graph (Figure 1), enabling the visual comparison of men and women Fellows. 

The Fellows Lists have been an important dataset for us to consult as they provide comparable data that was not available from other archival sources. As can be seen in Figure 1, that the overall numbers of Fellows were increasing from 1921 to 1950, showing expansion of the Society of Antiquaries, not just through the election of women Fellows. Although the numbers of women Fellows were increasing, they were still incredibly low in comparison to the numbers of men being elected as Fellows. There seems to be relative stagnation for women Fellows in the years of the 2nd World War (reflected here in the data for 1935 and 1941) and a decrease in the numbers of men Fellows for the same time period. Thus, the events of wider society are reflected within the Fellows Lists.

This is important information that contextualises the data we are adding to our knowledge base using the fascinating documents held at the Society of Antiquaries. It forms a baseline from which it is now possible to map the growth of the Society in terms of both men and women Fellows. The numbers of women Fellows may also be used to form a comparison with similar data collected from other scholarly societies (where that data exists). This data comes from a period of great social and political change in Britain, a time that marked women’s entry into differing aspects of public life, thus the data illustrates for the first time, how such a change was reflected in the Society of Antiquaries.  

Getting started with wikibase.cloud for heritage projects

Posted on by admin

By James Baker (Co-Investigator)

The Beyond Notability Knowledge Base stores biographical information about women’s work in archaeology, history, and heritage in Britain between 1870 and 1950, information gathered during the course of our AHRC-funded research. We create information in the form of semantic triples, machine and human reading statements that describe the relationship between two things: the Miss Hemming lived in Uxbridge, that Louisa Elizabeth Deane was a donor to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1887, that Harriet Loyd Lindsay destroyed the Yew Down barrow in 1906.

Wikidata, which celebrates its 10th birthday this Autumn, is the pre-eminent knowledge base for machine readable linked data describing the relationship between people and things. Whilst we are adding and enriching wikidata, and whilst we use it as a source of information we choose not to duplicate, we maintain our research on a separate knowledge base because we need to describe relationships that are too particular to us to represent on Wikidata, and because we diverge from the Wikidata community in how some concepts – such as gender expression – should be described.

If you visually compare our knowledge base with Wikidata you’ll notice that they look remarkably similar. This is because they use the same underlaying software – Wikibase – to create, maintain, manage, and query semantic triples. Since June this year, our Beyond Notability Wikibase instance has been hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland via their wikibase.cloud service. wikibase.cloud enables people who want to run a Wikibase but don’t have the (technical or financial) capacity to run their own instance, to create a Wikibase on a shared hosting platform with minimal configuration.

This post describes how to get started, key points to consider, and some basic things to do to make your work with wikibase.cloud easier.

Create an Instance

At the time of writing, wikibase.cloud is in a closed beta, which means they are not accepting account requests. However, you can sign up for early access and join community mailing list.

Once you have a login, you can create a new wiki by choosing a site name, deciding a prefix to .wikibase.cloud, and then creating your wiki. From there you have a few important configuration options:

  • to set a site logo;
  • to edit your site skin from three options (ours is “Vector”);
  • to select whether users of your Wikibase can create accounts and edit straight away, or require your approval (we have the latter);
  • whether or not to map your properties to those on Wikidata (we don’t, for reasons).

Editing pages

Editing a page – e.g. a landing page or a list of queries – on your wikibase.cloud instance is the same as editing a page on Wikipedia in that both use the same syntax: so, ==HEADING== for a heading, * for a bullet, [http://www.foo.bar My Website] for a link, etc.

If you aren’t sure where to start, hit the View source link on another Wikibase – like ours! – borrow the code, and start playing around. Anything you get wrong can be reverted via the View history tab, so little can really go wrong.

Note that to make a new page, there is no new page button of the kind you might be used to on WordPress or similar sites. To create a new page you need to manually enter the URL you want for your new page – such as https://beyond-notability.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Project:MyNewPage – in your browser, and then hit the create this page button to create the page from scratch.

Give your collaborators edit access

Once you are logged into your Wikibase, you will see a Special pages link on the left-side tower. Here you can find lots of useful pages for maintaining your site. One is the Create account page. Use this to add new people who will be collaborating with you on the Wikibase. Their user privileges can then be maintained via links in the Users and rights section of Special pages.

Create some linked data

Linked data is made up of Subject-Predicate-Object triples. These are both human and machine readable, meaning that – on our Wikibase – Margaret Sefton-Jones (Subject) was a member of (Predicate) the Royal Archaeological Institute (Object) is the same as bnwd:Q507 bnwdt:P67 bnwd:Q35.

Subjects and objects can change position (so, the Royal Archaeological Institute (Subject) has archives at (Predicate) the Society of Antiquaries of London (Object)). On Wikibase – as on Wikidata – both subjects and objects are represented by Q numbers and called “Items”. Predicates are the glue in the middle, represented by P numbers and called “Properties”. A Q-P-Q triple is known as a “Statement”.

To make a new item, hit New Item on the left-side tower. To make a new property, hit New Property on the left-side tower. Note that you must select a Data type for new properties otherwise they can’t be used to make statements. In most cases, the Data type will be Item, meaning that the property takes a Q number as its object. Common alternatives are Point in time or EDTF Date/Time (used for dates) and Monolingual text (used for adding free text).

Once you’ve made two items and a property you can make them into a statement. To do that works as follows:

  • Go to the item page for the item you want to be a subject, hit add statement, type in your P number (note that you can start typing the label for a P or Q in this box, but new items and properties won’t appear immediately because the search index for wikibase.cloud refreshes occasionally – usually daily at the slowest – to minimise resource use/impact) and click it.
  • Add your Q number in the next box and hit save to create your statement.
  • For more complex statements, create qualifiers to add detail to your statements and/or references to show where you got the information from. Qualifiers work the same way as statements so should feel intuitive (even if the logic takes a while to figure out – dig around our Wikibase and look at pages for individuals such as Margerie Venables Taylor if you need some guidance).

See who has been making what

Special pages are your friend. One really useful section is Recent changes and logs, which can give you a sense of what changes have been made recently, who has been doing what, and the new items that have been created in your Wikibase. If you are planning quality assurance work on your Wikibase, these logs are the place to start.

Use the ‘what links here’ pages

On the left side of each item and property page is the link What links here. This is an incredibly useful resource for navigating your emerging knowledge base, getting reports on usage of particular properties, and spotting quirks (and errors!) in the implementation of your data model.

For example, the What links here page for Margerie Venables Taylor gives you a quick sense of all the items – mostly for people – that link to her, in most cases because of her role in putting other women forward as Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries.

Equally, the What links here page for Oxford gives a sense of that place as hub for women’s intellectual communities in our period.

And the What links here page can also be useful for properties. For example, the What links here page for the property Archaeology Data Service person ID gives a list of all the people with ADS IDs in our Wikibase. That the result (at the time of writing) is 304 of 489 women in our Wikibase indicates the way our sources are revealing voices thus far unrecorded on other canonical services and persistent identifer infrastructures.

Write your first query

You can query your data with your ‘Query Service’, which can be accessed from the left pane. The Wikibase query services uses a query language called SPARQL, a standard query language for linked data. I have had a long and painful relationship with SPARQL – it isn’t all that easy to get your head around. Thankfully there are amazing resources out there to support query writing, notably Bob DuCharme’s book Learning SPARQL, and the Wikidata community maintains a range of example queries which give a sense of what is possible. Because a lot is possible.

We use SPARQL queries not only for analysing our data (for example, a query that returns people in our knowledge base sorted by the number of places they lived, including the number of cites/towns/villages in which they lived in), but also for auditing our data: for example, to return lists of people whose gender we’ve been unable to assign or people in the knowledge base listed alongside the external identifiers – e.g. Wikidata IDs – that we’ve been able to find. These connections with external IDs enable our linked data to link to other linked data, and are particularly powerful in enabling us – for example – to recover familial connections from Wikidata (where people have Wikidata IDs, and to the extent to which their familial connections are listed on Wikidata).

By building up our data, and connecting to external sources, we hope – in time – to be able to write more complex queries that support our research, including queries that return lists of women who undertook work within two years of having their first child, or those people who used their position in the field to bring women into the profession (a hacky version of which we’ve made a start on), and so on.

Join the community

When I run out of SPARQL talent (which happens often), Bob’s book and the examples of Wikidata often help me realise how to write the query I want. But if I’m totally stuck, I’ve also found that the Wikibase community is full of wonderful people willing to offer advice and guidance. Questions on Twitter are responded to. The Wikibase community on Telegram are a constant source of support and insight. And public tickets on Phabricator – where fixes and feature additions are proposed, prioritised, and tracked – help reveal which problems are your own, and which are shared; as well as being a space to log problems and suggest features. Like many such open source communities, the Wikibase community – as well as the wider Wikidata – are welcoming to beginners, full of expertise, and provide sustainability to the technology – software is, after all, about people. So, if you are thinking of using the Wikibase, join the community, dig around the community activity, don’t be afraid to ask the community and when you have insights to share or wish to contribute to the community.

License your data

People need to know how they can use your data. So make it easy for them. Good linked data enables data to be connected, queried across, and assembled from various sources. So clearly state your terms of use (data on Wikidata is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License) so that it can be used. Better still use your Wikibase to document your data so that people using it get a sense of the decisions you’ve made, the absences you are aware of, and the uses you think would be inappropriate or might cause harm. If you are not sure where to start, see Timnit Gebru, Jamie Morgenstern, Briana Vecchione, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Hanna Wallach, Hal Daumé III, and Kate Crawford’s wonderful ‘Datasheets for Datasets’ (2020) – you don’t need to follow every suggestion, but given that you will be creating machine readable data on your Wikibase, it is sure to provide inspiration.