Wikidata:Data Import Guide/Step 7: Match the data to Wikidata

◀ Step 6: Chose how to import the data Back to index Step 8: Add the data to Wikidata ▶

Option 1: Request data is imported by other people

Step A: Request data be imported into Wikidata on the Wikidata bot request page. To make a request click on the Add a new request button and then link to your request on the Data Hub page.

Step B: Check the Manual work needed section of the table once the import has started to see what work has to be done manually.

Step C: Go to Step 11 once the data has been imported.

Option 2: Self import

Go to Step 8: Match the data to Wikidata.

Before you can import data about any list of items, you will need to know the corresponding Wikidata ID numbers for each item in the list (essentially each row of your spreadsheet). You will also sometimes need to find Wikidata Ids for people, places, concepts or other things that are used to describe your main list of items.

a) Matching 'main' items Finding a Wikidata item number for each 'row' in the data (e.g. the item number for each painting if the dataset was a collection of paintings). The options you have for this step are:

Mix'n'match - Use this tool when a significant amount will need to be matched manually by community members.
OpenRefine - Use this tool for fine-grained matching using multiple columns of your dataset, using fuzzy-matching, external identifiers or sitelinks.
Other semi-auto matching - When the data has some unique IDs, URLs or other data in common with Wikidata that allow you to generate a list of Q numbers (e.g. by running a query and matching common data in your import spreadsheet).

b) Matching items used as values

Finding Q numbers for any additional data to be added. E.g. a painting which has "country of origin" = "Italy", needs to become P495 = Q38 (Note: The properties should have been found already in Step 5 above).

The method you use for for this will depend on the specific case. The following tools are available:

OpenRefine can be used again for that;
Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools addon provides similar functionality for Google Sheets.

With any method used, you may end up with some manual work at the end to finish it off.