Wikidata:WikidataCon 2017/Notes/Wikidata and biographical identifers

Abstract

We currently have ~3.7 million people in Wikidata, of whom over 2.5 million have enough metadata to usefully disambiguate them (one or motr of dates, nationality, occupation...). Many of these people are linked to one or more external databases, and over a million have one or more external identifiers in an authority control record. This gives us a great opportunity to tie together all sorts of external authority control records with a common "spine" - a single service that can hold links between them and allow connections between them as needed. These links can also enhance the authority of Wikidata, making it more usable as an authority file in its own right.