I was just talking to some of the Freebase Data Team, and they asked me to pass on a request. They’re working on several large loads of books and authors: the Open Library Project, ISFDB, and an as-yet-unnamed major university library’s catalogue. As information comes in from an external source, it’s important to match it to what’s already in Freebase. This is called reconciliation.
Reconciliation gets better the more we know about the topics in Freebase, and one of the most important things to know is a topic’s types. That is, when we’re trying to match an author “Jane Smith”, it helps if we can limit our matching to people named Jane Smith that we already know are authors.
In short, typed topics make our data loads more effective.
We’re already working on typing 95% of the topics in Freebase. If you’d like to help out, and know that your efforts are going to be multiplied by the data team’s mass loads, you can help us by typing authors and books.
Using Typewriter, simply choose Author (15,349 items) or Book (9,323 items) from the list of types, and answer “Yes” or “No” for each topic.
Don’t forget, there’s also an iPhone app: great for that long commute or boring meeting!
For more background reading on our data loads, reconciliation, and human intelligence, check out:
