MetaBelgica: A shared entity management infrastructure between Federal Scientific Institutes in Belgium

Apr 1, 2023

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Sven Lieber

data manager

My research interests include FAIR and Linked Data.

Posts

SEMANTiCS 2026

In a world with generative AI, semantically annotated data of high quality is also of high value! The SEMANTiCS conference usually brings together not only Semantic Web scholars, but also players from the industry. More than 400 people attended the 22nd edition of SEMANTiCS in Ghent, Belgium from September 15 to 17, 2026. Apparently a record number of participants! In this blog post I will reflect on some of the keynotes and talks that I have attended. As always with references, links, and archived at the Rogue Scholar.

Sven Lieber

Sep 18, 2026 11 min read events

Publications

Balancing Persistence and Access: Implementing Archival Resource Keys (ARKs) on Partially Visible Wikibase Data in the MetaBelgica Platform

Upcoming poster about the usage of ARK identifiers in the MetaBelgica platform

Sven Lieber

Enforce fine-grained data governance for Wikibase via generic and declarative filter rules

Upcoming poster at the SEMANTiCS conference, September 2026 in Ghent, Belgium

Sven Lieber

MetaBelgica: Breaking Belgian Federal Data Silos to support Named Entity Linking

This poster presents the MetaBelgica project and aims to collect feedback from the DH community about the needs of authority data for Named Entity Linking (NEL).

Sven Lieber , Ann Van Camp , Dieter De Witte , Erik Buelinckx , Els Angenon , Hannes Lowagie , Inez De Prekel , Julie M. Birkholz , Karine Lasaracina , Ravi Khatri

MetaBelgica: A Linked Data Infrastructure Between Federal Scientific Institutes in Belgium

This paper introduces the MetaBelgica project that aims to fill the gap for Belgian Authority data related to Cultural Heritage.

Sven Lieber , Ann Van Camp , Dieter De Witte , Eva Coudyzer , Erik Buelinckx , Els Angenon , Hannes Lowagie , Julie M. Birkholz , Karine Lasaracina

Events

Catalogues-as-data: Practice, Principles, and Prospects

This was a panel discussion at DHBenelux 2026 where me and my co-presenters talked about catalogues-as-data. After very brief presentations from each of us, we had a moderated session with questions and input from the audience.

Jun 5, 2026 10:30 UTC — 12:00 UTC Maastricht, The Netherlands

James Baker , Coen Wilders , Rebecca Kahn , Steven Claeyssens , Sven Lieber

RDA mapping for MetaBelgica data

In this presentation at the EURIG annual meeting 2026, I present the MetaBelgica project and how we aim to generate RDA-compliant data via a property mapping in the Wikibase.

May 28, 2026 09:45 UTC — 10:15 UTC Brussels, Belgium

Sven Lieber

Opening up Belgian Cultural Heritage Reference Data with Wikibase

In this presentation for the ENDORSE conference, I will present the MetaBelgica project, our data integration strategy and why we opted for a central Wikibase solution for our authority data management.

Oct 8, 2025 18:10 UTC — 18:30 UTC Brussels, Belgium

Sven Lieber

Data standardization in the MetaBelgica project

In this presentation at the second study day on the Visual Name Authority project of the Flemish archiving institution meemoo, I talk about data standardization in the MetaBelgica project. More concretely I focus on standardizing dates according to the EDTF format and placenames with the help of GeoNames.

Apr 22, 2025 10:50 UTC — 11:10 UTC Brussels, Belgium

Sven Lieber

FAIR authority data: A first step towards a Linked Open Belgian Bibliography

In this webinar for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) I argue for structured Linked Data-ready data in library catalogues. This serves as a single source of truth and eases further steps towards Linked Open Data for example for the Belgian Bibliography.

Nov 27, 2024 15:20 UTC — 15:40 UTC Online

Sven Lieber

Data Governance Considerations for MetaBelgica

In this presentation at a study day on the Visual Name Authority project of the Flemish archiving institution meemoo, I talk about possible data governance for the MetaBelgica project. I do this by referring to data governance of the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND) in German-speaking countries and recent research.

May 21, 2024 10:50 UTC — 11:10 UTC Brussels, Belgium

Sven Lieber

MetaBelgica: A Linked Data Infrastructure between Federal Scientific Institutes in Belgium

In this presentation at the first Conference on Research Data Infrastructure, I present the MetaBelgica project for the first time to the public. Four Federal Belgian institutions join forces to collaboratively maintain authority data and make them available as FAIR data.

Sep 12, 2023 15:10 UTC — 15:25 UTC Karlsruhe, Germany

Sven Lieber