Talk:Q1622062

Merge with "academic library" (Q856234)

Currently there are 171 instances of "college library" and 467 instances of "academic library", per:

SELECT (COUNT(?college_library) AS ?college_libs) WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
  ?college_library wdt:P31 wd:Q1622062.
}

SELECT (COUNT(?academic_library) AS ?academic_libs) WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
  ?academic_library wdt:P31 wd:Q856234.
}

Most of the instances of "college library" appear to be libraries attached to universities.

"college library" currently is a subclass of "school library": school libraries are associated with primary and secondary education (per the Encyclopedia Britannica entry). Currently the qualifier on the "instance of: school library" is "of: higher education institution", which conflicts with the base class. Over the past year, the subclass hierarchy has changed between having "school library", "academic library", and "library" as its parent class. The purpose of this item does not seem to be well understood.

Given that an academic library is "part of: higher education", and given that colleges are higher education institutions, I propose merging college library into academic library (Q856234), and adding "college library" as an alias. Dan scott (talk) 23:51, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

There are now 207 instances, as a "further education library" subclass has been created, further confusing things. Dan scott (talk) 22:41, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

It isn't possible to merge university library (Q1622062) and academic library (Q856234) because both have linked German and Estonian language Wikipedia articles. I agree that there is a problem with the usage of and relationship between these two items but this is perhaps indicative of a general problem with the library class structure in Wikidata.

I wanted to use university library (Q1622062) but, as you've mentioned, most of the instances are university libraries and it is, therefore, not suitable for the libraries of further education colleges, which are not higher education institutions. Since there was already a further education college (Q21822439) item, I felt it would be appropriate to create a further education library (Q50233619) item to reflect the fact that these libraries are distinct from those at schools and universities.

Happy to discuss possible improvements to these items or the library class structure Simon Cobb (Sic19 ; talk page) 19:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree there is a general problem with the library class structure in Wikidata. Was kicking around a hierarchy like the following but it needs much more thought:

library
  -> educational library
    -> school library
    -> further education library
    -> academic library
      -> college library
      -> university library

Dan scott (talk) 02:50, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Grouping these libraries together in the educational library class makes sense. It might be worth posting a message on project chat to get some community input before making any significant changes. Simon Cobb (Sic19 ; talk page) 21:22, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Grouping these libraries together in the educational library class makes sense, however specification of academic libraries might be much more complex (for instance, with faculty-libraries, inter-university_libraries, etc.). Morevover, the diffrence between college and university is not international. All in all, it would be more efficient to keep to « academic library » only. --Julienpedia (talk) 14:33, 18 May 2020 (UTC)