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< GLAM‎ | Newsletter‎ | February 2020


Wiki project on Museums with My Armenia

Wiki project on Museums with My Armenia

On February 15-16, 2020 Wikimedia Armenia in partnership with “My Armenia”, a program with USAID and Smithsonian Institution, launched the new GLAM program “Strengthening Regional Museums.” This partnership will help cultural institutions share their knowledge and resources with the world through various Wikimedia platforms: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiki Data, etc. This project also aims to make knowledge more accessible to the public, promoting regional museums and motivating them to get engaged in the Wiki community and become editors. Within the framework of this collaboration, Wikimedia Armenia worked with the “My Armenia” program’s nine beneficiary regional museums. Within the framework of this project, museums provided various materials about the history of their institutions, the region, their exhibitions and collection highlights, biographies of renowned persons from their regions, and more. By the end of this training, several Wikipedia articles were created, Wiki Data was generated, and photos were made available in Wiki Commons.

Ten museums in the regions of the Republic of Armenia participated in the wiki project, among them: Hovhannes Tumanyan House-Museum in Dsegh, Goris Geological Museum, Yeghegnadzor Regional Museum, Art Gallery of Jermuk, The Vanadzor Fine Arts Museum, The Gallery of Mariam and Eranuhi Aslamazyan Sisters, The Charents Museum of Literature and Arts, The Regional Museum and Art Gallery of Dilijan․


Moreira Salles Institute GLAM initiative in Brazil

By Sturm

GLAM initiatives this year

Resuming our reports of our GLAM initiatives this year of 2020, the Wiki Movement Brazil User Group brings this month the case of the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS, acronym in Portuguese). The IMS holds important assets in four areas: photography, with the bulk of material, as well as music, literature, and iconography. Moreira Salles Institute is also renowned for its exhibitions, highlighting visual arts by artists from Brazil and abroad.

As you may know, we are always concerned with making sure that our GLAM initiatives are not a mere upload of images on Commons, but something organized, structured and that contains quality metadata, reverberating with other projects like Wikipedia and Wikidata, for example.

So far, more than 80 images from the IMS collection have been uploaded for this GLAM initiative. Stay tuned and follow the developments of this initiative here.

IMS GLAM on Wikipedia

This image was upload during another GLAM that we've promoted: the Arquivo Nacional GLAM.

On Wikipedia, a case to be cited is the improvement of Alice Brill's Portuguese language article. Alice (1920–2013) was a German-born Brazilian photographer, painter, and art critic. In addition to being a photographer, she worked as a painter, participating in the I and IX Bienal de São Paulo (1951 and 1967 respectively), as well as several individual and collective exhibitions. Her subjects involved urban landscapes and abstractionism, performing watercolors and batik paintings. The article was created and improved mostly by Aline Beatriz and Bruno Buccalon, who has been one of the main contact persons in this GLAM initiative. Bruno is a technical assistant at the Instituto Moreira Salles' photography department, currently working with Rice University.

IMS GLAM on Commons

An example of media file on Commons using Structured Data.

In the case of Commons, we are attentive to the context of the development of the Structured Data on Commons (SDC), a three-year software development project funded by the Sloan Foundation to provide the infrastructure for Wikimedia Commons volunteers to organize data about media files in a consistent, linked manner. The goals of the project are to make contributing to Commons easier by providing new ways to edit, curate, and write software for Commons, and to make general use of Commons easier by expanding capabilities in search and reuse. You may read more about it in this blog post. A good example of an archive of our GLAM initiative that was uploaded to Commons is the photo on the side, by Marc Ferrez (1843–1923). Ferrez was a Brazilian photographer born in Rio de Janeiro. He photographed Brazil from south to north, but paid more attention to his home city, Rio de Janeiro. His masterpieces are the great albums of railway constructions and the great panoramic views of the city of Rio de Janeiro and its development.

IMS GLAM on Wikidata

Last, but not least, are the items on Wikidata. Considering that Marc Ferrez is certainly one of the main names of photographers in the collection of items that are part of this GLAM, we paid special attention to his item on Wikidata: Q3180571.

For other GLAM initiatives promoted or supported by our user group, visit our category on Wikimedia Commons.


The Helsinki then and now exhibition

By Zache
People exploring the exhibition

Helsinki: Then and now is a photography exhibition on how the Helsinki cityscape has changed over time held in the Helsinki Central Library Oodi. The exhibition opened on November 15th, 2019 and will be on display until April 6th, 2020. The physical space Brygga used in the exhibition is run by the Helsinki Urban Environment Division. The implementation was a collaboration between Wikimedia Finland and the Estonian historical photo group Ajapaik.

Materials used in the exhibition are collected from Wiki Loves Monuments, Helsinki Rephotography’s photo walks, and openly licensed content from GLAMs. The old photos are mainly from the Helsinki City Museum and maps from the City Archive. In addition to the photos, we implemented tablet interfaces for annotating and browsing the photos. We have a video display that displays the best photos of Wiki Loves Monuments Finland 2019 and a wall display connected to social media that projects photographs posted to Twitter and Instagram. At the beginning of February, we also had projector time for a then-and-now slideshow in Oodi’s entrance hall.

Centrally located Oodi is next to the main train station in downtown Helsinki. Oodi is the most popular library in Finland and recently won the 2019 Public Library of the Year award. We have used space also for some events. So far there have been 15,000 visitors.

Planning the exhibition

We proposed the exhibition at the beginning of August to the Helsinki Urban Environment Division’s Brygga team. They were interested in the idea. However, our original idea was to use Helsinki-related content from Wiki Loves Monuments and rephotography was a secondary idea. In discussions with the Brygga team, it was clear that they were more interested in the idea of showing how the city has changed. They were also very interested in ideas on how to engage people. Another thing we realized only after discussions with the Brygga team was that there were also hard limitations because of the character of the space.

As space is an open, unstaffed balcony, it needed to be safe for library users all the time. It meant that the physical installation should be vandal-proof. For example, props needed to be selected so that they could not be easily dropped from the balcony. Everything also needed to be kid-safe. Things needed to be mounted so that they could not tip over if climbed on or so light so they would not hurt anyone if they hit them. What we had was video displays, tablets, and a lot of surfaces that we could cover with stickers or boards with pictures. The proposed synopsis of the exhibition was submitted at the end of August and we received an answer in September.

In August and the beginning of September, we asked for approval from the Wikimedia Foundation and from the City of the Helsinki so we could use money from the Helsinki rephotography project for the exhibition. We also needed to confirm that we could use the money after the end of October if needed as it was the end of Helsinki Rephotography's first year’s term. The budget for the exhibition was 8265€ for building the physical content and 8000€ for the work.

Implementation

We had a team of five people: Zache, Eteil, and Kulttuurinavigaattori in Finland and Vahur Puik and Märt Häkkinen in Estonia. Zache coordinated the exhibition as project leader of Helsinki Rephotography. Eteil was our graphic designer. Kulttuurinavigaattori was the main person for curating and preparing the rephotography content until he traveled to Benin in mid-October. While not part of the team itself, Yupik translated the name of the exhibition into quite a few languages and crowdsourced the rest, resulting in 40 languages ranging from Riffian Berber to the Saami languages that could be used to advertise the exhibition.

Vahur and Märt created our content for the tablets. We had a big television for geotagged then-and-now pairs of photos which was controlled by a tablet. We also had two smaller tablets where users could browse photos and enrich the information of the photos. Vahur and Märt were also doing their exhibition for Ajapaik in the Museum of Photography in Tallinn and we shared the technology and ideas with them.

For content, we used photos from Wiki Loves Monuments and our photo walks. Some of the walks concentrated on photography while some were more focused on history such as a walk on an old military island outside Helsinki and getting to know Signe Brander’s life. There were about 120 participants altogether and 300-400 photos were published in Commons and Ajapaik. For old photos, we concentrated on photos by Signe Brander from the 1900s to the 1920s. We used photos by other photographers too, but the photos from Signe Brander were clearly one of our main sources of inspiration. In addition, we used old maps and aerial photos of Helsinki.

The balcony space is also divided into two areas where we were in the larger one and the smaller one had to change mini-exhibitions like biking in the city and the plans by the architecture students of Aalto University. The Brygga space has employees from the Helsinki Urban Environment Division who are staffing the balcony during office hours. They were also presenting the city, but also the exhibitions and other content that was in the balcony.

As for events we had an event for kids on Oodi’s birthday December 5thm 2020 and then a second time when we visited the exhibition as part of our autumn meeting. On Open Data Day on March 7, 2020, we are using the space for our programs together with OKFI.

What we learned?

As the timing was mainly defined by when Brygga was free and by available funding on the Helsinki rephotography project. However, this meant also that we need to do it in parallel with Wiki Loves Monuments, organizing walks as part of Helsinki Rephotography, and preparing our SAPG. It was also done by the people who haven't done exhibitions before and pretty much everything would have benefitted from more time. So there would have been room for a proper try, fail, refactor loop. However, we got great help from the city of Helsinki’s Brygga team.

The electrical interfaces of the tablets were translated to Swedish, Estonian, and English. However, due to a limited amount of time and space, the printed exhibition texts on the walls were only in Finnish. Considering also that Oodi is visited by not only people living in the Helsinki Metropolitan Region but also by lots of tourists, it would have been a good idea for us to have had the exhibition material in other languages besides Finnish since there are plenty of people who do not understand Finnish visiting Oodi and the exhibition. For example, we had a lot of Russian era content in the tablets and Russian translations for description texts were asked.

Partially also for timing reasons, we did not plan beforehand what we would do when the exhibition was actually running. With the exhibition, we had a multipurpose space that could be used a lot more versatilely for public events than what we have done to date. Continuous running events would have required people who would be generating ideas just for this. Another issue related to this was that as the place is visible it needs a lot of Wikimedia materials for sharing. Basically we only have a Wiki Loves Monuments postcards and some Creative Commons copyright leaflets left. As a result, we made a new set of postcards from WLM2019 photos. We learned that the content for sharing should be prepared beforehand so we could just print them when we need them.

Gallery

  • Helsinki Then and Now exhibition presentation slides in Oodi, view from the hall.
    Helsinki Then and Now exhibition presentation slides in Oodi, view from the hall.
  • Parliamentary house seen through the window and the same building on the photo on the handrail.
    Parliamentary house seen through the window and the same building on the photo on the handrail.
  • Children's drawings of the future of the Helsinki.
    Children's drawings of the future of the Helsinki.
  • Photos in the handrail and building the Helsinki Then and Now exhibition in Oodi.
    Photos in the handrail and building the Helsinki Then and Now exhibition in Oodi.
  • Deoldified Signe Brander photos from Finna.fi by Väri-Signe bot
    Deoldified Signe Brander photos from Finna.fi by Väri-Signe bot
  • Crowdsourcing tablets and map tablet with television
    Crowdsourcing tablets and map tablet with television
  • Big tv monitor, tablet kiosk for rephotographs and aerial photos and old maps of Helsinki Finland
    Big tv monitor, tablet kiosk for rephotographs and aerial photos and old maps of Helsinki Finland
  • Sift-pics annotation tablet where the user selected if the context of the photo was indoor, outdoor, urban ...
    Sift-pics annotation tablet where the user selected if the context of the photo was indoor, outdoor, urban ...
  • Face-tagging annotation tablet where the user selected if the person in the photo was young or old, male or female
    Face-tagging annotation tablet where the user selected if the person in the photo was young or old, male or female
  • People exploring the exhibition
    People exploring the exhibition
  • The old city map of Helsinki 1909 by Helsingin Kaupunginkanslia / kaupunginarkisto
    The old city map of Helsinki 1909 by Helsingin Kaupunginkanslia / kaupunginarkisto
  • The old city map of Helsinki 1909 by Helsingin Kaupunginkanslia / kaupunginarkisto
    The old city map of Helsinki 1909 by Helsingin Kaupunginkanslia / kaupunginarkisto
  • Then and Now exhibition in Oodi guestbook and info material
    Then and Now exhibition in Oodi guestbook and info material
  • Leaflet table and door panel with photos
    Leaflet table and door panel with photos
  • Doors with send rephotos to us and we will show them text.
    Doors with send rephotos to us and we will show them text.
  • The other side of the Brygga space with architecture examples by Aalto University Students.
    The other side of the Brygga space with architecture examples by Aalto University Students.
  • Leaflet totem with crowdsourced translations of the exhibition.
    Leaflet totem with crowdsourced translations of the exhibition.


GLAM related blogposts

Blogposts

Several blogposts (in French) where related to GLAMs :


Proposing collaboration with museums in Bali; First Wikisource training in the region

Meetings with new Bali museums

In the first week of February, Wikimedia Indonesia went to Bali to meet GLAM institutions we were going to propose collaboration. They are Museum Blanco, Museum Puri Lukisan, Bali 1928, Museum Seni Neka, and Museum Seni Agung Rai (ARMA). The institutions were open with the proposal, thus Wikimedia Indonesia sent memorandum of understanding and memorandum of action draft for further review by the institutions.

  • Museum Seni Neka
    Museum Seni Neka
  • Museum Puri Lukisan
    Museum Puri Lukisan

Wikisource training

Wikimedia Indonesia also held a Wikisource training for Balinese Wikipedia community in Denpasar. The aim was to introduce Wikisource project for the community as they would like to propose Balinese Wikisource, so this would help them how to use Wikisource.

Participants' contributions are available here.

  • Wikisource training in Denpasar
    Wikisource training in Denpasar


Students write articles about Media artists, Public Domain Day 2020, Wiki Goes Caribbean, WikiFridays at Ihlia - Wikimedia Nederland in January & February 2020

By DDJJ

Students write articles about Media artists

In January we completed a collaboration between Wikimedia, LIMA and 20 students of the study Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam. The students were commissioned to write a Wikipedia article. Most students wrote an article for the English Wikipedia and submitted their article as a draft. Some have now been published, others are still awaiting review or need improvement.

Public Domain Day 2020

Copyright protection is temporary. In the Netherlands, the rule of thumb is that the duration of this protection expires 70 years after the maker's death, on 1 January. That is why 1 January is also called Public Domain Day. On this day, many works become available whose (re)use is no longer restricted by copyright. On January 10, 2020, attention was paid to the makers who died in 1949, their works entering the public domain, underlying legislation and new technical developments with a programme of lectures and workshops (see full programme (in Dutch)). During this day, Wikimedia Nederland organised a special edit-a-thon for the makers who died in 1949 and who do not yet have a lemma on Wikipedia. The day took place in Sound and Vision in Hilversum. Watch the photo impression of Publiek Domeindag 2020 on Wikimedia Commons. Also, a batch of works from Dutch visual artists that entered the public domain was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain Day 2020 is an initiative of the working group Public Domain of Vereniging Open Nederland, in which Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland also participates.

Wiki Goes Caribbean

On February 18, 28 people travelled to the National Archives in The Hague to visit the Wiki goes Caribbean New Year meeting. Among the participants were Wikimedians, researchers and people from the network of Wikimedia Nederland, the Dutch Caribbean Bookclub, the National Archives and various organizations including Stichting Splika, Stichting Stil Verleden, the MUSEON, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and Stichting Tribal Wisdom. The progress made within the Wiki goes Caribbean project and the plans for 2020 were discussed in more detail. In addition, valuable ideas were shared about approaching and activating people with a connection to the Caribbean. The meeting ended with a pleasant drink with Antillean snacks. Pictures of the meeting can be seen on Wikimedia Commons.

WikiFridays at Ihlia

On 14 February, IHLIA and Wikimedia Nederland organized the first Wikivrijdag at IHLIA. There was a lot of enthusiasm for this afternoon, we had already reached the maximum number of 15 participants well before 14 February.

It was interesting to think together about encyclopaedic relevance and we are happy to report that an article was published the same afternoon (Transcreen).

From now on there will be a monthly meeting at IHLIA. Together with IHLIA we are working on deepening and expanding the information on lhbti-related matters on Wikipedia and sister projects.


Wikipedia editing workshop with the Norwegian Network for Museums

On February 6, Wikimedia Norway held an editing workshop for employees at Norwegian museums, at their network gathering. The network gathering and workshop was held at The Norwegian Women´s Museum Norway, in Kongsvinger. Some 20 new biographies about women were startet at this workshop, most of them based on names from the red list project. The date February 6 is also the Saami National Day, so a number of the biographies created this day was about Saami women.

Postcard Women in Red Wikimedia Norge


Great dedication of librarians

#1Lib1Ref: Serbian Librarians achieved great results

The global reference editing campaign #1Lib1Ref has placed Serbia at the top of wiki communities that have added the highest number of references. A total of 30 editors of Serbian Wikipedia added as many as 4.052 missing references! The absolute winner of this action is the user др Милорад Димић, who added 1.230 references, which placed him at the second place in the world!

The second best participant in Serbia, the user Gzanag added 577 references, followed by user Ziva73 with 408 entries, Ojce with 340, and user 11sasapus11 who added 336 references. These 5 editors were placed on the list of Top 10 best editors of the global campaign.

Wikimedia Serbia awarded the best 10 editors with vouchers for the purchase of books and goodie bags, but also organized fine catering at the University Library for the final event.

The most active participants were librarians from University Library “Svetozar Marković”, where one workshop and prize-giving event were held.

FindingGLAMs Challenge

Wikimedia Serbia participated for the first time in the campaign of adding data to Wikidata, thus improving the coverage of information and creating the largest global database. The FindingGLAMs Challenge ran from February 17 to 23, 2020.

As a result of this campaign, Wikidata was increased by 337 added cultural institutions, almost 10 thousand added references and 7,910 improved items on cultural institutions.

For the first time, Wikimedia Serbia participated in the action of adding data to Wikidata and contributed with 129,029 items on cultural institutions, 93 improved items and 59 added references to the items. The participants of this action made a big step towards achieving the Wikidata mission and increasing the amount of data on cultural institutions on the Internet.

Public domain, open media, open knowledge - Panel discussion

Within the framework of the International Public Domain Day 2020, Wikimedia Serbia participated in a panel discussion ,,Public Media, Open Media, Open Knowledge". The focus was on highlighting the importance of the public domain in science, education, culture, and the arts. Panel discussion participants were Aleksandra Popovic (University Library “Svetozar Markovic”), Tamara Butigan Vučaj (Department for Digital Library Development and Microfilming, National Library of Serbia, DARIAH-ERIC, Council of Europe Network), Nebojsa Ratkovic (Educational Program, Wikimedia of Serbia), Gorana Gomirac (GLAM Program, Wikimedia of Serbia) and Nevenka Antic (Creative Commons of Serbia).

Gallery

  • Milorad Dimić, Intermedichbo (1st place)
    Milorad Dimić, Intermedichbo (1st place)
  • The second 1Lib1Ref Workshop in Serbia
    The second 1Lib1Ref Workshop in Serbia
  • The first 1Lib1Ref Workshop in Serbia
    The first 1Lib1Ref Workshop in Serbia
  • Panel discussion ,,Public domain, open media, open knowledge".jpg
    Panel discussion ,,Public domain, open media, open knowledge".jpg


Historic photos; Support for international Wikimedia community; Library training tour; Many GLAMs improved on Wikidata

Historic photos from the National Museum of Science and Technology

The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology has shared over 500 historical photographs by Sigurd Curman, a Swedish architectural historian and Director-General of the National Heritage Board. The photos were taken in the early 20th century during Curman's travels across Europe and depict urban environments in Germany, France, Sweden and other countries. Can you find any familiar places?

  • A public urinal in Dinkelsbühl, Germany.
    A public urinal in Dinkelsbühl, Germany.
  • Alhambra, Spain.
    Alhambra, Spain.
  • Altes Rathaus in Bamberg, Germany.
    Altes Rathaus in Bamberg, Germany.
  • Porte Cailhau, France.
    Porte Cailhau, France.

Wikimedia Sweden supports the international Wikimedia community

Back in December, Wikimedia Sweden invited you to participate in the Minor grants program, aimed at supporting the international community in organizing GLAM-focused events. Thanks to the hard work of everyone who applied, several events have now taken place, and dozens of GLAM professionals in several countries have got the opportunity to learn about Wikidata, Wikipedia and participating in the Wikimedia movement. You can read more about the workshops organized in Nigeria and Ghana.

Library training tour

Wikipedia i biblioteken, training session in Stockholm.

The second part of the training tour for librarians has ended, and 87 librarians have learned how to edit and contribute to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, and also how to organize events like edit-a-thons, workshops and public lectures for visitors to the libraries. In their training they added 56k words, uploaded 98 images and got almost 300k views on the articles they edited. Some libraries and librarians have already hosted both internal and external events, and others are planning for running single events and returning series of events as part of their activities.

Tore and Axel also particiapated at the conference Folk och Kultur (en: People and Culture) where they talked to people and gave a short presentation on if and why you can trust Wikipedia.

Many GLAMs improved on Wikidata

The FindingGLAMs Challenge, a competition to improve data about GLAMs on Wikidata, took place between February 17th – 23rd. 90 people signed up and over 50 of them made at least one edit. Over 16,000 edits were made in total, including over 9,000 items created from scratch.


Kimonos and Khalili

By MartinPoulter & Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing)

Khalili Collections

A Japanese Kimono from the Khalili Collection of Kimono

The partnership between the Khalili Collections and Wikimedia UK has entered a new phase, with User:MartinPoulter being employed part-time as a Wikimedian In Residence for six months starting 13 February 2020. The project page is at w:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Khalili and monthly reports will appear in this newsletter. The Khalili Foundation is working on the first batch of images for bulk upload. In the mean time they have shared a high-resolution image of an item from the Khalili Collection of Kimono (right). Martin has written an article about the Khalili Collection of Kimono, which will serve as a gallery of kimono images once they are available. English Wikipedia's list of Islamic art museums has been updated with a list published by Professor Khalili, taking it from 16 entries to 76.

Coventry University

Andy Mabbett's residency at Coventry University continues. The University's "Disruptive Media Learning Lab", where Andy is based, hosted the Wikimedia in Education UK Summit 2020 on 26 February. At the time of writing, videos of the main sessions are being edited. Meanwhile, some open licenced photos are on Flickr.


Winning photos Wiki Loves Monuments shown in different cities; Libraries Lead an All-Ukrainian Challenge

Wiki Loves Monuments: Showing Winning Photos to All-Comers

Winning photos exhibition continued its tour to different Ukrainian cities. As it was before, GLAM institutions and volunteers were welcomed to invite or organize displays.

Until February 2020, the exhibition was held in two cities: Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Visitors were able to admire the top 10 photos of last year’s contest, as well as photographs that won the Jewish Heritage and Mill specials.


Libraries Lead an All-Ukrainian Challenge to Write Article for Wikipedia's Birthday

Every year, Wikimedia Ukraine invites everyone to make a gift for Ukrainian Wikipedia's birthday — to write an article. On January 30th, Ukrainian Wikipedia turned 16th, which meant that we once again ran Wikimarathon, a challenge whose aim is to engage as many people as possible in writing Wikipedia. Wikimarathon 2020 lasted for a week (January 26th — February 1st).

Wikimarathon consisted of two parts: a week-long online marathon and a series of events across the country. Overall, in 2020 Wikimedia Ukraine supported more than 60 wiki-workshops in 37 localities across the country; 21 regions of Ukraine out of 25 were covered.

Map of Wikimarathon 2020 meetups in Ukraine


Libraries have led our quest to cover the whole country (which is the biggest in Europe, so to speak) by Wikimedia-related events in the week around Wikipedia's birthday. 25 libraries in 16 regions hosted a Wikimarathon event, including two libraries in Ukraine's capital Kyiv and as many as six libraries in the Kharkiv region in Eastern Ukraine. One of these 25 libraries was WIKI Library in Lviv, a local library inspired by the idea of Wikipedia.


Black History Month and Open Access Anniversaries

Open Access: Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution officially launched their Open Access initiative on February 25, 2020, with the participation of many Wikimedians involved.

The initiative provides CC0 access to "3 million 2D and 3D digital items" across the organization's 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. Wikimedia District of Columbia and the community has worked with Smithsonian for more than a decade on Wikimedia-related projects, and has been a consistent partner in pushing for this initiative. At the launch event at the National Museum of American History, Wikimedia Foundation chief executive officer Katherine Maher gave opening remarks, and Wikimedia DC had a booth with Kelly Doyle, Open Knowledge Coordinator with the Smithsonian's American Women's History Initiative, and Andrew Lih, who has partnered with Smithsonian on the Wiki Art Depiction Explorer, operated a demonstration booth at the launch event. Wikimedians who have worked with the Smithsonian in the past included Sarah Stierch and Dominic Byrd-McDevitt who served as Wikimedians-in-residence with the Smithsonian over the last decade.

See the on-wiki Smithsonian Open Access page to interact with the demos Andrew and Kelly showed.

Effie Kapsalis, the Senior Digital Program Officer at the Smithsonian, helped get Smithsonian Open Access off the ground. A longtime Wikimedia contributor and open access supporter, Effie used a newly open image from a 1900s eclipse to create her outfit for the launch event. A creative way to kick off the multiple uses for the 3 million newly released items!

The Smithsonian used the occasion to publish their collection information via a new API and a dump of their collections data in Github, both of which are available through their open access portal. A new Wikidata property wikidata:Property:P7851 was created for a new Smithsonian-wide identifier to prepare for this open access release.

Readings

  • Effie Kapsalis, senior digital program officer, Smithsonian Institution
    Effie Kapsalis, senior digital program officer, Smithsonian Institution
  • Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
    Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
  • Katherine Maher of the Wikimedia Foundation
    Katherine Maher of the Wikimedia Foundation
  • Event at the National Museum of American History
    Event at the National Museum of American History
  • Andrew Lih, Dominic Byrd-McDevitt (former Wikimedian in Residence), Sara Snyder (Smithsonian American Art Museum), Effie Kapsalis (Smithsonian Institution)
    Andrew Lih, Dominic Byrd-McDevitt (former Wikimedian in Residence), Sara Snyder (Smithsonian American Art Museum), Effie Kapsalis (Smithsonian Institution)
  • Andrew Lih and Kelly Doyle demonstrated Wikidata Knowledge Graphs and Wikidata Game to attendees
    Andrew Lih and Kelly Doyle demonstrated Wikidata Knowledge Graphs and Wikidata Game to attendees
  • Demonstration table
    Demonstration table
  • Wikidata Knowledge Graph demonstration
    Wikidata Knowledge Graph demonstration
  • Wikidata Game interface
    Wikidata Game interface

Open Access: Metropolitan Museum of Art

On February 20, 2020, The Met celebrated three years of its open access initiative with a salon at the museum that included a presentation by Andrew Lih on the Wikimedia collaboration over the last three years, starting with Wikipedian in residence Richard Knipel's work from 2017 to the present day. Andrew described three phases of engagement - contribution, collaboration and co-creation, highlighting projects to upload The Met's content to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, to creating knowledge graphs of connections to other domains, to using artificial intelligence and machine learning to help predict image tags for other artworks.

Readings

Black Lunch Table

Black Lunch Table and College Art Association Annual Conference held a meetup, CAA 1

Black Lunch Table and Rutgers University held a meetup, RutgersFeb2020

Black Lunch Table and Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, held a meetup, SAIC Feb2020

Smithsonian Wiki Summer Internships

Along with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the American Women's History Initiative, Kelly Doyle will host a paid internship around Wikimedia this summer. The intern will work with the Museum of Natural History to uncover notable women in anthropology from the archives and work to add those women to Wikimedia. Together, they'll help plan an edit-a-thon in June at the Museum. The intern will learn on and off Wiki skills from this experience.

There's also a wiki-related summer internship available at the National Museum of the American Indian.

The internships are paid and housing in DC is provided. Travel to and from DC is reimbursable. The intern must be a current undergraduate student and be a US citizen. The deadline to apply is March 15th. Please share within your networks!

American Folklife Center’s Wikipedia Meetup

Wikimedia DC and American Folklife Center held a meetup, Biographical Entries on Women Folklorists, Ethnomusicologists, and Fieldworkers

Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve

Wikimedia San Diego and Railroad Bronies, held a meetup at Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve. San Diego/February 2020

From Field to Lab: Writing Histories of the USDA's Women

Wikimedia DC and National Agricultural Library held a meetup, From Field to Lab: Writing (Wikipedia) Histories of the USDA's Women

Black History Month Wiki-a-thon at Prelinger Library

Prelinger Library and Bay Area Wiki Salon held a meetup, Black History Month Wiki-a-thon at Prelinger Library

Enhancing the Narrative of DC Public Schools

Wikimedia DC and Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives held a meetup, Enhancing the Narrative of DC Public Schools: A Wikipedia Editing Workshop 2020

Climate at the National Academies meetup

National Academy of Sciences, Credibility Coalition, and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Climate at the National Academies Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

KC African American Artists 2020

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Kansas City Meetup held a meetup, KC African American Artists 2020

Smithsonian Hirshhorn Library Presents

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Libraries, and Art+Feminism held a meetup, Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: Art+Feminism DC2020


Summary of pilot projects, and what's next

Since 2019, files on Wikimedia Commons can be enhanced with multilingual and machine-readable structured data. If Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons is still pretty new to you, here's a very short introduction video (3'30 minutes):

A summary of GLAM pilot projects

In the past year, the WMF GLAM team has mentored GLAM staff and Wikimedia community members in a series of pilot projects, to ‘test’ this new technology, explore its potential, and provide inspiring examples. What does Structured Data on Commons make possible? Which new questions and challenges appear?

Structured data for a very small (art) collection

Wikidata-driven gallery on Wikimedia Commons of the collection of the Jakob Smitsmuseum

Staff from the Belgian organization PACKED vzw (now called meemoo) have imported the collection of the Jakob Smitsmuseum, a small, municipal art museum, to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, in order to experiment with data modeling, and to explore the potential of structured data to make small collections accessible online for the first time.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/04/how-we-helped-a-small-art-museum-to-increase-the-impact-of-its-collections-with-wikimedia-projects-and-structured-data/

Connecting different collections, and linking them to their historical context

Structured data-driven page that displays relationships between objects designed by the Wolfers dynasty, and the drawings that have served as blueprints and designs for them

Another pilot project with PACKED vzw has brought together, and connected, the work of three generations of prominent Belgian silversmiths, exploring the potential of structured data to connect (art) collections around the world and to link them to their broader context. This pilot also highlighted the description of copyright and licenses in structured data.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2020/02/26/connecting-the-work-of-three-generations-of-decorative-artists-with-structured-data/

Describing digitized publications, making data re-usable across wikis

Books in the Punjabi Qisse genre, described with structured data

Wikimedians have described digitized books with structured data, to prepare them for transcription on Wikisource, investigating how Structured Data on Commons can help to avoid data duplication across Wikimedia projects and how it can make cross-wiki workflows more efficient.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/07/how-can-structured-data-on-commons-wikidata-and-wikisource-walk-hand-in-hand-a-pilot-project-with-punjabi-qisse/

A game to easily add structured data through campaigns and contests

At various Wikimedia conferences and on other occasions, people organize mini-challenges with ISA, and so can you!

The ISA Tool is a multilingual, mobile-friendly tool, that makes it easy for anyone - especially beginners! - to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons. You can create 'tagging' campaigns and small competitions in ISA. Anyone can do this - no need to be an administrator or a skilled user! ISA was developed as a Structured Data on Commons and GLAM pilot, by Wiki In Africa and Eugene Egbe in collaboration with Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons team.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/11/26/introducing-isa-a-cool-tool-for-adding-structured-data-on-commons/

The new frontier of data roundtripping

Metadata roundtripping now becomes easier thanks to structured data. Is this something your GLAM partners would be interested in?

Various organizations researched data synchronization and roundtripping with external databases – a feature that many larger GLAM institutions ask for, and for which structured data on Wikimedia projects provides more advanced foundations.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/13/data-roundtripping-a-new-frontier-for-glam-wiki-collaborations/

Open questions and fresh challenges

A concluding blog post summarizes the open questions and fresh challenges that Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons poses for the GLAM-Wiki community - challenges related to data federation and the correct description of creative works and media files that show these works.

  • The difference between data about a creative work and a file showing that work, as described on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons
    The difference between data about a creative work and a file showing that work, as described on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons

What's next?

New GLAM projects that use Structured Data on Commons

In 2020, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides digital assets from DPLA's contributors to Wikimedia Commons, describing the files with structured data. Dominic Byrd-McDevitt (User:Dominic), formerly Wikipedian in Residence at US National Archives and a GLAM-Wiki pioneer, works as a data fellow on this project.

Are you also working on a new project that involves structured data? Make sure to add it to the GLAM page of the Structured Data on Commons portal, and report on it in This Month in GLAM!


Leap into Wikidata!

By Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing)

Special Report: Upcoming Conferences

News

Press, articles, blog posts

New tools

  • The Kensho Derived Wikimedia Dataset is a a cleaned English subset of Wikipedia/Wikidata with 2.3B tokens, 5.3M pages, 51M nodes, and 120M edges for use in natural language processing (NLP) research
  • Knowledge Grapher is a new tool to create Wikidata knowledge graphs without needing any knowledge of Wikidata Query or SPARQL code. It is currently in early testing mode. Feedback is appreciated.
  • Cradle tool can now generate forms based on Schemas (example for human)

Technical matters

Other news

For all other Wikidata news, new properties, etc, see:


New Team Leadership, GLAM-Focused Grants Review, OpenGLAM Declaration Research

WMF Welcomes Fiona Romeo as Senior Program Manager, GLAM and Culture

We are thrilled to welcome Fiona Romeo as the new lead of our GLAM program. Fiona comes to us with a deep background in digital strategy and exhibition design in the international museum sector, and an eclectic mix of other tech/media experience ranging from the BBC to Skype to online games. She's also no stranger to Wikimedia collaborations. :-) Fiona also brings a strong ethical orientation and personal priority around knowledge equity, as evidenced most recently by her work redesigning a permanent exhibit at London's Wellcome Collection (described more below).

Fiona is just two weeks into the job, but is already starting to establish contact with various GLAM-Wiki volunteers and organizers. Please join us in welcoming her to the Foundation, and to the movement.

More About Fiona

Fiona Romeo has been working in the cultural sector for 14 years, leading teams to deliver both digital and exhibition programs. She recently produced the Being Human gallery at Wellcome Collection, which was lauded for its inclusive design (“Is This The World’s Most Accessible Museum?”). Previously, she was Director of Digital Content and Strategy at The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and Head of Design and Digital Media at Royal Museums Greenwich (London).

Fiona’s work demonstrates a longstanding commitment to openness. At Royal Museums Greenwich, she developed new platforms for participation, including citizen science projects, such as Old Weather, and the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Under her digital leadership, Royal Museums Greenwich was an early contributor to many open GLAM initiatives, sharing its collections and data with Flickr Commons, Europeana, Wikimedia, and Art UK. The museum’s digitisation programme was extended through large­-scale collaborations, such as a project with The National Archives and volunteers to transcribe Merchant Navy crew lists.

At MoMA, Fiona dedicated the collection data to the public domain and hosted a datathon to explore it. She also supported a project to stabilise and capture all 200 MoMA exhibition websites for the Internet Archive, released a comprehensive exhibition history, and deepened MoMA’s engagement with Wikimedia through editathons and linked data. This work was reported in a Wall Street Journal article, titled “Museums Open Up to Power of Wiki”.

More recently, Fiona has been advising smaller heritage organisations, such as The MERL, a small museum with an outsize digital following.

GLAM focused WMF Project Grants

Its that time of the year again for WMF Project Grant review! We are excited that there are a lot of different project grants related to GLAM practices: many of the more innovative independent GLAM projects in the movement start with seed funding from this program.

As a reminder, WMF grant programs are open for community review and endorsement, so we encourage community members to either endorse the grants or leave feedback on the project pages. We may have missed a project that you might be interested in or related to your GLAM project: see the full list on meta.

Here are the GLAM related projects:

Structured Data on Commons: GLAM pilot projects concluded

The GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons have been concluded, summarized and documented. See this month's Structured Data on Commons report for an overview.

Open GLAM collaboration: research to inform the Open GLAM Declaration

The WMF is moving forward with its collaboration with Creative Commons to produce a revised set of principles for GLAM institutions on Open Access. We are in the process of preparing a White Paper, which is going to deliver the most current up-to-date research and practical guidance on how different institutions are adopting their Open Access policies.

We are making available the papers, slideshows, videos, talks, blogposts, among many other materials, that are informing that research. We are also asking for community input: what are the resources that you have found the most useful when talking with institutions about implementing and using CC licenses? It can be anything, from slides to papers, to talks and videos. Read more about the story here. Complete the form here, or if your list is too long and you have many resources that you want to share, drop us an email at info @ openglam.org.


March's GLAM events

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