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< GLAM‎ | Newsletter‎ | July 2012


World Digital Library Wikipedian in Residence

World Digital Library to host a Wikipedian in Residence

At the Wikimania Google Opening Reception held in the World Digital Library's honor on July 11, John Van Oudenaren, Director of the World Digital Library, announced in his address the World Digital Library's intention to host a Wikipedian in Residence. The World Digital Library is composed of many participating institutions from around the world, mostly national libraries, and operated by the Library of Congress and UNESCO. In late July, Dominic met with WDL's Product Manager to discuss potential ideas for the position. As of yet, the role is still being defined, and no call for applicants has been put out.


British Library update; UK representation at Wikimania 2012; brief news

British Library

Andrew Gray, the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library, has just completed his third month.

One of the core goals of the program is to train specialists and academics in how to contribute to Wikipedia. Since the first workshop in mid-June, 46 British Library staff have attended practical training workshops. With the help of volunteers, there have also been workshops to train nine staff from the National Archives and 25 academics from the University of London and the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Several more workshops are being prepared, including a series of public sessions for British Library readers in London.

Alongside these practical workshops, a number of curators have expressed an interest in collaborating with Wikipedians on specific topics - see Wikipedia:GLAM/BL/One on one collaborations. Some of these relate to BL content or collections, while others are broader topics. From the content side, a series of uploads of freely licensed images are being prepared, and the first of these should hopefully be ready by the end of August.

Lastly, a series of events through the autumn are being organised. These will include a tour of the Writing Britain exhibition (dates TBC) and a three-day editing workshop in late October with the International Dunhuang Project, focusing on Central Asia and its archaeology. To register interest for the Dunhuang event, please sign up here.

Wikimania 2012

British Wikimedian John Cummings during the "QRpedia and you" workshop.

A number of UK GLAM collaborators attended Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC, USA and several made presentations or spoke on panels. These included:

Prior to Wikimania, Andy Mabbett met with staff at Washington Zoo to discuss the implementation of QRpedia there. He then gave a presentation to staff at the National Art Gallery, plus guests from neighbouring organisations, including the Smithsonian Institute, also about QRpedia. One of those present subsequently wrote that it was "possibly the best presentation I’ve heard in that room (of two hundred, probably)."

News in brief


Wikipedian in Residence for a whole town; Backstage Pass at National Art Museum of Catalonia

Wikipedian in Residence in Palafrugell, Catalonia

Palafrugell

During July and August 2012, Catalan Wikimedian David Parreño, User:Davidpar will be serving as Wikipedian in Residence for the town of Palafrugell, a municipality in the Mediterranean Costa Brava, in Catalonia.

After convincing the cultural institutions and the Town Council itself, this summer he will serve several local cultural institutions at a time, with the aim of improving Palafrugell cultural institution's presence internationally.

He will coordinate and try to build bridges between the Wikipedia community and the local cultural institutions, looking for releasing materials (text, photo, video), organizing editing events like workshops or edit-a-thons, coordinating a local Wiki Takes for this year's Wiki Loves Monuments edition, implementing the use of some QRpedia codes, among others...

Here is a list of the Institutions:

  • Cultural Dept. of Palafrugell's Municipality
  • Arxiu Municipal de Palafrugell (local archive)
  • Biblioteca de Palafrugell (Palafrugell's library)
  • Fundació Josep Pla
  • Museu del Suro (Cork Museum)
  • Fundació Cuixart (Cuixart Foundation)
  • Fundació Ernest Morató (Ernest Morató Foundation)

On Saturday June 16 we already organized the first workshop in the local Library, and it was a real success. 17 people attended from different towns of the region to learn or improve Wikipedia articles about Palafrugell. This is another example of how joining forces cultural institutions can reach wider audiences.

Catalan Ministry of Culture signs an agreement of collaboration with Amical Viquipèdia to promote the use of Catalan language

Gomà and Mascarell signing the agreement

Catalan Ministry of Culture, Ferran Mascarell, signed yesterday an agreement of collaboration with Joan Gomà, president of Amical Viquipèdia, to promote and disseminate the Catalan language.

The aim of the agreement with Amical is the dissemination of Wikipedia's contents and use, given the importance of having a Catalan edition of this free encyclopedia for the promotion and dissemination of Catalan language through Internet. The agreement, signed by the President of Amical, Joan Gomà, aims to create a stable channel of communication between both parties.

Under this agreement, Amical will advise the Direcció General de Política Lingüística (Department of Language Policy) in the potential use of the platform and it's associated projects, on how to create training projects related to learning the Catalan language. Also will provide them data and stats relatied to active users and number of articles existing in Catalan, and any other indicator of the presence and use of Catalan on the Internet.

The Department of Culture gives the right to disseminate the articles, essays, studies and other materials produced which have been edited and published by the Direcció General de Política Lingüística and on which this institucion has rights, so they can be uploaded to Wikipedia. They will also offer technical support in placing names and terminology in Catalan, will do outreach of Wikipedia, and other actions to promote the use of Catalan on the Internet. Amical Viquipèdia will spread among Wikipedians all this material and this information so that they can use freely to improve the quality and quantity of the contents of Wikipedia.

Backstage Pass at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

A Wikipedian helping the restoration lab in Medieval Heraldry bassoon

As Part of Kippelboy's residency at the MNAC museum project is to build bridges between the museum professionals and the local community of Wikipedia editors. This is why on July 30 we organized a whole day of Wiki activities where curators and Wikipedians met and discussed about their ways of working.

More info about the event on this blog post


Wikipedian in Residence updates; WikiCon 2012; Hamburgmuseum workshop

Two GLAM institutions are hosting a Wikipedian in residence

Right now, two GLAM institutions in Germany are hosting a Wikipedian in Residence. At the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin the employees are now permitted to publish articles in the Wikipedia during work time. This is quite a big step advancing, because it helps us to get more scientific input into the Wikipedia. It will be quite a challenge to see whether they manage to publish the articles following the rules of the Wikipedia. Please help out in a constructive way, when you see that assistance is needed. Of course they will be instructed by Marcus Cyron, who is in these weeks preparing his visits also to the affiliate institutes both in Madrid, Rome and Istanbul. In Istanbul we plan to arrange a meeting in between both Wikipedians from Germany and Turkey together with archaeologists from both countries. For more information please get in touch with Marcus Cyron. At the Stadtmuseum we are preparing both editing workshops for the employees and back pass visits to the collections. In August, Wikipedia invites in the "Lange Nacht der Museen" the visitors to get to know how easy it is to become an Wikipedian. Last year thousands of visitors used the glamours opportunity to stroll at night through the Berlin museums.For more Information please get in touch with Kilian Kluge.

WikiCon 2012 in Austria

At the WikiCon in Austria later this year, Daniel Mietchen, Marcus Cyron and Barbara Fischer will present to Wikipedians attending from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein the platform "Lange Nacht" as a toolkit to organize Wikipedian presentations in GLAM institutions. An easy and charming format we hope that more community members will use to get in touch with GLAM institutions in their region. Daniel and Marcus will also present their and Kilian Kluges work as Residents in a workshop.

2nd Workshop at Museum of Hamburg History

In Hamburg during 3 days in August at the 2nd Workshop at the Museum for Hamburg History Wikipedians and Wikimedian will meet up to write article and document museum artefacts. For more Information please get in touch with Peter Weis.

In case You would like to get to know more on the Wikimedia Germany strategy to outreach for GLAM institutions please visit the German GLAM portal.

July's case studies shed new light on African GLAMs

By Elitre

This month the Share Your Knowledge team decided to reveal more about partnerships with organizations based in Africa. As a matter of fact, July's case studies are about Chimurenga and doual'art, which are the first institutions to join the WikiAfrica project, and Africa Centre, which is main partner since 2011.

Thanks to Chimurenga, a magazine founded in Cape Town, we now have an overview of reviews, not only African ones, which are and were particularly influential on African generations. The doual'art center, which is based in Douala instead, provided images for Commons documenting its events and activities. Africa Centre, an arts and culture center in Cape Town, partnered with lettera27 to spread the WikiAfrica initiative in the African continent and is taking care of the project pages in English. They also created an Incubator which aims at becoming a launchpad for African articles created by new contributors, after being reviewed by more expert Wikipedians. You can read more in the linked pages in Italian, which also contain links to articles in other languages.


Second editathon with Wikipedia Student Clubs; participation in Mexico City's Creative Commons Film Festival; private art gallery donates 650+ images

Editathon of Wikipedia Student Clubs at UAM and UNAM

Students editing Wikipedia at Telmex Hub.

On 21 July, Wikimedia Mexico made ​​his second Editathon. This time, organized with the Wikipedia Student Clubs in the UAM Iztapalapa and the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the UNAM, gathering 25 people editing Spanish Wikipedia. The venue was the Telmex Hub, a technology learning center located in the historic center of Mexico City. This center provides excellent connectivity and provides a laptop to each of assistants, in a totally geek and very comfortable ambient.

The editatón started about two o'clock in the afternoon, and was divided into two groups. One for newbies to learn the basic rules of Wikipedia and a quick workshop of wiki markup, and the other, who decided to write articles directly. Wikimedia Mexico supported resolving their doubts. While UAM students focused on writing new items from their own university, the UNAM students worked on philosophy and history. Máxima pragmática and the Biblioteca Digital del Pensamiento Novohispano are two of the new articles writed during the event. For all it was a fun and exciting experience, reaching 12 new articles, and many more editions. At eight at night we had to turn off the equipment because Telmex Hub is open until that hour, if not, maybe we could have stayed a little longer to edit.

Local channel of Televisa, main broadcaster of Latin America, attended the event and gave extensive coverage the editathon before and made ​​later a news report.

Participating students are planning with Wikimedia Mexico the next activity in August: a photographic invasion and an editathon at the Palace of Fine Arts.

Collaboration with Creative Commons Film Festival

University of the Cloister of Sor Juana

Wikimedia Mexico collaborated on the first Creative Commons Film Festival of Mexico City, wich was held from 9 to 14 of July in various locations of the historic center of Mexico City. This was an initiative of Andrés Garibay and Jacobo Nájera, both students at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and supporters of initiatives of culture and free knowledge.

WM-MX participated with two speeches. The first called "Shared environments", speaking to students about the importance of a free encyclopedia, with Odin Mojica of Mozilla Mexico local chapter, and José Serralde and Irene Soria, both artists and promoters of free software tools in artistic creation. And the second in the panel "Film in the Internet age." In this last, participated León Felipe Sánchez, a lawyer and one of the main drivers of Creative Commons in Mexico, Juan Carlos Reyes, filmmaker and researcher, and Ivan Martinez, coordinator of WM-MX. In addition to talks, collaboration of the local chapter of the festival included diffusion, and in coming weeks, helping the organizers for some of the movies can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Launch of MPBAeditorial.mx website

Facade of the palace

As part of the first activities for a future GLAM agreement with the museum of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts), one of the major cultural venues in the city and the country, we participated in the launching of the museum's new website, MPBAeditorial.mx, held at the beautiful Zone of the Murals. Carmen Alcazar, representing Wikimedia Mexico, gave a talk in the panel "Digital culture projects", about the possibilities of cultural cooperation through Wikimedia GLAM projects, which generated a lot of questions of attendees and interest for future agreements with the chapter. The next activity with the museum, in a few weeks, ¡will be an editathon!.

The event included speakers from the museum itself, the CONACULTA, Cultural Diffusion of the UNAM and CENTRO school, among others.

Garros donates 650+ images to Commons

Garros Galería, a private art gallery located in Mexico City, has donated over 650 photographs from its earlier exhibitions and events, which include images of artwork located at on Commons. Garros is the first art gallery in Mexico to partner with Wikipedia. Joel Nava Polina, the gallery owner, is highly involved in social media with very active Facebook and Twitter (@garrosccr) accounts, so he has been very receptive to working with Wikipedia, even placing QR codes for Garros’ Wikipedia page Garros Galería on the front of the gallery! Garros (which means "claws" in Spanish) is a cat-themed establishment with a gallery/boutique downstairs and Mexico’s only cat museum upstairs. However, it also works to promote new artists, especially those from Mexico City’s small but important Japanese artist community, whose members have come to the country because Mexico offers more opportunities to artists than Japan does! Prior to the donation, Garros and students from ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México have been working on putting together articles on the notable artists associated with the gallery, such as Fumiko Nakashima, Shino Watabe and Midori Suzuki.


A month in Africa's GLAMs

The following newsletter is an update of GLAM activity from the last month (and a bit) across the African continent and beyond. The activities listed below have come from the work of two Wikimedia chapters, South Africa and Kenya, and from the WikiAfrica Project.

GLAM presentation at Creative Commons Africa in Uganda, June

In the very last days of June 2012, Isla Haddow-Flood and Abbas Mahmood were asked to present GLAM in Africa to the delegates of the Creative Commons Africa Convening being hosted by Creative Commons International in Uganda.

Abbas began the presentation with an overview of the Wikimedia Outreach's approach to GLAM, and referred to some of the initial successes, specifically in Europe and the UK.

WikiAfrica Project Manager: Africa, Isla followed, speaking specifically about the WikiAfrica's GLAM project, Share Your Knowledge. The project's strategy, accomplishments and intentions were presented and discussed, including the then 17 (now, 23) galleries, libraries, archives, and museums across Africa that have signed up as Content Partners intent on sharing the content within their institutions with Wikimedia projects under the CC-BY-SA licence. She also presented the Share Your Knowledge WHY video, that was created for GLAM by Lettera27.

Africa at Wikimania

WikiAfrica did also attend Wikimania on the 12th of June, where it discussed GLAM in Africa as part of the presentation: Wikipedia and Africa: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship.

South African Heritage Institutions Supports Wiki Loves Monuments

Wikimedia South Africa and WikiAfrica have been working to get South Africa's heritage institutions involved in and participate as upload sites for the upcoming Wiki Loves Monuments 2012. The National Heritage Council (NHC), South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA), Western Cape Heritage and City of Cape Town Heritage are all eager to be involved, especially in an upload marathon at local museums to the South African Wiki Loves Monuments and thus to Commons, that will take place on Heritage Day (Monday, 24 September), a public holiday. Their official involvement is pending the return of signed final agreements.

WikiAfrica stimulating digitization of collections

Institutions in Africa especially Galleries and Museums are embracing WikiAfrica in order to share their content with Wikimedia Projects. However, most of these institutions have not fully digitised their collections. The immense benefits envisaged by these institutions in partnering with WikiAfrica has encouraged them to digitise part of their collection for use in the Wikimedia project. Refer to the list of African GLAMs below for the latest partners.

Potential GLAMs - Still in Talks

The following have expressed interest in working as GLAMs with Wikimedia Kenya:

  • Nairobi Railway Museum have partially accepted to collaborate with Wikimedia Kenya to have their content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The senior management requested for copies of proposals to review them in detail.Wikimedia Kenya is in discussions on the best way to undertake this project being the first of its kind. A preliminary study revealed that they have none of their collections digitized.
  • Kenya National Archives are still reviewing a proposal that was sent to them regarding GLAM. Hopefully the results shall be out by the time the next newsletter shall be published.

The following have expressed interest in working as GLAMs with WikiAfrica:

  • National Museum Malawi
  • Shimoni Slavery Museum, Kenya
  • Sungani Zakwathu Cultural Heritage Promotions, Malawi
  • Seychelles People's Defence Forces Museum, Seychelles
  • Bamako-London Exhibition, UK/Mali
  • South African Heritage Resource Agency, South Africa
  • Name your hood, South Africa
  • IZIKO Museums of Cape Town (14 museums in the Cape Town area) www.iziko.org.za, South Africa
  • Western Province Government – Department of Heritage, South Africa
  • Western Province Government – Department of Museums (in charge of 26 museums in the Western Cape), South Africa
  • City of Cape Town Heritage Department
  • National Herbarium of Tanzania (http://vimeo.com/11736032), Tanzania
  • TARA – Trust for African Rock Art, Kenya, www.africanrockart.org
  • Kuona Trust, Kenya www.kuonatrust.org
  • National Commission of Museums and monuments, Nigeria, http://www.nigerianmuseums.org
  • Digital Archive,Rock Art Research Institute, Origins Centre, Wits University, South Africa, www.SARADA.co.za

African GLAMs: Cultural Institutions Contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Projects with African Contents

The following GLAMs are at different stages of the Share Your Knowledge path. For in-depth Case Studies of long term partners, please see below, or look at this month's Italy report.

GLAMs related to Africa based outside Africa

Wikimedia chapters supporting the collaborations with institutions in Africa and with African contents

  • Wikimedia South Africa
  • Wikimedia Kenya
  • Викимедија Србије (Wikimedia Serbia)
  • Wikimedia CH
  • Wikimedia España
  • Wikimedia Italia


Wikimania gets GLAMorous

The Wikimania opening reception at the Library of Congress
On the evening of day 1, Wikimedians visited the Newseum for an evening of networking and discussion.
The national GLAM co-ordinators panel
David Ferriero gave the closing plenary; "If Wikipedia's good enough for the archivist of the United States..."

This year's Wikimania was the biggest to date. Held at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. it also featured the largest number of GLAM-related sessions to date.

Events

There were almost 30 GLAM-related events over the course of the conference.

Pre-conference

Day 1 - Thursday 12th

On Thursday, the first day of the main conference, there were three GLAM-related streams throughout the day there were three GLAM-related streams; the first centred upon legal issues appertaining to GLAM and the second upon GLAM outreach projects around the world. The third was sponsored by the US Department of State and featured 4 presentations on local wikis.

The day ended with Wikimedians visiting the Newseum for the GLAM night out. The consisted of networking with US GLAM employees, the launch of the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium and a panel entitled "The Sponsored Point of View: Financial Conflicts of Interest in Health Care and Science".

Day 2 - Friday 13th

Friday was the day of GLAM panels. The first sessions of the day included the GLAM III: Outreach stream which included a panel of GLAM professionals who, chaired by Dominic McDevitt-Parks (Dominic), told of their own experiences working with Wikimedia. After the break, there was a panel of national GLAM co-ordinators from across the globe. They each summarised how they had come to take up their role and their experiences in it before taking questions.

The afternoon's GLAM sessions centred upon photography events. Organisers of Wiki Loves Monuments projects talked about their experiences and looked forward to this year's competition which will include 33 countries from all across the globe. The final GLAM session was on photo hunt events. Organizers of events spoke of their individual experiences before coming together for a panel.

Day 3 - Saturday 14th

On Saturday, the last day of scheduled events, GLAM talks began with "GLAM VII: Science and Archives". Sara Snyder, Archives of American Art web mistress, gave a presentation entitled "5 Reasons Why Archives are an Untapped Goldmine for Wikimedians", Daniel Mietchen (Daniel Mietchen) presented on Scientific cultural institutions and their place in GLAM-Wiki collaborations with a talk entitled "Science GLAM". The session ended with Dominic McDevitt-Park's presentation "Wikisource and the National Archives".

In the afternoon there were 3 talks in the stream "GLAM VIII: Tools", including an update on the GLAM-Wiki toolset project. In the last session, members of the QRpedia team ran a workshop on QRpedia.

The day ended with a closing plenary from Archivist of the United States David Ferriero. He called himself a "huge fan of Wikipedia", and acknowledged that one large challenge is that most GLAM institutions are still wary of the "radical" notion of Wikipedia. With changing technologies, Ferriero said that the online world is "changing the way [GLAMs] think about archival work." The biggest challenge in this new world is visibility, so he stated that GLAMs need to be "aware of where the people are."


Open Access at Wikimania; Year 2 of Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science; Open Access Media Importer tested; WikiProject Medicine goes publishing

Open Access at Wikimania

GLAM Night Out in the Newseum, with a slide about transparency of research processes as the basis for trust in research results.
Meiosis I in a crane-fly spermatocyte, one of the test files uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer Bot.

Several Wikimania 2012 talks covered Open Access, Open Science or related issues, including a panel contribution at the GLAM Night Out as well as presentations on the Open Access Media Importer and on the Research Committee's activities.

A number of talks with a strong Open Access component were also given around Wikimania, namely at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, at the Wikimania unconference and (remotely) at a meeting of the Mycological Society of America. See also the Wikimania report in this issue.

Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science goes into second year

The Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science project at the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany has been extended for another year, with continued support from the Open Society Foundations. The focus will remain on increasing the reuse of Open-Access materials on Wikimedia projects, on improving coverage of articles relating to Open Access on the English Wikipedia and on supporting the Wikimedia community in matters of open-access more generally, particularly by way of WikiProject Open Access. In addition to that, the aim is to expand and adapt the concept of WikiProject Open Access to languages other than English - including French, German and Russian - and to projects other than Wikipedia, especially Wikisource and Wikispecies.

Open Access Media Importer tested

A bot request was filed for the Open Access Media Importer to upload files it harvested from the supplementary materials of Commons-compatibly licensed scholarly articles from PubMed Central. A few test uploads were made and the code adjusted accordingly (see report). On a related note, a number of files supplied by the journal ZooKeys has been uploaded by JarektUploadBot as a test for large-scale import of images as supplied by publishers directly, rather than via large databases, from where the Open Access Media Importer harvests its materials.

WikiProject Medicine collaborates with journals

WikiProject Medicine has launched a collaboration with the journal Open Medicine to publish high-quality medical articles from Wikipedia into the journal. The first article in this track is Dengue fever. This complements ongoing efforts with the journal PLoS Computational Biology to publish review articles in such a way that they can continue to evolve.

Open Access File of the Day

The following files have been featured as Open Access File of the Day this month:


August's GLAM events

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"Modest Cuixart" Edit-a-Thon, Palafrugell, Catalonia, Spain
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"Masterpiece Museum" Edit-a-Thon, Washington, D.C., USA
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