GLAM/Newsletter/May 2014/Contents/Netherlands report

This Month in GLAM – Volume IV, Issue V, May 2014

Normal version • Single page version

Netherlands report

Libraries; Wikidata & DBpedia; Wikipedians in Residence; Open Culture Data

By Ter-burg, Spinster, Hansmuller & Romaine

Libraries

A first try-out for an open training was organised in the library of Amersfoort. It is an open training because people do not have to sign up to participate. Visitors and employees of the library can just show up with their laptop or tablet and get training from a Wikipedian. The first training was nog successful due to the fact that it was poorly advertised and the library wasn't opened officially. The first real training will take place on June the 13th, during the opening week of the new library. The library of Vlissingen is interested in hosting these open trainings too.
Sebastiaan ter Burg gave a presentation at the Zeeuwse Bibliotheek. The library of Zeeland had been working on an Encyclopedia of Zeeland using the Mediawiki software. Further cooperation between WMNL and the library will be discussed in the coming months.

Wikidata & DBpedia

The Wikidata & DBpedia team have made a mapping of the data in DBpedia and Wikidata on authors and monuments. The next steps in this project is too map the public available datasets on authors and monuments and to generate a list of differences between DBpedia, Wikidata and the public datasets. Volunteer Gerard Meijssen wrote an insightful blogpost about the project.

Women and Art edit-a-thon

On 17 May, a group of Wikipedians held a new edit-a-thon about women and art at De Appel art centre in Amsterdam. This event was a follow-up to the first Dutch Art+Feminism edit-a-thon on February 1 and was also financially supported by Wikimedia NL.

Both events together have, so far, resulted in more than 50 new or improved articles about women in the arts.

Wikipedians in Residence

Expert Meeting: Wiki Loves Maps

Wikipedians in Residence Sandra Fauconnier and Hay Kranen have organized an expert meeting on old maps and Wikimedia projects. The meeting, entitled Wiki Loves Maps, took place on Saturday 24 May in Amsterdam. It was attended by a mixed audience of more than 20 participants, including curators / collection managers of map collections, and Dutch Wikipedians.

A keynote presentation was held by Susanna Ånäs (Wikimedia Finland), who presented the WikiMaps project. Further presentations, and a brainstorm session, included historical map collections from Koninklijke Bibliotheek, old maps on Wikimedia Commons, and a case study of storytelling via maps: visualizing the 1934 world trip of Felix Vening Meinesz, a project by TU Delft.

Expedition Wikipedia: students write about historical travelogues

The project Expedition Wikipedia, with Sandra Fauconnier as Wikipedian in Residence, deals with academic heritage of nearly 10 Dutch universities. Education is an integral part of this WiR project: in 2014, Sandra acts a guest lecturer and Wikipedia coach in two different university courses in which students are assigned to contribute to Wikipedia.

At Maastricht University, the first Wikipedia-related course takes place in May-June 2014. Nine international students write and improve articles about historical travelogues and their authors. Examples include Isaac Titsingh, Johan Nieuhof and Mansfield Parkyns.

A second course, at Utrecht University, is being prepared; it will take place in September-October and will involve a group of max. 30 students who will be assigned to write and improve Wikipedia articles related to expeditions by scholars from Utrecht University, such as Arthur Wichmann and the Karakoram explorations by Philips Christiaan Visser.

Peace Palace Library donates 2000 high resolution images

The Peace Palace Library donated about 2000 photographs of prints from their old books, which were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Hans Muller, Wikipedian in special residence. Subjects range from episodes in the Dutch Eighty Year's War, illustrations in books by Hugo Grotius, and the art of war, to portraits, maps and a report of an embassy to the Emperor of China. Help to describe this plethora of detailed 50 MB images is solicited from the Wikipedia community. The GLAMWikiToolset proved to be very useful for mass upload.

Eruption of the Etna volcano in 1669
Alexander Farnese's boat bridge across the Scheldt during the Eighty Year's War..
.. which was subsequently blown up.
Portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden

WiR meeting

The Wikipedians in Residence had a meeting on the 25th of May. The notes of this meeting are public (Dutch).

Open Culture Data mass upload to Commons

The Open Culture Data network in the Netherlands is building an API that will bundle all open culture data they can access. They've proposed to do a mass upload from their API to Wikimedia Commons. An analysis of the current available datasets and the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal are publicly available. Comments are highly appreciated.

Wiki Loves Earth

Wiki Loves Earth is organized in the Netherlands during the months of May and June. During May four activities have been organized.

On 3 May was the kick-off in De Weerribben-Wieden National Park. After a presentation a group of participants went into the national park by boat with a ranger (from Staatsbosbeheer to take pictures of this park.

Start of the boat trip (3 May)

25 May three activities were organized in three different national parks:
- In Sallandse Heuvelrug National Park a sound workshop was organized to record sounds of nature.
- In Utrechtse Heuvelrug National Park a photo workshop was organized to take pictures of this park.
- In Drentsche Aa National Landscape a photo workshop was organized to take pictures of this national landscape with a guide.