GLAM/Newsletter/May 2022/Single
Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
This year, WoALUG’s annual Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon was organized in Pogradec, Albania. WoALUG organizes this activity to write and update Albania and Kosovo articles on the free travel guide Wikivoyage.
Pogradec is a tourist destination in the south-eastern part of Albania, lying on the shores of Lake Ohrid (Ohër), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In addition to Wikimedian volunteers from our community, this time we invited certified guides from the Kosovo Tourist Guide Association to join us.
On May 20, 2022, we traveled to Pogradec. Later that day, our group took a tour of the Park of Drilon and Tushemisht, a small village 5km away from the town.
For the next two days, May 21-22, we updated and created new articles for Kosovo and Albania, uploaded the pictures we took from our expedition to Wikimedia Commons, and used them to illustrate the articles of the area.
To keep our community posted, we were active on social media by inviting the community to participate in the edit-a-thon virtually and sharing our progress on article writing and updates.
Here are some statistics from the Outreach Dashboard:
- 12 new articles were created
- 36 existing articles were expanded and improved
- 14 editors participated
- 58 multimedia were uploaded to Commons
We would like to thank Wikivoyage administrators for their support during this activity.
Below are some pictures uploaded during the event, with aerial filming to be uploaded soon.
Social media
- We have a public Telegram channel (language used mostly Albanian) if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects. You don't need to be a member to be part of this channel.
If you want to see more about our activities you canː
- Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
Face-to-face and virtual events on May
Santa Fe city's archives training programme
Our Culture and Open Program first in-person activity since pandemics was held in Santa Fe city, with our partners from Education and Culture office (Municipio de Santa Fe) with whom we had already offered several activities during 2021 (a series of webinars and two photograph collections uploaded to Wikimedia Commons). Specially aimed for archivist, the idea was to learn about the different processes for photographs to be correctly organized, conserved and digitized, so they could be part of the "Archivo de la imagen documental santafesina" as well as be accesible vía Wikimedia Commons. More than 40 people were involved on these two-day trainings. The next and last meeting will be on June to upload together with the participants the digitized content to Commons.
Though these events were face-to-face this time, we offered with Santa Fe's municipality the complete streaming of the event. You can find it here.
Image Description Week
Wikimedia Argentina participated from the Image Description Week organized by the Foundation's GLAM team with two proposals: Conversations on the role of images in the construction of cultural narratives from a critical, contextualized and accessible perspective, with DALAT (Accesibility on digital devices) + ICOM CECA LAC (Education office of ICOM), plus a demonstration on Wikipedia's ALT text feature; and a conversation around Zugasti Collection of indigenous related photographs and their descriptions, by No'Lhametwet Indigenous Documentation Center. In addition, we worked with ISA Tool with these pictures. More than 50 people participated on these conversations that we started developing the previous month with the Add an image feature and GLAM professionals.
First time approaching popular libraries
On April Wikimedia Argentina, as well as other regional chapters, received the collaboration of an intern as a result of the Fellowship Program. Fabián Mamaní is librarian an works on two community-driven libraries in Jujuy, a province located in the north of Argentina. Motivated by this, we designed together a survey for popular libraries from all the country to know what is their current situation, as well as their demands and needs; afterwards, we prepeared a series of workshops for them to learn how Wikimedia projects can improve their visibility as well as their communitie's on the internet. These workshops starts on June and are supported by Jujuy's National University. By now, more than 120 people answered this survey and were invited to participate to the training programme.
Over 1000 references added in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand for #1Lib1Ref
Wikimedia Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc again joined forces for #1Lib1Ref offering six free drop-in sessions for librarians across the region, resulting in 762 citations.
The campaign which stands for One Librarian One Reference, encourages us to imagine a world where every librarian added one more reference to Wikipedia. Librarians around the world unite to add missing references to articles on Wikipedia to grow the accuracy and creditability of content.
The regional online sessions held every Monday and Wednesday during the three week campaign, offered training and support to add a citation to Wikipedia during the campaign which runs from Sunday 15 May to Sunday 5 June 2022. And additional session aimed at school librarians was also held.
Although held twice each year, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand participate in the mid-year #1Lib1Ref campaign, as the earlier campaign falls within a holiday period for both counties.
Wikimedians from both regions supported the two-hour sessions, which were attended by around 20 participants from libraries across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, some with some editing experience, others with none whatsoever. Attendance numbers were lower than expected, perhaps due to a saturation in online training in recent years and also an overlap with the national Australian library conference, but engagement was strong with some participants attending more than one session and participants from libraries that we have never engaged with before.
Registrations were taken for each session, to prevent any unwanted drop-ins (not that a guitar playing performance was entirely unwelcome last year!) and also to enable future contact with participants. This may also have provided a barrier to last minute participation. Growing the marketing of the campaign and direct engagement in libraries may grow participation numbers in future years.
At each session, participants were supported to create a login to Wikipedia, introduced to the basics of Wikipedia and the visual editor and shown the many methods of adding a citation to Wikipedia. They were then encouraged to have a go at adding a reference themselves, many sharing their screens to troubleshoot any issues they were having.
Some participants chose to add a reference from a pre-prepared list that session organisers created. While participants were also introduced to Citation Hunt, without any prior knowledge of some of the suggested pages, this proved a more difficult way to generate something to work on. The Bruce Myers category bot offered another way to explore references within expertise or interest areas.
The overall results of the the three week campaign were collected on the project Dashboard, which saw 762 references added from 26 participants, many of whom have continued to edit beyond the completion of the campaign.
Sincere thanks to Ann Reynolds, Kerry Raymond, Caddie Brain, Siobhan Leachman, Mike Dickison, Pru Mitchell, Alex Lum, Tamsin Braisher and Amanda Lawrence for their facilitation and support of these sessions.
Read more on the Wikimedia Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc program here.
State Library of Queensland and the University of Newcastle shine for #1Lib1Ref
Each year, the State Library of Queensland participates in the #1Lib1Ref recognising the potential it has to increase the discoverability of its content and collections. For the 2022 campaign, the library held three of their own drop-in sessions for staff, encouraging use any content from the State Library of Queensland to cite, from websites, catalogue records and blogs. All blogs are released under a creative commons license so can be used freely on Wikimedia platforms.
Fourteen staff collectively added 302 references collected in the project Dashboard. Perhaps more significantly that the number of references, is the impact of that contribution. The Dashboard shows that over the last three weeks the edits by staff were already seen by readers 147,000 times, a figure that will only grow.
Supporting Wikimedian Kerry Raymond says understand this link between collections and Wikimedia platforms in terms of public discoverability is where the opportunity lies for libraries participating in #1Lib1Ref into the future.
"The #1Lib1Ref programs should be designed to encourage librarians to contribute content arising from their programs or collections and, of course, citing their collections. This gets their information out there in Wikipedia articles and the citations back to their library driving up their web count hits."
"Wikipedia is a growing referrer and, unlike many other referrers, it is a referrer they can actively influence through engaging in #1Lib1Ref as an annual program, allowing staff are welcome to contribute in between times as well as part of their job," Kerry said.
The Wiki Warriors at the University of Newcastle Library also participated in the campaign this year, hosting two sessions as a way to grow their edit-a-thon facilitation skills and growing Wikipedia editing throughout the library.
Congratulations to Troy Keith, Tania Schafer, Kerry Raymond, Paige Wright and Jennifer Goh for coordinating these efforts.
New Wikidata Property
Wikidata Property “raw material processed”
A new Wikidata property raw material processed has been created, to document a factory, or an industrial or chemical process. The property describes the raw or intermediate material, or a natural resource converted or consumed by a factory or industrial process, to manufacture a product, or to deliver energy.
We have been using it to document the textile factories in Gent, and a number of other industries:
Wiki Loves Espírito Santo is a success
WLES wikicontest
As we announced in the last Newsletter, in 2022, Wiki Movement Brasil (WMB) accepted the challenge of reducing the information gap about the Brazilian State of Espírito Santo (ES). The state has 78 municipalities, only 32 of them have images on Wikidata and 15 have images on Wikimedia Commons, affecting their representation on the Internet. The contest Wiki Loves Espírito Santo (WLES) has a partnership with the Secretary of State for Culture. The opening event of WLES was transmitted on April 13th and the list of articles defined for the contest is divided into five thematic axes: biographies and diversity, Fauna and Flora, cultural heritage, festivities and religiosity, and territories and natural landscapes.
The state of Espírito Santo is located in the Southeast region, bordering the most populous Brazilian states. Espírito Santo stands out for its very favorable economic indexes in recent decades (such as its capital, Vitória, the 2nd Brazilian capital in Human Development Index), mainly in the fields of agriculture, forestry and mining, and for its good infrastructure of roads and urban services. Nevertheless, it is still the southeastern state with the lowest visibility in Wikimedia projects.
The cultural and historical features of Espírito Santo definitively mark the local identity but they are often confused with those of neighboring states, such as Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.
Only nine historical buildings are listed by IPHAN (federal level). However, there are almost 700 archaeological sites listed in the state and the intangible assets are very expressive, such as the Ofício das Paneleiras de Goiabeiras (Trade of the Pan Artisans of Goiabeiras city), the first intangible heritage listed by IPHAN (Federal Law No. 3,351, of August 4th, 2000). Other intangible assets are Roda de Capoeira and Ofício dos Mestres de Capoeira and cultural groups of Congo, Jongo and Caxambu. At state level there are 179 listed assets by the Secretary of Espírito Santo State for Culture (SeCult) distributed in more than half of the municipalities (48).
More than 4 millions bytes were edited for WLES so far. In the last week, almost 1 million bytes were added. Wiki Community also edited 80 articles and created more than 50 fresh new ones. The environmental issue "Fauna and Flora" is still the apple of editors' eyes, but many contributions were also made about Cultural Heritage (50 Wikipedia entries were added and almost 100 were improved). And the community still have until July 12th to contribute to this Wikicontest.
GLAM Fábrica de Pios
Fábrica de Pios is a Brazilian company founded in 1903 in the city of Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Espírito Santo, by Maurílio Coelho. He learned how to handcraft the “pios” (whistles) with indigenous people called Purís, who lived in that region. This is the only factory in Latin America specialized in the manufacture of “pios”: blowing instruments that imitate the sounds of birds and other animals. Previously used for hunting, today they are used by bird watchers, and fulfill the function of preserving the history and culture of this city.
Some of the animals imitates by pios are
- Black-fronted Piping-Guan (Aburria jacutinga),
- Blue-throated Piping-Guan (Aburria cumanensis),
- Chestnut-bellied Guan (Penelope ochrogaster),
- Common Potoo (Nyctibius griseus),
- Cricket (Gryllus assimilis),
- Gray-fronted Dove (Leptotila rufaxilla),
- Gray Tinamou (Tinamus tao),
- Little Tinamou (Crypturellus soui),
- Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata),
- Northern Pintail (Anas acuta),
- Picazuro Pigeon (Patagioenas picazuro),
- Rosy-billed Pochard (Netta peposaca),
- Rusty-margined Guan (Penelope superciliaris),
- Small-billed Tinamou (Crypturellus parvirostris),
- Spot-winged Wood-Quail (Odontophorus capueira),
- Tataupa Tinamou (Crypturellus tataupa),
- Undulated Tinamou (Crypturellus undulatus),
- White-throated Tinamou (Tinamus guttatus),
- White-tipped Dove (Leptotila verreauxi),
- Yellow-billed Pintail (Anas georgica), and
- Yellow-legged Tinamou (Crypturellus noctivagus).
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Other news from Brazilian GLAM
NEW GLAM: LabAm (Laboratório do Ambiente or Environment Lab) is a research group at the Federal University of Goiás. This WikiProject begins with a set of photos taken by LabAmers in 2016, that documented the Historic Centre of the Town of Goiás. Despite its nomination by UNESCO to the World Heritage List, this set of buildings is not well-represented in Wiki.
Musica Brasilis have uploaded more than 200 music sheets from two other Brazilian composers: Ernesto Nazareth and D. Pedro I (the first Brazilian Emperor). And for the celebration of the month of "slavery abolition", we have uploaded the song "Gaúcho" from Chiquinha Gonzaga, who had fought for liberty in our country.
The first batch by FILE generated the most beautiful GLAM page you will see today!
From university to library
History of Medicine in Wikipedia
In 2022 one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe, University of Tartu (UT) celebrates its 390th anniversary. In WMEE we also decided to organise an event to recognise the important milestone. Together with the University of Tartu Museum, we created a virtual exhibition which is dedicated to history of medicine in UT. The specific theme of the exhibition is "Physical Anthropology in University of Tartu" and its co-author together with WMEE GLAM project manager Kerdo Kristjan Tamm is UT lector of the history of medicine Ken Kalling (MA). It was completed at the beginning of May 2022 and is available only in Estonian.
The exhibition is remarkable in many ways, one of which is its original and very rare collection of various medical equipment of the UT scientists from the II half of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, the written part of the exhibition which supports the visual is substantial, detailed in facts and written fully in academic style. The exhibition about the medical history in University of Tartu could be an interesting experience to an ordinary visitor of Wikipedia as well as study material for the medical students in their academic pursuits. Visit the exhibition´s visual part here.
Librarians actively complementing Wikiquotes
As was mentioned in our March´s newsletter, WMEE is celebrating the Estonian Year of Libraries 2022 by organising a event where librarians all over the country are asked to complement Wikiquotes with memorable quotes from their favourite novels, poems etc. During April we launched the project on Tartu Public Library, the second-largest library in Estonia. The idea was well-accepted by the management and within a few weeks, more than 30 new quotes was gathered. The most active librarian Aimi Tedresalu was also rewarded by WMEE with a valuable gift card from different book stores. Tartu Public Library was left entirely satisfied with the enterprise and complemented Estonian Wikiquotes very professionally.
We are now planning to make this a nationwide project! At the end of May, we held a virtual meeting where in addition to our communication manager the heads of the Year of Libraries and Estonian Librarians Association participated. We agreed on taking the project to a national level whilst they help WMEE with marketing and communication in a way which reaches every library in Estonia. We have set a goal to add at least 1,000 new quotes by the end of 2022 when the Year of Libraries ends. We hope to attract many librarians all over Estonia to make remarkable contributions to Estonian Wikiquotes and introduce Wikimedia in Libraries under a new interesting and fun angle!
Photowalks in Southern Finland, spring 2022
Helsinki Rephotography and Kuvaa uusiksi projects aimed to encourage the activity of retaking photographs of landscapes and architecture in Southern Finland, in order to engage people in the history of their local area, but also to collect new open licensed or public domain images of the city. This has been done especially by organising guided photowalks that are planned around old photographs taken from the area. An integral part of these walks is the possibility to rephotograph historical images and get guidance for it. With the help of Ajapaik mobile phone application, users can easily find an angle and a crop to match the old photographs in order to create new ones, which will then stay in Ajapaik for others to see.
The historical photographs used in these projects have been from the collections of museums involved and from Finna (a collection of search services, maintained by the National Library of Finland) which is at the core of our process, both in finding visual history details and public domain historical images.
Helsinki Rephotography
Helsinki Rephotography was a project of Wikimedia Finland, and this spring it continued the photowalk activity from last autumn, starting again mid-March (after a winter pause) when estimated warm and consistent enough weather conditions in Finland. The activity consisted of 1,5h long urban walks, that were a crossover between guided tours and photo workshops. Two of the events lead us to climb into local towers, to photograph Helsinki from a bird's eye view.
The participants were introduced to Ajapaik rephotography app during the walks, many for the first time, and encouraged to try it out. The walks were planned and conducted as a co-operation between an arts educator and a guide specialised in each theme. This spring we concentrated especially on building co-operation possibilities with museums. For museums, these photowalks (and rephotography itself) can be interesting opportunities to engage the public with their collections in a participatory way.
The walks proved to be not only interesting opportunities to get to know local history and rephotography, but also cheerful gatherings of people from different age groups and backgrounds, as well as spaces for discussion on personal and public histories, remembrance and ideas. This kind of interaction seemed to be valued after the Covid-19 restrictions and isolation. We were also able to use the walks as a testing ground for an IOS version of Ajapaik rephotography app.
- Dates and themes
- 24.3. and 6.4. Photowalk in the footsteps of photographer Ivan Timiriasew.
Prepared in co-operation with Helsinki City Museum and Iisa Aaltonen, who is a historian and a sociologist concentrated on the history and cultural politics of Helsinki. She is also co-author of the book Ivan Timiriasew – Helsinkiläinen valokuvaaja, published in the autumn of 2021.
- 27.4. and 3.5. The disappeared wooden houses of Hermanni neighbourhood.
Prepared in co-operation with Kallio Walking Festival and the city guide Juhani Styrman, who is specialised in the history of the area.
- 4.5. and 13.5. Photographer Signe Brander up in the air: photo tour of Paasitorni (tower).
Prepared in co-operation with Paasitorni Helsinki Congress Paasitorni and Kati Kosonen, who works at Paasitorni as marketing chief and is very familiar with the history of the building.
- 5.5. and 19.5. Photowalk in the footsteps of photographer I.K Inha.
Prepared in co-operation with The Finnish Museum of Photography and Leena Sipponen, who works at the museum as curator of collections.
- 8.6. and 12.6. Photo tour to the tower of The National Museum of Finland.
Prepared in co-operation with National Museum and Hanna Korhonen, who works at the museum as curator of education.
Shoot again - rephotographing in the neighborhood
Kuvaa uusiksi - jälleenkuvausta kotikulmilla (”Shoot again - rephotographing in the neighborhood”) was a rephotography project (aug 2021 - apr 2022) of six local museums in Central Uusimaa region (Tuusulan museo, Keravan museopalvelut, Riihimäen kaupunginmuseo, Hyvinkään kaupunginmuseo, Nurmijärven museo, Mäntsälän museotoimi). The project was funded by Finnish Heritage Agency’s fund for innovative museum projects. The aim was to experiment with using rephotography as a tool for presenting museums’ photo collections to the public and try it as a way for crowdsourced present-day documentation using Ajapaik rephotography mobile app.
There were 15 rephotography walks (2-3/museum) arranged by a project coordinator Inka Tuominen. Pictures chosen by the project coordinator and museum staff were downloaded to Ajapaik. Each tour was also published as a blog post in Kuvaa uusiksi -blog with a map, short historical background texts and instructions on rephotography. In addition, Kuvaa uusiksi arranged two learning events on photographing in public places and present-day documentation. Local museums do already some collaboration with amateur photographers in documenting present day and the events were aiming to find more volunteers and tell about museums’ photo collections in general.
The audience found the walks interesting and it was a great way to hear memories and discuss about changing townscapes. For present-day documentation purposes rephotographing is a too limited tool but via the project museums found new potential photography volunteers. A how-to -guide for rephotography walks can be downloaded from Tuusula Museum website (in Finnish).
- In news
- Yle, 3.4.2022, Kuvasovellus tekee kenestä tahansa kulttuuriperinnön luojan: näin omat kotikulmat voi dokumentoida tulevia sukupolvia varten
- View from Paasitorni to south
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1908 -
2022
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- Paasitorni Congress Hall
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1918 -
2022
- Tähtitorninvuori
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1908 -
2022
- Bio Arena, Hyvinkää
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1910s -
2022
International Museum Day 2022
IMD 2022
The results of the Wikidata contest for the International Museum Day are in! Wikimédia France is pleased to congratulate the 3 winners of the "France" category: Manu1400, Emu and Ecritures : https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/International_Museum_Day_2022/Results/fr
Congratulations and a big thank you to everyone for the contributions on this GLAM theme.
Digitization of Tibetan Buddhist canons, The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
Digitization of Tibetan Buddhist canons started at RIWATCH
RIWATCH Museum, located in the village of Khinjili near the town of Roing at Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh, in the North-eastern part of India, has an unique collection of 330 volumes of printed Tibetan Buddhist canons donated by the 14th Dalai Lama to the institution. An overhead scanner was sent by CIS-A2K to the museum so that the Wikimedian-in-residence appointed there can digitize the entire collection gradually under the GLAM project running there. A visit was made to the institute during the mid May by West Bengal Wikimedians User Group to ensure that the digitization happen in the correct way and to bring back some of the contents, so that they can be uploaded from a facility with faster internet than the institute. The religious texts are now getting uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
West Bengal Wikimedians User Group has participated in the International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition along with affiliates from around the world. The competition was organized by Wikimedia Switzerland (WMCH) and Wikimedia Austria (WMAT) from May 4 to 18, 2022. The focus of the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group was to create and enrich data about museums and their collections located in the Indian state of West Bengal. An outreach dashboard tracked the progress of the competition. According to the statistics, 305 users enrolled, editing 5642 times to create 1660 and edit 5642 Wikidata items about museums in West Bengal, altogether adding 10,260,754 bytes of content.
May inside and for museums
Edit-a-thon at Museo Egizio in Turin
The May 23 edit-a-thon was held in the impressive Gallery of the Kings of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, where Wikimedia Italia, Museo Egizio and Archivio Storico Ricordi collaborated for the first time, with the participation of Creative Commons Italy. The goal was to increase the free content available on Wikipedia and related projects dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida," to which, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of its first performance, the Egyptian Museum is dedicating the exhibition "Aida, daughter of two worlds." Open to the public until June 5, the exhibition brings together archaeology and opera history in an original way.
The cultural project dedicated to Aida, edited by Enrico Ferraris, aims to open up reflection on the significance of Verdi's opera as a turning point in the confrontation between Europe and nineteenth-century Egypt. Thanks to the contribution of Wikipedia volunteers, but also to melomaniacs or students who would like to contribute their knowledge for the first time on the free encyclopedia, Aida and its very rich history will be able to have all the space they deserve on Wikipedia in Italian.
All sharing a contact with "Aida," set designers such as Philippe Chaperon and Auguste Alfred Rubé, opera singers such as Paolo Medini, Giuseppe Fancelli, Pietro Mongini and Eleonora Grossi, but also conductor Ionel Perlea, the Fluminense Lyric Theater and Scafati's satirical opera "Aida" can therefore now count on a new Wikipedia entry. The work of Wikimedian volunteers, coordinated and aided in finding reliable sources by experts from the Egyptian Museum and the Ricordi Historical Archives, has led not only to the creation of nine new entries, but also to the expansion of 21 and the creation or modification of 14 items on Wikidata.
Wikidata competition
On May 18, Wikimedia Italy participated at the International Museums Day by supporting the Wikidata competition for the Italian and Ukrainian communities. Same as last year, from May 4 to 18 there was the contest that rewards volunteers from projects that add and improve the most items on Wikidata.
In keeping with the spirit of solidarity and cooperation of the day, Wikimedia Italy has chosen to support a specific project related to Ukrainian museums. In fact, in addition to awarding the three best volunteers who will dedicate themselves to Italian museums, it will also support six prizes for volunteers who will dedicate themselves to museums in Ukraine. All volunteers, from any part of the world, can participate by dedicating themselves to increasing the amount of data available on Ukrainian museums.
Helping to increase shared knowledge about Ukraine's cultural heritage is a way of showing closeness to communities affected by a conflict, emphasizing the value of the Wikimedia projects as a space for collaboration and protection of common heritage.
New project promoted by volunteers
New proposals supported by the second call for volunteer projects 2022 have been approved. Six projects funded, for nearly 34,000 euros made available for volunteer ideas by Wikimedia Italy. One of them is on the GLAM: Fostering open access with Wikidata.
Two volunteers with the support of Firenze University Press have proposed a project that aims to exploit the potential of Wikidata as a tool for collecting and enhancing scholarly research data starting with the import of article metadata. Taking the metadata of the journals Substantia and Caryologia, which are published in open access, they will upload and reconcile the data of the authors of the articles on Wikidata, the large collaborative database of the Wikimedia projects, which offers the possibility of making different databases talk to each other and make the information and data available to an immense audience of users. This will make research and information about authors and the institutions of which they are a part even more easily accessible online.
Cooperation with the National Gallery of Kosova and Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
Cooperation with the National Gallery of Kosova
Last year WoALUG started its partnership with the National Gallery of Kosovo (GKK), where we had created Wikidata entries for all the artwork that the National Gallery of Kosovo holds.
This year's achievement is that we held the edit-a-thon with the art students of Kosovo as well as placed the Wikimedian-in-Residence.
On May 10, we held the basic training on Wikipedia at Prishtina Hackerspace with art students from the University of Prishtina and UBT - Higher Education Institution. The training lasted two hours and the students determined the articles that they would work on during the edit-a-thon.
The edit-a-thon was held on May 14th at the National Gallery of Kosovo’s object. The participants created various articles on Wikipedia Shqip as well as improved existing articles related to art, artists and cultural institutions in Kosovo.
The Wikimedian-in-Residence placed in GKK will lay the foundation for a more lasting partnership between the Albanian Wikipedia community and the National Gallery of Kosovo. It will promote understanding of Wikimedia among the staff of the Gallery, and will work towards digitizing, compiling, and organizing resources that can be shared with the Wikipedia community worldwide as the collection of the Gallery contains many art pieces of well-known international artists.
Pictures taken during the training session held in Prishtina Hackerspace:
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Pictures taken during the edit-a-thon held in the National Gallery of Kosovo:
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Summer of Wikivoyage 2022
This year, WoALUG’s annual Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon was organized in Pogradec, Albania. WoALUG organizes this activity to write and update Albania and Kosovo articles on the free travel guide Wikivoyage.
Pogradec is a tourist destination in the south-eastern part of Albania, lying on the shores of Lake Ohrid (Ohër), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In addition to Wikimedian volunteers from our community, this time we invited certified guides from the Kosovo Tourist Guide Association to join us.
On May 20, 2022, we traveled to Pogradec. Later that day, our group took a tour of the Park of Drilon and Tushemisht, a small village 5km away from the town.
For the next two days, May 21-22, we updated and created new articles for Kosovo and Albania, uploaded the pictures we took from our expedition to Wikimedia Commons, and used them to illustrate the articles of the area.
To keep our community posted, we were active on social media by inviting the community to participate in the edit-a-thon virtually and sharing our progress on article writing and updates.
Here are some statistics from the Outreach Dashboard: - 12 new articles were created - 36 existing articles were expanded and improved - 14 editors participated - 58 multimedia were uploaded to Commons
We would like to thank Wikivoyage administrators for their support during this activity.
Enjoy some pictures taken during this edit-a-thon, taken by our Wikimedian Sinan Berisha:
WoALUG welcomes cooperation with all GLAM institutions.
Social media
- We have a public Telegram channel (language used mostly Albanian) if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects. You don't need to be a member to be part of this channel.
If you want to see more about our activities you can:
- Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
WikiGap Malaysia 2022 @ Kuala Lumpur Library
On 21 March 2022, the Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia held a Wikipedia meetup for the 6th time with GLAM institutions under the Wikipedia Kuala Lumpur Meetup 10 official name at Kuala Lumpur Library, located in the city of Kuala Lumpur.
Users Dody Ismoyo and Tokeifu were the presenters for this meetup, in which it was organized in collaboration between the user group, Swedish Embassy in Malaysia and the University of Malaya. This was the 2nd WikiGap held in Malaysian the first one held face-to-face. The meetup was opened by the Ambassador of the Swedish Embassy in Malaysia and a representative from the University of Malaya. The meetup was also broadcasted online for those participants who opted to join through the platform.
Various articles about women of Malaysia and Sweden were improved during the meetup, in which many of them participants used the English-language Wikipedia (to improve any existing sub articles) and Simple English-language Wikipedia (to create new articles). Some photos were uploaded as well to Wikimedia Commons.
Pacific Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject, Auckland Museum's Exploratory Study and Report back on #1Lib1Ref
Pacific Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject
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The Pacific Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject, coordinated by Pakoire, included a Wikipedian in Residence pilot component funded by Creative New Zealand (CNZ) that started in December 2021 and finished on 24 April 2022.
The Wikipedian-in-Residence project aimed to identify gaps in information and provide training to create content, learn about Wikipedia platforms and connect with future possibilities of promoting and celebrating Pacific Island artists from dance, music, fine arts and theatre through Wikipedia platforms. The project addressed that although Pacific arts is a prominent feature of the arts landscape in Aotearoa, the number of notable artists, events, companies and creators with articles in Wikipedia is very low. The Arts Pacifika Awards (run by CNZ) started in 2002 but only 42% of winners had Wikipedia articles. Expanded articles about Pacific arts helps create an enriched network of interlinked information painting a picture of Pacific Island creativity, investment in community and innovation that is globally searchable and an important springboard for further research and connections.
The overall purpose of the residency was to provide training to Pasifika editors and to expand knowledge about Wikipedia to Pasifika people in the arts. There were three Wikipedian-in-Residents that took part in the programme Kowhaiarewhana, Friagatewayfinder and NEOLANI2022, and each had a target for outreach conversations about what they were doing within their own networks or areas of interest. Often they reached out to the subjects of their articles for 'talanoa' or conversation, where sometimes they were able to hear first hand how people spoke about their work. This guided the research of the editors with clues about where to find citable sources. Although this is not perhaps the way many Wikipedia editors approach writing biographies of living people, in this context it endorsed the use of Wikipedia as a place for information about Pacific Island art and artists, as all who were approached were positive about the idea.
The residency contributes to Creative New Zealand’s work to develop ‘Tagata’ arts leadership, a strategic focus of its Pacific Arts Strategy 2018-2023, and is part of its #DigitalMoana response to the impacts of COVID-19.
Outcomes of the residency
The Creative New Zealand residency created 20 new articles with ten of these being created beyond start class by the three editors new to Wikipedia. The three residents also improved 13 Wikipedia articles, created and expanded 19 Wikidata items and uploaded 4 images to Wikimedia Commons.
The three new editors attended a number of New Zealand-based Wikipedia group meetings and one secured a sponsored place to New Zealand's National Digital Forum conference. Each resident spoke to practitioners within the Pacific Arts community in Aotearoa about their learning and the goals of the project and their work was covered in this blog on the Creative New Zealand website.
Some reflections from the editors as outlined in the Creative New Zealand blog post covering this project include:
Looking deeper into the future I hope we begin to build frameworks outside of Wikipedia, a database that best reflects our lens and cultural practices that is true to the way we catalogue information from our ancestral practices deeply rooted in oratory.
I am an avid user of Wikipedia, and most of my reading has been through music and film deep dives over the years so it's nice to experience Wikipedia from this perspective as a contributor.
Auckland Museum: Wikipedia and the Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum Exploratory Study
The Study
Auckland Museum recently reported back on a WMF project grant used to complete a literature review and run an exploratory study to investigate New Zealand secondary social studies/history teachers' attitudes to using Wikipedia as a resource for teaching the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories (ANZH) curriculum. Data was gathered by a survey/questionnaire and interviews (n=90).
New Zealand is introducing the new histories curriculum in 2023. The new curriculum content will be developed by local schools and kura (Māori language schools) and these schools will decide which historic events and sites, people and local contexts will be explored as part of the classroom learning programme. Auckland Museum staff are aware that the introduction of the new curriculum will prompt multiple research requests from local teachers and students that will require servicing. Staff are looking to develop information and resource lists specific to the local Auckland suburb area to meet this demand. This study was the first step in Auckland Museum's strategy to investigate whether Wikipedia could be the platform where Auckland Museum could proactively work to improve local history articles and assemble resources and useful references for the teaching community.
The Findings
The study found:
- Most participants saw Wikipedia as a reliable resource for national Aotearoa New Zealand history content and valuable to both inform their teaching and for their students to access information for enquiry-based studies. The prevailing view was that Wikipedia was as reliable as any encyclopedia and that it provided a worthwhile starting point in the research process.
- The question of reliability was a concern when it came to accessing local histories on Wikipedia. The encyclopedia was not generally seen as an accurate source of information in this area. The reasons for this are not evident from the survey but drawing on the interviews, this may indicate that some teachers do not see a diverse range of experiences reflected in local history Wikipedia articles. For example, mātauranga Māori perspectives, the increasingly diverse demographic changes in Auckland over the last 40 years as well as more recent historical interpretations that reflect contemporary scholarship.
- Teachers overwhelmingly trusted the information on local history sourced from Auckland Museum as reliable and accurate. Considering this, there is an opportunity for the museum to work with Wikipedia to support teachers by providing resources that enhance articles on Auckland areas that reflect the diverse range of experiences in the region.
- Teachers saw Wikipedia as having the potential to contribute to how students learn to think critically about sources and develop the skills to differentiate between knowledge that is supported by reliable evidence and unverified narratives. Teachers will require support if they are to use Wikipedia in the classroom for this purpose. Few have edited articles or have an in-depth understanding of how Wikipedia operates. Supporting teachers to develop these skills is closely aligned with Auckland Museums’s Wikimedia strategy. The museum has hosted edit-a-thons and is equipped to deliver the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program. There is the opportunity in this area for Auckland Museum to increase teachers' digital literacy skills in using the encyclopaedia, with the ‘flow-on’ effect that, as teachers develop expertise as editors, they could teach their students to contribute to local articles as creators of content.
- While a substantial number of participants thought articles were well written and accessible, there were some who indicated their students found the reading level of the articles too advanced. The extent to which this is an issue was not evident from the data, but considering almost 43% were neutral on this question, this area would benefit from further investigation.
Next steps
Auckland Museum believe the results of the study are promising and that, with support from Auckland Museum staff and other Auckland GLAM institutions, teachers would successfully use Wikipedia as an information source to deliver to the new history curriculum. Auckland Museum staff have discussed the overall strategy with members of the Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand and local Auckland Wikipedia editors and have received feedback on and support for their approach. Articles on each of the Auckland suburbs and major sub-regions of the Auckland region have been identified for improvement by Auckland Museum including enhancing information on Māori settlement and occupation of those areas, the colonial period and later developments of 20th century, upload and reuse of openly licensed images from Auckland Museum collections and citations to other useful and authoritive print and digital resources. While a recent WMF funding application for an editing project to accelerate this work was declined, Auckland Museum remain committed to continuing with implementing their Wikipedia strategy.
Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc report on #1Lib1Ref Events
In 2022, like in 2021, Wikimedia Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc joined forces to offer librarians across our region online support to participate in #1Lib1Ref. See the landing page for this effort.
We collaborated to provide 6 virtual drop in sessions offered during the campaign dates of Sunday 15 May to Sunday 5 June 2022. Of the two #1Lib1Ref campaigns per year, this is the more productive of the two for New Zealand and Australia, as unlike the January/February campaign, it is not held during our holiday period.
What worked
The 6 two hour zoom meetings were productive with a handful of new editors being tutored at each session. We also had a couple of repeat attendees wanting to expand their knowledge after attending their first session during this campaign. The use of Eventbrite for sending logins and the Zoom platform worked well and we did not have a repeat of the zoombombing that occurred last year.
The run sheet for the session also worked well. Tenniscourtisland from Wikimedia Australia would do a general introduction explaining about the #1Lib1Ref campaign, we then would complete a round table of short introductions both to introduce experienced editors and to gauge the needs of the attendees.
One of the experienced wikipedians attending would then share their screen and complete a 5-10 min demonstration of how to add citations to Wikipedia. The Wikipedian who demonstrated had prepared for the meeting by adding unreferenced statements to a Wikipedia article and then used the citoid tool and visual editor to add citations.
Because the focus of the meeting was to get the participants adding citations to Wikipedia as soon as possible, we would then point the participants to three ways they could find articles to add references to. The first was a pre-prepared Google document listing suggested articles and proposed references. The second was the Wikiproject cleanup listings and the third was the citation hunt tool.
Sometimes an editor was attending to refresh their skills obtained from earlier 1Lib1Ref campaigns or alternatively expressed an interest in adding content to Wikipedia as well as references. In those cases we would encourage the participant to find a quality nonfiction book or scholarly article on a subject and then explore if any information contained in that publication could be added to Wikipedia and the source cited.
Every participant that attended the sessions left the meeting having created a Wikipedia account and added at least one reference to Wikipedia. Where the new editor was comfortable for us to do so, we collected their user names and added them to the event dashboard. They also left with contact email addresses should they need support in editing in the future.
What could improve
Although we had attendees in each of the sessions and were productive ourselves during the two hour blocks we could have easily handled more participants. Also, very few New Zealand based librarians attended the sessions. More direct outreach prior to the next #1Lib1Ref campaign may help encourage librarians to attend sessions. Although the New Zealand organisers undertook publicity of these sessions over Facebook and twitter, including outreach on these platforms to local libraries and to library organisations this didn’t elicit much engagement from the New Zealand library community. The New Zealand based organisers will in future consider directly emailing libraries around the country prior to the next campaign and encouraging librarians to participate as part of their professional development.
It was suggested to one of the organisers that the last minute sharing of the zoom link was an issue for some of the participants. After explaining the reasoning for this late link - that is to ensure organisers were able to contact those who registered last minute - the participant suggested perhaps a two email strategy may work better. i.e. an email two days before and then an email two hours before the session started. This suggestion will definitely be considered for next years campaign.
There was an issue during one zoom session where the Zoom account being used for the session was unavailable at the start time due to another meeting running over time. The New Zealand participants suggested that the Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc should have its own zoom account. This could then be used as a backup to help avoid a repeat of this situation. This has been raised with the board of Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc and will be actioned as soon as possible. The obtaining of an organisation run zoom account for events was already in the planning.
Conclusion
It is anticipated that this joint campaign will again be held next year as the organisers from both Australia and New Zealand believe it works well and although numbers at each session are small, the repeat of this event this year saw a number of returning librarians gaining a refresh in skills as well as new editors who quickly became efficient and continued to enthusiastically contribute during the campaign.
Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand's first planning workshop
Over 28 and 29 May the committee of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand (WANZ) met in Wellington for its first strategic planning meeting. WANZ has created a constitution and is an incorporated society seeking charitable status; we have just received general support funding from the WMF to set up a website, purchase software, fund some work on the NZ Thesis Project mentioned in the March 2022 report, and run meetups and the next WikiCon. The process was greatly helped by having a professional meeting facilitator—who took our group portraits, and so was set up with a Wikimedia account on the spot, so she could learn how to upload to Commons (and later use VRT to licence her work).
Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; Training at the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection; How can we make GLAM’s digital resources more reusable in education?; The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow
At the beginning of May the Wikipedian in residence Filip (MNK) has started work at The National Museum in Cracow within the partnership set up in February 2022. For the next three months he will introduce museum staff to the Wikimedia world.
The MNK is the largest museum in Poland and the main branch of Poland's National Museum, so the first step is meet with the curators and custodians to build solid ground for further cooperation. The technical support is also provided to prepare the uploading process of a unique collection of art that belongs to the Museum. The selection of the artworks for the upload to the Wikimedia Commons is prepared by museum professionals. The next steps will focus on engaging museum's professionals and Wikimedia community to prepare and develop articles and illustrate them with uploaded images.
Training at the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection
Staff at the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection have improved their Wikimedia skills by learning basic editing of Wikipedia. The training was led by Wikipedian Durski and was supported by EwkaC. Thus, the partnership set up two years ago has been relaunched.
The goal is to equip the museum professionals with skills of editing Wikipedia so they could develop the series of articles connected with the new opening of the Crown Treasury which is planned at the end of June this year. The Crown Treasure is now reconstructed and renovated. It is the part of the Castle that was used from the 15th century for storing the Polish coronation insignia and Crown Jewels. The new and expanded exposition of the Treasury will include the objects that will be described in Wikipedia.
The Wawel Royal Castle, where the museum is located, for centuries had been the residence of the kings of Poland and the symbol of Polish statehood.
How can we make GLAM’s digital resources more reusable in education?
We invite you to take part in a pan-European research conducted by Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation in partnership with Europeana and EuroClio. It is addressed to teachers, educators and librarians who use GLAM’s digital resources in the education process.
The research project will focus on studying teachers’ and educators' motivation, ways of use and barriers regarding the usage of digital educational educational tools & resources developed by GLAM institutions.
On behalf of Centrum Cyfrowe we invite you to fill up a short questionnaire. This will not take more than 10 minutes. You can take part in the survey till the end of June 2022.
More information about the research project can be found here.
All materials from the study will be published on a Centrum Cyfrowe website as well as a pdf format and made available under CC BY Licence – so everyone can copy, modify, distribute, communicate and make the publication available to the public, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
The official presentation of the research will take place in September 2022 during the Open Education Policy Forum.
The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition
Wikimedia Poland has participated in the Wikidata Competition, which was organized to celebrate the International Museum Day. The competition took place from May 4 to 18, 2022. On 17th of May Wikimedia Poland organized event for Polish Wikimedia Community to edit wikidata on museums together. The goal was to get newcomers more familiar with this Wikimedia project and create a space for exchange of knowledge and experience in editing Wikidata.
According to the statistics, there were 46 participants from Poland, who made a total number of 21 653 edits. The winners of Polish edition of the competition are: Piastu, Czupirek, Powerek38.
Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all participants and organizers!
New GLAM brochure and Wikilive 2022
New GLAM brochure
During the Wikilive 2022 conference, we exclusively presented a new edition of the GLAM brochure. We presented models of cooperation, achieved results, new partners, as well as their impressions of Wikimedia projects and endeavors. An English edition is in preparation.
Wikilive 2022
After a two-year break, the Wikilive Conference was held in Belgrade. This conference is organized for Wikipedians and Wikimedians from Serbia and the region. The conference was attended by about 100 participants who attended the two-day program. During this conference, novelties in the GLAM program were presented through the session called GLAM round table, which was also attended by partners from cultural institutions. The contributors shared their experience in cooperation with Wikimedia Serbia, their understanding of the importance of digitizing cultural heritage, as well as the Wiki project. Many experiences were exchanged, plans for future activities were made and time was used to connect with each other. The round table was attended by Milica Naumov from the Museum of African Art in Belgrade, Aleksandra Popović from the University Library Svetozar Markovic, Miloš Todorović, a participant in the project, Nevena Popović from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia and Aleksandar Marušić from the Museum of Rudnik and Takovo Region. During the second day of the conference, a panel discussion with Wikipedian in residence was held. The panel discussion was attended by Milena Milenković, Sara Horvat and Đorđe Ilić.
IMD Wikidata competition
Wikimedia Serbia has participated in an international competition on Wikidata on the occasion of the International Museum Day, organized by Wikimedia Switzerland (WMCH) and Wikimedia Austria (WMAT) with the support of other Wikimedia affiliates. The competition lasted from May 4 to 18, 2022. The goal of this competition on the occasion of the International Museum Day was to improve data on museums in the participating countries and regions. 27 affiliations and a total of 979 participants participated in the competition, 18,721 items were changed, 3,222 were made, and a total of 86,108,434 bytes were added. Regarding the editing of Wikidata on museums in Serbia, 24 participants applied for participation, 196 items were changed, 15 were made, and a total of 1,474,841 bytes were added. Nikolina Šepić contributed the most to the competition at the level of Serbia, winning an award worth 150 euros of promotional material from world-famous museums of her choice, and editors Zoran Filipović and Sadko received vouchers for books worth 3,000 dinars.
Gallery
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GLAM Brochure -
WikiLive - Second day -
WikiLive - First day -
"Wikipedin in residence" panel discussion -
GLAM open table -
GLAM open table
Rembrandt and others – drawings from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm; Stockholm Museum of Women’s History; The map book of Heinrich Thome; Sörmland Museum; Wikidata competition – International Museum Day 2022
Rembrandt and others – drawings from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm
As part of Wikimedia Sverige's collaboration with the Nationalmuseum, a couple hundred new files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons – and more are on the way! These are high-resolution scans of drawings from the museum's collections, and are a valuable addition to the previous uploads, which consisted of paintings. Among the artists represented are Dutch masters such as Andries Both, Romeyn de Hooghe and Rembrandt. Have a look in the category for the new uploads and help us put them to good use on Wikipedia!
Stockholm Museum of Women’s History
The Stockholm Museum of Women’s History are planning to start hosting regular edit-a-thons to add and improve articles in their field, and to kick things off they did a training session for the staff members. Normal editing, uploading images, notability, adding sources, using talk pages and regular Wikimedia basics was on the schedule for the group, as well as looking into various gaps among editors and content and how to fill the gaps.
The map book of Heinrich Thome
The Swedish National Archives has completed the upload of the map book of Heinrich Thome. Thome was a fortification officer in the service of first Sweden and then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His map book, produced in the 1620s, includes plans for and maps of cities and fortifications in current day Sweden, Poland, Russia (Kaliningrad), Lithuania and Latvia.
Sörmland Museum
In May, Sörmland Museum has been quite busy on several Wiki projects: We've completed our Wikimedian-in-Residence project together with Biblioteksutveckling Sörmland, organized a Wikipedia competition on folk costumes on Swedish Wikipedia, and uploaded 129 artworks to Wikimedia Commons. The uploaded files include artworks from Bernhard Österman who portrayed royals, stars and the Swedish high society during the early 20th century, Ferdinand Boberg's drawings of buildings and places in Sörmland in the 1910s and 1920s as well as paintings by Nils von Dardel, Olof Hermelin and others.
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Wikidata competition – International Museum Day 2022
Power to the Museums was this year's theme for tha International Museum Day and Wikimedia's platforms are truly a powerful place to share knowledge and strengthen museums. In collaboration with the international museum association ICOM, the Wikimedia movement conducted a competition focusing on data and information to pay tribute to the knowledge that museums share.
The project is coordinated by Wikimedia Switzerland (WMCH) and Wikimedia Austria (WMAT) and almost 30 Wikimedia organizations participated. Congratulations to the winners as there were competitions per country and the results are registered on each country's individual dashboard.
Diversity in GLAM Program
Awarness Campaign for the International Archive Week 2022
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Wikimedia CH launched together with the Swiss Association of Archivists, the awareness campaign to support the International Archives Week 2022. This year's International Archives Week take place from June 6 to June 10, 2022 and focuse on the topic "ArchivesAreYou". We aim to motivate GLAM professionals and our volunteers to support us in improving and completing the presence of Archives on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata in Switzerland.
Interested in more information? Visit our project page.
International Museum Day 2022
ICOM has been organizing the International Museum Day for over 40 years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, museums and the cultural sector are among the most affected. Nevertheless, this crisis serves as a catalyst for crucial innovations, notably an increased focus on the creation of new forms of cultural experience and dissemination.
With this call, many Wikimedia affiliates worldwide wanted to give an impulse to support this initiative, despite the actual circumstances, where culture knows no borders and lives on virtually. Many museums have adapted their operations to support virtual formats, released high resolution images and information under a free license and organize virtual collection tours.
The project was successfully coordinated by Wikimedia Switzerland (WMCH) and Wikimedia Austria (WMAT), GLAM partners and supported by many other Wikimedia organizations.
Wikimedia CH gave a micro-grant to Wikipedians in Benin and they were able to organize an edit-a-thon and a Wikipedia formation. You can see their report in this page (in French): Reporting Bénin Museum Tour
Common project with the Natural History Museum in Neuchâtel
Following a partnership between Wikimedia CH and the Natural History Museum in Neuchâtel, a world-renowned fossil collection, initiated in the 1830s by the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) and preserved in this museum, is now largely digitized. Photos of these objects are freely accessible on the Wikimedia Commons multimedia platform in the following category: Category:Collection of fish fossils created by Louis Agassiz
This is the first time that photographs of a historical fossil collection with its scientific metadata, including species, biblio-graphic citations, places of origin, and geological periods, have been placed on Wikimedia Commons.
Khalili Collections
Khalili Collections
At the end of 2021, the Khalili Foundation published a book on the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. This has been used to improve various Wikipedia articles, especially UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which was expanded sixfold and has now passed DYK review, to appear on English Wikipedia's home page on 5th June. This is the twentieth DYK to come from this project.
On May 2, the Talismanic Shirt appeared on the front page of English Wikipedia as the Featured Picture of the Day, where it was shown to potentially 5.1 million people. I have continued adding categories to images on Commons and adding statements on Wikidata. Khalili Collections images are now visible in 1067 categories (57 more than a month ago); the new categories include Islamic candlesticks, 8th-century metalwork, Al-Ahzab, and Dolphins in art. The number of "uncategorised" images (with just one category tag) decreased from 179 to 138.
I have continued making minor improvements to Islam-related articles on Wikipedia, including Paul Lucas (traveller), Sahih al-Bukhari and Al-Baqi Cemetery. No new images were uploaded this month, apart from three cropped/edited versions of previously-uploaded images. The BaGLAMa tool reports that 305 pages on English Wikipedia now use Khalili Collections images.
The article on the Dar al-Kiswa has been put up for Good Article review and is awaiting a reviewer.
Wikimedistas de Uruguay report: 1bib1ref, Museum of Natural History, and more!
Workshops with the National Museum of Natural History of Uruguay
As part of our ongoing collaboration with the of Uruguay, we had a workshop with the staff at their new venue, where the Museum will be finally established. We used the opportunity to navigate through different Wikipedia categories and to understand the potential impact that a media release could have on bringing visibility to the Museum's collection. Afterwards, they showed us part of their new installations.
Activities for #1bib1ref campaign
In the context of the #1bib1ref campaign, we organized several workshops and conversations with librarians.
- We gave a workshop at the Information & Communications School at the National University of Uruguay (UDELAR). We had around 40 people participating. The presentation is available on Wikimedia Commons. We adapted some of our previous presentations from the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom to fit this audience, making it around information literacy. We had an issue with the post-workshop survey so we had to put together a form last minute, but we got 16 responses and people seemed overall very engaged and satisfied.
- We gave a talk with Nicolás Caitán, from the Digital Services at the National Research & Innovation Agency of Uruguay, on how the meta harvester SILO developed by the National R&I Agency can be of use for librarians and Wikipedians alike. Around 14 people participated in the conversation. The recording is available here, on our Wikimedistas de Uruguay YouTube channel.
Looking at environmental issues from a cultural heritage lens
In the context of the #Wiki4HumanRights, we did a panel on "Looking at environmental issues from a cultural heritage perspective". We had Carlos Gradín from the River Authority Control of the Matanza-Riachuelo River, Anabela Plos from Wikimedistas del Museo de La Plata and Carlos Brescia from WikiAcción Perú. In that context, Carlos Gradín presented the archive that the Authority Control is putting together on the Matanza-Riachuelo River. The recording is available here, on our Wikimedistas de Uruguay YouTube channel.
Uruguay results from the Wikidata International Museum Day
Organized by Wikimedia Austria, we participated in the International Museum Day. While the results for our Dashboard weren't very impressive (see below), we obtained some other interesting results as participating in this activity. Namely, we got national coverage about the contest in the newspaper El País with an interview Compartiendo datos ganamos todos and we started working with the network of museums of Canelones. We gave their museums a closed workshop with around nine people participating and we are in conversations to move forward with a set of workshops in July-August.
Hackathons and Edit-a-thons
Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 meetups
While the Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 was planned to be virtual, local Wikimedians were encouraged to create their own regional meetups. Wikimedia DC and Wikimedia NYC held their respective in-person meetups for the DC Hackathon 2022 and 2022 Hacknic Prospect Park Brooklyn. This marked the first significant in-person meetup for some Wikimedians in almost two years.
In Washington, D.C. activities included:
- Discussion of knowledge graphs led by User:Fuzheado, and associated notes.
- User:SuperHamster and User:Fuzheado worked with Dschwen to upgrade the 360 panorama viewer to the lastest version.
- There was a demonstration and training on how to use Google Sheets with Wikipedia/Wikidata functions, with more info found at m:Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools.
- User:Fuzheado demonstrated extensions to Google Sheets scripts to pull in ORES ratings and other information, and how these were used for GLAM institutions to evaluate the overall quality of worklist at places such as The Met Museum and Smithsonian Institution. The page m:Wiki List Tool was started to help document this.
- The ISA tool was used to provide an easy on-ramp to contributing info to Structured Data on Commons, even allowing for some of our young 11-year-old participants to add depiction information for Metropolitan Museum of Art collections. Example data set from The Met.
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Hackathon in D.C., Day 1 with WMF staffers -
Hackathon in D.C. Days 2 and 3 in The Cove -
Some younger Hackathon participants adding Structured Data on Commons depiction info via the ISA Tool -
New York City Hacknic in Brooklyn's Prospect Park
100 DC Women 2022
Wikimedia DC held an editing contest, 100 DC Women 2022. 6 participants created 72 articles.
Seattle @ Distant Worlds
Cascadia Wikimedians User Group, held a meetup, Meetup/Seattle
San Diego/May 2022
San Diego Wikimedians held a meetup, San Diego/May 2022
Smithsonian APA Heritage Month Edit-a-thon
The Smithsonian American Women's Initiative and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center held an edit-a-thon on May 19th which generated the addition of 16,000 new words on Wikipedia and Wikidata. It was the most successful Smithsonian edit-a-thon since the first one held in 2010! Articles created at edit-a-thon include: Linda Mabalot, Youngmi Mayer, Wai Chim, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, and the Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival. In addition, the forthcoming book from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, We Are Here, now has a Wikidata item that includes all who are featured in the book.
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Philadelphia Salon
Philadelphia Wikimedians held their monthly salon, Philadelphia/WikiSalon 2022-05-14.
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Elijah F. Pennypacker
We have been closely working with the International Energy Agency to help them share their knowledge and expertise on Wikipedia. They have contributed information on energy and fossil fuel use around the world as well as information specific to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In addition they have also contributed 45 graphics on energy use to Commons which we encourage you to use on Wikipedia articles.
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Gas production by type in the United States, 2018-2022. US natural gas production reached a new record in December 2021. -
Natural gas production in Africa by domestic and export market destination, 2020-21. Africa’s gas production growth was supported by both domestic and export markets in 2021 -
Solar photovoltaics (PV) & onshore wind investment cost estimates for new contracted projects under high commodity prices -
Russian crude and oil product exports, Jan 2020-Dec 2021 -
Impact of a commodity price shock on average household energy bills in advanced economies in 2030 by scenario -
Monthly gas supply balance in the European Union, 2014-2021.
Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine: looking for test uploads!
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The OpenRefine team is working hard to include Wikimedia Commons (structured data) batch editing and upload functionalities in OpenRefine, and the work is progressing well. The first files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons last month.
This means that experimental, basic functionalities for uploading files to Commons are getting ready! It is still fiddly to install and run these - this will be improved in the upcoming months. But we are ready for testing!
The team would like to work with a few (think 3 to 5) diverse community projects to test batch file uploads. This will help a lot to find bugs and to better support your workflows.
Maybe you have an upcoming Commons upload that the OpenRefine team can test with? If so, please contact Sandra!
Ideally this upload of files (any files!) is
- Rather small (max. a few hundreds of files).
- You preferably already have some basic data/information about the files.
- They are ready to be uploaded somewhere in June-September 2022, and it’s OK if there is a bit of delay (you don’t have hard deadlines).
- The rights for the files are cleared / there is evidence that the files have the right licenses/copyright .
- You are OK with it that some mistakes may happen during the test, for instance some errors in Wikitext or structured data. (We are testing new software!). You are willing to help look for and fix mistakes if they happen.
- You can upload the files yourself, or you can let Sandra upload them for you. If you want to upload the files yourself with OpenRefine, the team will help you set up. In that case, it’s good if you are a bit tolerant of bugs, errors, and unfinished software (we are testing brand new code that is still rough around the edges!). It would be great if you can then also give the team tips and feedback about your experience.
Are you interested in this? Then send Sandra an email (sandra.fauconnier
gmail.com) with some information about the kind of files you would like to upload.
Results from 1Lib1Ref May 2022
The May 2022 edition of #1Lib1Ref has come to a close with very interesting results. The campaign happened from May 15th to June 5th and it was an opportunity for people in the southern hemisphere to participate.
According to the Outreach Dashboard campaign, we were joined by 24 programs that gathered 520 editors. That is almost 100 more editors than last year!
We also had:
- 8.79K references added
- 1.82M words added
- 10.8K articles edited
- 1.48K articles created
- 1.2K Commons uploads
- 9.54K total revisions on Wikidata
This year's highlights will also go to the campaigns by AfLIA (1Lib1Ref African Librarians Week 2022) and by the Igbo Wikimedians User Group (1lib1ref cite-a-thon). AfLIA added 3.15K references alone and the user group added 1.44K.
This year, the May campaign managed to keep up with last year's stats, overcoming them by a small margin. In 2021, there were 24 programs, 428 editors, and 8.54K references added according to the Outreach Dashboard.
On the other hand, according to the overall stats on Wikipedia, the "#1Lib1Ref" hashtag was used less this year. We are still gathering this data and will update this page with the information soon.
June's GLAM events
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