GLAM/Newsletter/April 2012/Contents/UK report
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MonmouthpediA project; first QRpedia railway station
MonmouthpediA Charles Rolls Challenge ends, QRpedia codes put up
April 21st saw WMUK's project in Monmouth being noted. A Monmouth meet up had been organised because of the MonmouthpediA project which had brought the WMUK to its first board meeting outside the English borders. This was also the first Wikimeet in Wales. Since December of 2010 the MonmouthpediA project had written over 120 articles in English and 300+ in other languages, the content is generating around 400,000 more page views a year of articles related to Monmouth. This meant that over 50 notable buildings (including most of the pubs) had articles and QRpedia codes had been placed on the notable objects inside several of the buildings.
Introduction
MonmouthpediA is a project to make is to make the Welsh town of Monmouth "the first Wikipedia town". The project aims to cover all notable place, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible, but with a special focus on Welsh. This is a different scale of wiki-project. The project is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK, Monmouthshire County Council have installed free, town-wide wifi for the project.
Charles Rolls Challenge
The top 5 contributors in the Charles Rolls Challenge (in alphabetic order!) were:
The top 15 contributors in the Charles Rolls Challenge were:
Thank you!
The winning images
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Monmouth Museum: An Elephant escaped from the Mop Fair as they were leaving Monmouth.
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Keith Moseley: Dog agility and obedience trials at Monmouth Show.
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Bob Crowther: East Window, St Thomas the Martyr Church.
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Dawnswraig: Medieval timber frame in Monnow Street.
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Luciano Vecchio and Yel Zamor: image taken from the comic The Interactives, featuring the Monnow Bridge.
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Anthony Cope: The last train leaving Monmouth Troy railway station in 1959.
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Philip Halling: Monnow Bridge.
Also a special thanks to Llywelyn2000 who wrote 50 articles in Welsh, he chose not to enter the competition. I'm currently working with him on a Welsh Wikimeet and the possibility of making Android available in Welsh. This is particularly important as QRpedia relies on the operating system to find out the users language. If anyone would be interested in helping with this please get in touch with John.
People involved
Monmouthpedia is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK. There are many people involved, all the local and worldwide contributors, the local museums, Monmouth library, Roger Bamkin, two Phd students are studying it as part of their course, a history degree student on placement with the project is working at the museum, a steering meeting with council heads of departments, a number of local volunteers helping me with organisation and artwork (including the image at the top of this page by Dilly Boase). Harry Mitchell (HJ Mitchell), Doug Taylor (RexxS) and myself have been teaching how to edit Wikipedia and upload images inc foreign languages at two secondary schools. The board of Wikimedia UK board held a meeting in Monmouth this month on the 21st and 22nd of April which was live streamed online. Because of our good relations we were given a folly to play in for an hour. A full list of partners can be found here.
Making the content available in the town
We want to integrate this content into people’s everyday experience of the world in a free and easily accessible way, offering visitors a level of information (in their own language) and allow residents can learn more about the town where they live.
We will be the first town in Wales to have free and open wifi available to everyone. We use multilingual QRpedia codes (pictured), a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. We will have over 1,000 QR codes in Monmouth by our celebration day on the 19th of May. These included:
- Ceramic plaques there will be over 50 around the town. They are made by a local art therapy centre, Swan Court Studio.
- Fingerpost signs ceramic plaques on pedestrian signage giving them Wikipedia articles, maps and trails
- Town map signs There are several town maps, there will be QRpedia codes on them linking to articles, maps and trails
- Shire Hall A local museum and tourist information point, QRpedia codes will be used to give museum visitors and tourists more information
- Monmouth Museum
- Monmouth Library The librarian are creating QRpedia codes for the inside cover of books, to give information on the authors
- Stickers in shop windows (pictured) QRpedia codes that link to the history of the profession and the goods and services that they sell.
We are also working on grouping the content by people's interest, allowing people to make online maps that can be accessed through QRpedia codes around the town on maps and signposts.
Monmouth Museum
The Museum has a large and ranging collection including many notable objects.The most important thing is to make intergrating and using Wikipedia within the museum sustainable, the objects on display change over time, it's important to help the museum staff understand Wikipedia and how to create qrpedia codes themselves. The museum curator Andrew Helme (appears in the video at the top of this page) is interested in what Wikipedia can do in terms of making the museum information available to as wide an audience as possible in as many languages, something not possible using traditional labels.
The student on placement at the museum from the University of Wales, Newport, Roisin Curran has become the Wikipedian in Residence for the museum, writing specific articles for notable pieces in the collection and upload images from the museum collection. We're very proud that we are creating leading Wikipedians from newbies!
Shire Hall
Shire Hall has a very small collection; it is the building and the events that took place within it that are important. We are trying to find ways to allow unobtrusive labelling. The Hall also functions as a tourist information centre, using QRpedia - they are able to offer information in many more languages than before. They also have a large store of images and a set of professionally-made videos John Cummings is working with them to release.
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Dramatisation of the trial of the Chartists at Shire Hall, Monmouth.
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QRpedia codes in the Shire Hall courtroom, where the Chartists were tried.
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Ceramic plaque for Shire Hall, the blue plaques are for the Heritage Trail sites.
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The plaque installed on the front of the building.
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Display board within the building.
Celebration Day
There will be a celebration day in the town on the 19th of May where we will:
- have 30 banners from the lamp posts and "World's First Wikipedia Town" displayed for all to see.
- show off what has been done
- provide Wikipedia drop-in sessions to teach people how to use Wikipedia and explain what's happened in Monmouth
- there will be an exhibition of images uploaded to commons
- there will be cake and balloons
To find out more and to get involved go to MonmouthpediA
News in brief
- QRpedia deployed to historic Moor Street railway station: On April 26th, Birmingham Wikimedian Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) deployed 8 QRpedia codes at the historic Moor Street Railway Station. Images of the codes can be found on Wikimedia Commons.
- QRpedia deployed to the Galleries of Justice Museum in Nottingham: This month the Galleries of Justice Museum began experimenting with QRpedia codes. More information will be made available soon as the pilot progresses.
Thanks for this great report with all the nice pictures! I like the ceramic QR-codes and will be curious to know what the usage stats are after about a year... Jane
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