GLAM/Newsletter/April 2018/Contents/UK report
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National Library of Wales, Oxford University and The National Archives
Projects
It's been a while since I have posted an update here, but rest assured we have been very busy at the National Library of Wales. We have now completed our Welsh Government funded 'Wici-Iechyd' (Wiki-Health) project, which saw the creation of over 4500 new health related articles on the Welsh language Wikipedia. This was acheived by holding edit-a-thons and translate-a-thons, securing open licensing of existing content and semi automating the creation of articles using open data and translations of open text.
Our next big project will involve releasing nearly 5000 historical Welsh portraits to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. We will then run an engagement project using the new Europeana Impact Playbook in order to better measure the wider impacts of this kind of Wikimedia engagement work.
Celtic Knot Conference
We are going to be hosting the Celtic Knot Wikipedia language conference in Wales this July, following the success of the first Celtic Knot held by Ewan McAndrew at the University of Edinburgh last year. The conference will focus on the issues and needs of smaller and minority language Wikipedias and we will have speakers from all over the UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Germany, Brittany, The Basque Country and more! So get your tickets now!
University of Oxford
Martin Poulter's placement in the University has been extended. His focus is on building proof-of-concept applications to demonstrate how Wikidata can assist search and discovery for the university's museums, libraries and gardens. He has imported data about three thousand paintings and sculptures from the Jameel Collection of Eastern Art in the Ashmolean Museum. The first proof-of-concept gives multiple views of this data set, and combines it with other databases, Wikipedia extracts and Commons images. The development is ongoing and we are interested in feedback.
Work has also started on the second proof-of-concept which is about the botanical drawings of Ferdinand Bauer: this is a chance to combine data about artworks and data about species, possibly also with geographical data about the places in the Mediterranean where the species were discovered. Wikidata is an ideal platform to combine these different types of data. Martin is also using presentations and workshops to raise awareness of Wikidata and its usefulness for GLAMs and researchers.
The National Archives
The National Archives ran its first editathon, on the theme of Dissidents, Suffragists and Freedom Fighters. A dozen participants created or edited a dozen new articles using sources from the National Archives' library collections and also making use of National Archives material uploaded to Commons in previous projects.
In separate work, more than 70% of the National Archives' ARCHON directory of UK and world archives has now been matched to entities within Wikidata.
Well done Jo, sounds like the event went well! Richard Nevell (talk) 09:07, 20 May 2018 (UTC)