GLAM/Newsletter/April 2019/Contents/Poland report

This Month in GLAM – Volume IX, Issue IV, April 2019

Poland report

Outcomes of A+F, new uploads, GLAM conference

Good vibes and good outcomes: After Art+Feminism 2019

A number of Art+Feminism editing meetings and workshops were run up until the very end of March and the results are in. People enthusiastic for the idea of closing the gender gap, empowering new editors and focusing on themes from outside the existing main narrative in Wikipedia have asked Wikimedia Polska to help organise meet-ups and trainings in 3 cities - Wrocław, Łódź and Kraków. All meetups were a success both in terms of meeting and training new editors, and creating interesting new entries for Wikipedia. Altogether the participants have written over 40 new articles and extended close to 300 (see statistics of the editing group from Wrocław and the group from Łódź). The first meetup was organised last year at the Museum of Art in Łódź thanks to the initiative of Alicja Kujawska, a scholar and activist living and working in the city.

In Kraków, students and teachers at the Academy of Arts created a fanzine for women about editing Wikipedia, remixing public domain images from Wikimedia Commons and public domain artwork from the POLONA digital library. The resulting zine contains the idea of A+F, basic rules of editing Wikipedia, information about the gender gap and even a psychological game titled 'Which type of Wikipedian are you?' We are delighted that Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons can inspire such optimistic creativity! View the entire Wiki-zine on Wikimedia Commons here.

New public domain scans from Mazovian Digital Library

In April 2019 the Mazovian Digital Library has uploaded 400 new files - archival illustrations in the public domain - into Wikimedia Commons, bringing the total number of files from that library to over 2200 items. This is a considerable success for our partnership as it only began in late December 2018.

The images include photographs of urban buildings, architecture, construction and trade from magazines such as Tygodnik Illustrowany, Biesiada Literacka and Przyjaci el Ludu. Some fascinating depictions of urban life in the nineteenth century can be found in the collection, as well of portraits of many notable people living in the period - a great opportunity for writing new Wikipedia entries to match the portraits. Files are currently undergoing categorisation by volunteers. The collection of all Mazovian Library illustrations can be seen in the Mazovian Digital Library category. Everyone is cordially invited to view the new illustrations, reuse them or help categorise the images!

Heritage on the Web Conference in Katowice

On May 8th the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice and Wikimedia Polska held a conference on online cultural heritage in GLAM context. The aim of the conference was to familiarise smaller institutions from the region with the practicalities of cooperating with Wikipedia (OTRS permissions, licensing issues) as well as some of the opportunities which arise from GLAM-WIKI work. larger OpenGLAM initiatives (work with Mazovian Digital Library and the National Library in Warsaw, cooperation with the National Museum in Warsaw) and new digitisation effors in the region were also presented.

For beginner institutions, representatives of NIMOZ - the Polish Institute of Museology and Heritage - presented official European and Polish regulations related to licensing, public domain GLAM content and good practices in digitisation and online dissemination. The event was attended by several dozen museum, library and cultural centre professionals. Wikimedia Polska would like to thank the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice for helping organise the event and invite local GLAMs. The Regional Institute in Katowice is the first cultural institution from the Silesian Voivodeship to actively contribute to Wikimedia as well as function as a hub of know-how for open knowledge projects in the region.