GLAM/Newsletter/April 2023/Contents/New Zealand report
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BHL Whitepaper and outreach for Citizen Science Month and WeDigBio, Auckland Museum suburbs project update, New Zealand Women in Architecture Wikidata Project
Biodiversity Heritage Library Draft Whitepaper
In April the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) released their draft whitepaper Unifying Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet for public comment. The BHL Secretariat commissioned the writing of this Wikimedia whitepaper for BHL’s consortium partners, its core users, and members of the open knowledge movement. Research into the Wikimedia information ecosystem began in September 2021. This whitepaper provides concrete use cases and recommendations to help BHL navigate Wikimedia project investments strategically. Multiple Wikimedians, including those based in New Zealand, were interviewed, assisted with answering questions, giving feedback and peer reviewing this whitepaper.
Wikipedia and Citizen Science
Ambrosia10 was invited to present on Citizen Science and Wikipedia as part of a panel discussion about citizen science in Australasia to celebrate Citizen Science Month 2023 in April. Her presentation covered the writing of Wikipedia species articles, the use of Natural History Collection images and data, and the reuse of the Wikipedia species articles in other websites such as iNaturalist and the Encyclopaedia of Life. Her presentation script and slides can be found here. The panel was recorded and can be seen on Youtube.
Virtual Voyaging for Science
In April Ambrosia10 participated in a symposium outlining her motivations for participating in the WeDigBio transcription event and highlighting some workflows she uses including connecting natural history collectors to their specimens via Wikidata and the website Bionomia Tracker. She also discussed writing Wikipedia articles on species, natural history collectors and the locations the collectors travel to, to collect specimens. The script and slides for this presentation can be found at this link. A recording of the symposium can be found here.
Auckland War Memorial Museum suburb project updates
Work continues on the Auckland suburb project, where history sections of local areas in Auckland are improved, to provide better resources for teachers and students with the new Aotearoa histories curriculum. April has focused on targeting South Auckland articles, especially areas with the greatest number of students. This month, articles were improved on Manurewa, Māngere, Māngere East, Favona and Papatoetoe, representing an area with over 26,000 primary and secondary students. In May, the South Auckland article will be improved based on these new articles, with the aim to match the scale of the article on West Auckland.
Additionally, work has been done to improve location data on geographic features in the Auckland Region in Wikidata. Until earlier this year, most geographic features in the area were misplaced on Wikidata (with issues such as hills showing up in the middle of harbours, or five different Wikidata items for the same stream). Now, anyone who wants to find locations that need photographs on Wikidata can use tools such as WikiShootMe. As of April 2023, metropolitan Wellington and Christchurch areas have also been checked to make sure locations are accurate, and anyone interested in other areas of the country can make a request at the New Zealand Wikipedian notice board.
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New Zealand Women in Architecture
DrThneed has created a new Wikidata project on New Zealand Women in Architecture, to support upcoming in person events in Auckland (event page) and Dunedin (event page) on May 20. She has been adding architects, landscape architects, awards, award winners, academics, students and resources into Wikidata and finding connections. She has been using Elizabeth Cox's recent book Making Space: A History of New Zealand Women in Architecture, but there is a nice overlap with the New Zealand Thesis Project, so she has also been able to connect many architects with their theses at a number of New Zealand institutions. There aren't yet many buildings in the project though!
