GLAM/Newsletter/April 2023/Single
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International Roma Day Edit-a-thon in Albania, 2023
The International Roma Day Edit-a-thon took place on April 8 this year in Tirana
For the third year, WoALUG participated in the global edit-a-thon organized by Wikimedia Serbia.
WoALUG organized a 4-hour edit-a-thon to translate and specifically update articles about the Roma community with local figures, statistics, and their installments in Albania.
We tried to invite and cooperate with organizations with a focus on Roma community development in the country. So, this year, we had representatives from the Youth Roma and Egyptian Movement that also supported us with material and other sources about this community.
Right now, we are following through with the Youth Roma and Egyptian Movement to add more content to Wikipedia articles.
Here are some statistics from the edit-a-thon:
- 10 editors
- 13 articles created
- 22 articles edited
Social media
- We have a public Telegram channel (language used mostly Albanian) if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects.
If you want to see more about our activities, you can:
- Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
"Every Book its Public" Campaign and Strategic Committee on Libraries
Every Book Its Reader (#EveryBookItsReader) was a campaign to increase quality content about books, literary works, and oral stories in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, and Wikisource. The campaign name is the third law in Ranganathan’s five laws of library science. The overall campaign has been planned and organized by nine volunteer Wikimedians, who are passionate about books and stories, located in Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Catalonia/Spain, and the United States; but some other librarians from other countries joined the campaign during the month of April.
In Brazil, the campaign was organized by Lilian Viana (Library of ECA/USP) and Stela Madruga (Library of IME/USP). Now you can see the results:
| Active editors | Articles created | Articles edited | Bytes added |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 26 | 1,043 | 349,875 |
During the creation of the task lists for this campaign, we included specific topics with suggestions of Black and Indigenous authors and their books as a (subtle) way to try to engage people in creating and improving articles about underrepresented populations and cultures in Portuguese Wikipedia. Behold, 20 of the 26 new articles are related to underrepresented Brazilian cultures.
WMB'S STRATEGIC COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES
Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) created this strategic committee in the beginning of 2023, to expand and improve its performance in terms of GLAM partnerships with librarians in Brazilian territory.
The first meeting happend in April 10th and there will be another ones bimonthly or quarterly along 2023. These meetings will be important spaces for exchange and guidance, where we will present the WMB's plans and accomplishments in broadening its networks and practices with librarians in Brazil, with special interest in Wikidata.
The strategic axes of WMB's Strategy for 2023-2025 most aligned with the scope of this Committee are:
- Articulate Brazilian wikimedian agencies, and
- Foment and diversify partnerships for free knowledge in Brazil.
Members
- Laurie Bridges (Oregon State University)
- Lilian Viana (Library of School of Communication and Arts / USP)
- Paul R. Burley (Northwestern University)
- Paula Nunes (Secretariat of Culture of the State of Espírito Santo, Midiateca Capixaba)
- Sandra Soster (WMB's GLAM & Culture Manager)
- Silvia Gutiérrez (Wikimedia Foundation)
- Stela Madruga (Library of the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics / USP)
WIKICON PORTUGAL LECTURE
WMB's GLAM & Culture Manager held a lecture during WikiCon Portugual about the Brazilian work on GLAM-Wiki partnerships. Now it is available on Wikimedia Commons and you can watch it on the link below.
What's new at GLAM in the Czech Republic
Memorandum with Charles University
Charles University is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic, so we are pleased that we were able to conclude a memorandum with this important institution in January. As part of the implementation of the memorandum, an edit-a-thon has already taken place with students from two departments of the Faculty of Philosophy. Thanks to the signed memorandum, the students will be awarded credits for their articles. The edit-a-thon was themed Women in Art and took place within the framework of the international Wikigap. More information about the signing of the memorandum can be found on the Wikimedia CR blog.
Cooperation with the State Regional Archive
We managed to establish cooperation with the State Regional Archive in Prague, which coordinates other regional archives throughout the Czech Republic. The archive has offered to release, through our wikipedian-resident, photographs from its collections that are most frequently requested by researchers in Bohemia. In this way, it will make the most requested archival material available to the Czech and, by extension, the world public. At the beginning of the cooperation we are going to improve the page about the archive and establish a project page.
The first edition of Open Collections, fully organized by Wikimedia Czech Republic
The Open Collections Project was founded by two students of the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague in 2020 with the aim of reporting on how Czech museums and galleries are doing with digitization and publishing collection objects online. Last year's edition was held under the auspices of Wikimedia ČR and this year's edition has already been fully organised by them. For this year's research, we managed to obtain the patronage of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. The number of institutions participating in the survey has also increased. Out of more than 400 Czech institutions, 106 institutions responded to the questionnaire. The information on the state of digitisation and the access of Czech museums to free culture is thus improving and becoming more precise every year. Since last year, the number of collection items online has increased by almost half a million (493,541 collection items), which is a 36% increase compared to the previous year. More data is available on the web page of the project. The English version is still under development.
GLAM Mini Grants; Structured Data Marathon VIII; Wikisource Online Workshop
GLAM Mini Grants
During March, GLAM Indonesia opened Mini Grants for GLAM institutions and individuals to submit their proposals for up to 10 million IDR (about 610 EUR) grants. Several dozens proposals were submitted and in April, we announced three of them received funding from WMID.
- Museum Musik Indonesia (Indonesian Music Museum) proposed to create a book with the stories of their 20 best collections and would be uploaded to Commons.
- Sanggar Seni Karawitan Laras Siwi (Laras Siwi Karawitan Art Studio) proposed to organize a workshop of Karawitan (a type of traditional music with gamelan originating from Java) and document them for Commons.
- Mandailing Manuscript Digitalization proposed to digitized rare Mandailing (of North Sumatra) manuscripts and upload them to Commons.
The projects will start in May. Stay tuned for the results in the next reports!
Structured Data Marathon VIII
Credit: Yon illahi, CC BY-SA 4.0
In our ISA Campaign this semester, we chose Wiki Cinta Alam (Wiki Loves Earth) pictures of 2022. Wikimedia Commons has more than 1.035 WLE pictures from Indonesia, but after the first day of the event, we were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the participants, so we quickly decided to add more pictures to be tagged with Structured Data, from WLE Indonesia 2021 and 2017 for a total of 4.847 images.
The 7-days-long campaign resulted in a record number of contributions with more than 45 thousands new structured data added to 4.847 images (at the time of the closing, it reaches 64 thousands at the time of this report is written) by 24 participants. It was twice as much contributions as last Christmas' campaign. You can see the most used elements in this pretty infographics, with sky, cloud, tree, leaf, and forest being the most common elements in the pictures.
Feel free to browse through the thousands of fascinating pictures from this collection, and even add some descriptions yourselves here! Thank you for all the participants, and especially the top three contributors who contributed in combination 25 thousand descriptions!
Wikisource Online Workshop
The Indonesian Wikisource Community held an online workshop in the end of April with 13 participants, and they proofread the book s:id:Indeks:Tata Bahasa Minangkabau.pdf that was made available by the Balai Bahasa Provinsi Sumatera Barat digitization project with GLAM Indonesia.
Bridges between Wikimedia and culture
MOOC for GLAM
There is a new course designed for librarians, archivists and museum workers who want to train on enhancing the digital content of cultural institutions through Wikimedia projects. "Wikimedia Community for Cultural Institutions. How to enhance the content of museums, archives and libraries" is the third MOOC created by Wikimedia Italy in collaboration with the e-learning office of the University of Padua. An entirely online course, to be taken according to one's own time needs, perfect for keeping up to date on open access issues.
By the end of the course, everyone will be comfortable with the concepts of open access and public domain, know how to move between the Creative Commons free licenses and also within the Wikimedia projects, adding contributions such as photos, data and text and measuring their impact. The course provides in fact the essentials to effectively use Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikimedia Commons and also OpenStreetMap.
This third MOOC, as the other two (aimed more at education) was possible thanks to the collaboration with the University of Padua, which was the first in Italy to host two Wikimedians in Residence, who have been working for two years to accompany this university, one of the largest and oldest in Italy, on Wikimedia projects. In addition to producing online courses designed to train on Wikipedia, the university has also committed itself to making its museum collections accessible to all and has involved faculty and students in the creation of new Wikipedia entries, on all fields of knowledge.
The three courses are available to all on the EduOpen platform, here.
Newsletter Arkivia
Arkivia is Wikimedia Italy's new newsletter dedicated to free culture and open access to cultural heritage. It will be a monthly newsletter, launched on April 20, hosting the voices of those who are committed to open access in Italy and giving advice on how to collaborate in person. There will be space for opinions, for telling about projects done in Italy and what is happening abroad. Arkivia will be a tool to disseminate and inspire, a meeting point for people interested in treating culture for what it is: a common good.
"To archive" can mean to catalog, to preserve, but also to close a process. Arkivia wants to do just the opposite: to open up, to initiate new projects, providing information, connecting ideas, releasing knowledge.
The first issue discussed how unfair (and unsustainable) is to charge for digital reproductions of artworks. Here to sign up: Arkivia newsletter.
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!
Another meeting of EU GLAM Coordinators; Guided tours for Wikipedians in museums in Krakow; Presentation on Art in Wikipedia; Online training on the basics of copyright law; Polish monuments among the top winners of WLM
Another meeting of EU GLAM Coordinators
On the 4th of April, there was another online meeting of European GLAM coordinators. The meeting was prepared by a team consisting of by Kamila Neuman, Michelle van Lanschot and Giovanna Fontenelle.
According to the meeting agenda, Ruben Ojeda from Wikimedia Spain presented the opportunities for GLAM-Wiki community to participate in the 20th Triennal ICOM International Conference, which will take place in September in Valencia. The aim of such a joint representation of GLAM-Wiki is to make museums better understand the idea behind it. Link to the presentation can be found here.
Giovanna Fontenelle talked about documentation of GLAM-Wiki initiatives and presented the advantages of centralizing documentation on Meta. She has also demonstrated the draft proposal of central template on meta for all GLAM organisations. Link to the Giovanna's presentation can be found here.
Kamila Neuman from Wikimedia Poland invited all European GLAM coordinators to answer question: How do we promote GLAM-Wiki initiatives in our countries and how can we learn and get inspired by one another to be more effective / visible? She encouraged all GLAM coordinators to complete the table on Miro and answer the questions related to GLAM promotion practices.
The meeting was also opportunity to introduce Silvia Eunice Gutiérrez De la Torre, the Foundation’s new Senior Program Officer for Libraries.
All European GLAM coordinators are welcomed to join to organising team and bring new topics to the agenda of the next meeting, which is planned on 30th of May.
Guided tours for Wikipedians in museums in Krakow
We rarely have the opportunity to organize joint tours for Wikipedians to our museum partners, let alone at three of them in one day.
And we had a unique opportunity to do so because this year's meeting of Wikipedians was held in Krakow, where we collaborate with three cultural institutions. Our GLAM partners, The National Museum in Krakow, the Wawel Royal Castle State Art Collection, and the Museum of Photography in Krakow, hosted our community.
These were exceptional meetings during which Wikipedians could see in person the exhibits they wrote articles about on Wikipedia and hear many fascinating stories about the unique items in the Royal Treasury, Jerzy Nowosielski's artworks, and the history of photography presented in the extraordinary exhibition at theMuseum of Photography in Krakow.
We would like to thank all of our partners for this remarkable meeting with art, which will stay with us for a long time.
Art in Wikipedia: Why do we look at paintings and what does Wikipedia have to do with it?
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Think back to your last visit to a museum. What was the experience like?
Was it a quick walk through the museum halls, ending with a social media post? Or was it an opportunity to stop, discover something new, be moved? Why do we look at art and what do we take away from a museum visit?
What influences this experience? Can Wikipedia shape it? Can it be our guide to art, an encyclopedia of art that we have at our fingertips?
These are the questions that our Open Culture Manager tried to find answers to together with the Wikipedians during her presentation titled Art in Wikipedia: Why do we look at paintings and what does Wikipedia have to do with it? at the meeting of Wikipedians in Krakow.
Online training on the basics of copyright law in the context of the Wikimedia Commons project
Have you ever managed to last through a two and a half hour online training session? What's more, during the training that focused on legal issues?
It turns out that it is possible, because the topic of copyright law in the context of Wikimedia Commons still raises many questions and doubts.
That is why on the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day, Wikimedia Poland organized an online training on the basics of copyright law in the context of the Wikimedia Commons project, which was led by Tomasz Ganicz, a prominent Wikipedian, member of Polish OTRS team who has been handling legal and copyright permissions as part of OTRS for many years.
Around 30 people participated in the meeting and actively took part by asking questions related to copyright law.
We would like to thank Polimerk for his involvement in preparing the training and for sharing his knowledge and interesting examples gathered during many years of his voluntary engagement in Polish OTRS team.
Polish monuments among the top winners of Wiki Loves Monuments
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Zamek Czocha, widok z drona -
Jaszczurówka at Winter -
Nowy Żmigród, Cmentarz żydowski w Nowym Żmigrodzie DZolopa 2015-07-18 103951 0055 -
Baszta Prochowa, Zamek Książ
We eagerly awaited the results of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition.
Finally it turned out that from the photos submitted at the national level, four photos submitted in the Polish edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition made it into the TOP15 this year.
The announcement of the results took place on April 18, International Day for Monuments and Sites.
Congratulations to the winners, especially to Aneta Pawska, Jakub T. Jankiewicz and Daniel Żołopa!
ISOF workshop
At a presentation and workshop for Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore in Uppsala, staff members learned more about Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement and how to update and create articles. Sources for names of places were added and an article about the dictionary of names of people during the middle age were created.
More articles from students
The long time cooperation between Wikimedia Sverige, Nordiska museet, Centrum för näringslivshistoria (Centre for Business History) and Statens centrum för arkitektur och design (Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) continues. This year the upper secondary school students from Anderstorpsgymnasiet and Enskilda gymnasiet wrote 20 new and 15 expanded articles, and added 116 images to Commons.
Edit-a-thons where people edit Wikipedia together are not uncommon. But never before has Wikimedia Sweden organized an event where people have shared their knowledge and created metadata for images!
At the Air Force Museum in Linköping, just over ten people with connections to SAAB's aircraft manufacturing in the area gathered. Among them were the Association of Saab Veterans and the Östergötland Aviation Historical Society, who were invited to the event, which was organized by Wikimedia Sweden in collaboration with the Nordic Museum and the Air Force Museum.
More information from those who participated
The photos that are uploaded have very little information, metadata, associated with them. Often, there is only a title and a year, which is information taken from what was written on the physical folders in the photo archive. Now, we wanted to gather people with strong connections to SAAB, who have worked or are working there themselves, who could tell us what the pictures depicted. In this way, we could add structured data to Commons via Wikidata tags, and image captions and descriptions directly in Wikimedia Commons.
The highlight was that a man who appeared in one of the photographs was present during the evening! He was able to tell many details about what he was doing when the photo was taken and why. Other participants added information about both that and other images. They talked about the premises, the airplane models, the equipment, the purpose, which photos showed actual activity, and which were staged.
Lessons learned
Since this was our first similar event, we drew many lessons. It was nice to sit together in the same room and look at the pictures together, but it was probably not the most effective way to work. Next time, we need to split the group into several to work with more different images simultaneously.
The tool we used, ISA Tool, worked relatively well for both adding Wikidata tags to the images and adding image captions. It works less well when several images are similar and could have essentially the same tags and descriptions, as the information cannot be copied in any convenient way. Feel free to help add more info to the SAAB campaign.
We will have a similar event in the fall to follow up and add more information.
ArkDes edit-a-thons
The edit-a-thons about women in architecture and design continued in March with an event on April 18. One additional bonus event is set for May 23.
Democratising knowledge and cultural diversity
Museum Ethnographers Group
Leah Emary of Wikimedia UK gave a presentation on "Global and Local Perspectives on Democratising Knowledge with Wikimedia" at the Museum Ethnographers Group conference. This introduced editor Lucy Moore's activist approach to content on museums in Oceania, the Mixed Museum partnership with Wikimedia UK, and the Khalili Collections' visibility on many Wikimedia projects.
Khalili Foundation
This has been an eventful month. The Khalili project got its first Featured Article as Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam passed a lengthy review involving six volunteers. The article will be on the front page of English Wikipedia as Today's Featured Article on 17 May.
The DYK for Musa va 'Uj was on the front page of English Wikipedia for 24 hours on 24 April. This is the 23rd article from this project to be included in DYK. Images of the Musa va 'Uj painting are now used in several articles: Rephaite, Og, Bilal ibn Rabah, Mary in Islam, Madonna (art), Moses in Islam, and Depictions of Muhammad. Four articles created by this project have been translated by volunteers into Bahasa Indonesia, seemingly the first content on Indonesian Wikipedia relating to the Khalili Collections. Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, Sitara (textile), Anis Al-Hujjaj, and Mahmal all relate to Islamic culture and were written from scratch on English Wikipedia. This brings the total of new articles created by this project to 40 (20 in English and 20 translations to other languages), not including the 5 new articles created at editathons.
A lot of work has been done this month on articles related to cultural diversity. The article on World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development was a very short stub and so was not eligible to be linked from the front page on the day itself, May 21. I have significantly expanded it so it can appear on the front page in the On This Day section. I am some way through a substantial rewrite of Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, making 87 changes so far. Between the incomplete translation from French, heavy jargon, and repetitiveness, the old article was large but a difficult read. I have expanded the article on the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and done some tidying of UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
I was not able to go to Cambridge for the Museum Ethnographers Group conference (see news item above), but briefed Leah by email.
There were no new image uploads this month.
Into the Wikiverse; Earth Day 2023 Bushwick
"Into the Wikiverse": AANHPIs in Science Fiction and Pop Culture
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum. held a workshop, Into the Wikiverse: AANHPIs in Science Fiction and Pop Culture
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Solomon Enos
Earth Day 2023 Bushwick
Sure We Can, and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, Earth Day 2023 Bushwick.
Wikipedia day pitches by FAO and IEA
FAO and IEA took part in Wikipedia Day
Wikimedia Sverige organized its annual Wikipedia Day in late April. The theme this year was environment and climate change. As part of the event, FAO – the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations – took part and gave a pitch about their work with the Wikimedia platforms, as did IEA, the International Energy Agency, which has recently adopted an Open Access policy for all its reports.
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Pitch by Jad Mouawad, IEA
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Pitch by Daniela De Pascalis and Jessica Mathewson, FAO
Activities are starting!
Photo contests
Photo contests kick off in the Nordic countries Norway and Finland. A contest is a popular program format that many local organizers wish to adopt. We start publishing best practice articles about the different activities arranged around the topics of living heritage. You are invited to add your experiences to any one of these articles, or create new ones about other successful activities you have created. Read the stub about photo contests and make it better!
Upload workflow that takes consent into account
The Wiki Loves Living Heritage pages display heritage elements. With each element there is an upload button that can be used to upload a media file about that element to Wikimedia Commons. Anyone can use these pages for their campaigns and contests. Pages exist for UNESCO-inscribed elements, locally administered heritage inventories and groupings by UNESCO member states. More views will be created based on popular demand.
As part of the upload workflow we ask the uploader to provide information about the permission that has been obtained from the depicted people or the community whose cultural heritage is being shared. The upload campaign and the options are experimental, and we invite you to participate in discussing them.
- Permission to share this media file has not been obtained.
- All identifiable persons or communities have consented to publication of this media file with open licenses.
- All persons or communities were photographed without deception, in a place where they had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
- This media file was copied from an external source that has recorded evidence of consent, or that adheres to professional editorial standards.
- This media file does not depict people.
You can sign up in the ethical sharing team to develop these practices further. We would wish to invite especially Commons users who have worked with consent, personality rights or traditional knowledge. The meetings of the group will kick off in near future and the group will convene whenever needed.
Blog
Wiki Loves Living Heritage is also a blog. On the main page you can see the latest posts. Read the latest about the Museum Day program organized by Wikimedia Switzerland! In the beginning we have more instructions and how-to's but we hope to publish and promote more and more articles from all corners of the world discussing living heritage.
Revisit Ethics of Open Sharing
The Ethics of Open Sharing webinar was arranged on 14 April in collaboration with Creative Commons, Wikimedia Foundation Culture and Heritage and Let's Connect. On the event page you will find the recording and documentation of the event, including the Ethical sharing card deck as pdf, svg and an editable/translatable/printable wiki page.
Living Heritage Bazaars
We are still just starting to arrange introductory meetings where the intangible heritage coordinators and Wikimedia communities may demonstrate their ways of working to each other. Would your affiliate or organization have the opportunity to host an introductory meeting? Plans are under way for a European meeting, and the most help would be needed in Latin America and Arabic-speaking countries. Contact us at wikiloveslivingheritage@gmail.com or talk to Susanna Ånäs or Sadik Shahadu.
Meetings
Join the weekly meetings to discuss aspects that interest you most on Tuesdays at 12:00 UTC online.
Wiki Loves Living Heritage is initiated jointly between the European network of focal points for the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ENFP) and AvoinGLAM.
Biodiversity Heritage Library whitepaper and the #1Lib1Ref campaign
Biodiversity Heritage Library and whitepaper about the Wikimedia projects
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the world’s most extensive open-access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. On the Wikimedia projects, they have hundreds of thousands of images and metadata available, as well as a network of dedicated Wikimedians who treasure biodiversity or the institution's collections and add or edit their contents.
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In April, BHL released a draft whitepaper titled Unifying Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet to provide concrete use cases and recommendations for a strategic investment in Wikimedia projects, especially considering the institution's goals of combating the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, as well as securing a sustainable future for the planet. The document by JJ Dearborn, BHL's Data Manager, is the result of several interviews and recurring meetings performed by her between long-time Wikimedia volunteers, partners, and members of the Culture and Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation.
The paper analyzes Wikidata, Wikibase, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, and Wikipedia and offers for each of them use cases and a future outlook. In the appendix, there are also several recommendations and even priority levels.
This whitepaper is one of the most comprehensive analyses of the Wikimedia projects from a GLAM or cultural heritage perspective. It's also one of several smaller, but mighty publications BHL has done in the past about Wikimedia.
Don't forget to read the whitepaper and the other blog posts, as well as to check the Biodiversity Heritage Library WikiProject page on Wikidata or their page on Wikimedia Commons.
1Lib1Ref/1Bib1Ref
The annual #1Lib1Ref campaign, hast two runs each year, and the January 2023, saw thousands of librarians and other knowledge enthusiasts from over 50 different language-regions adding references to Wikipedia articles. The campaign aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of Wikipedia, and is a great opportunity for librarians, archivists, and other information professionals to contribute to reliable open knowledge for all. In terms of number of edits, the 2023 campaign was particularly successful in the CEE region, but we celebrated each and every language editor on this Diff post (also available in German and Spanish). Hope in on that ride and travel from Serbia to Australia, flying through Catalonia, Australia, Spain, Malaysia and more!
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If you missed the January campaign, don't worry! There are still opportunities to get involved and make a difference. In May, different affiliates are hosting a series of online events focused on improving Wikipedia's coverage of underrepresented topics and supporting new editors. Below you'll find some options in different regions!
Africa
As in other years, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) is back with the Africans Librarians Week (#AfLibWk) from the 14th to the 26th of May – if you want to join this wonderful initiative to add “African Knowledge to the World”, do check out their 7 steps under “How do I participate” – they’ll give out prizes to top contributors!
Unsure how to join AfLIA's Dashboard campaign? Here’s a one-pager with 5 steps to join the campaign:
Latin America
Latin America is also back in the game, with the #1Bib1Ref hashtag! If you want to join the campaign, you can learn all about it in this Wikipedia Project Page Make sure you check out the wonderful resources they have prepared for us as well.
Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay have their dashboards up, so be sure to sign up to them if you want to enter a friendly competition on the number and quality of the references you’re contributing with (links in each countries’ name).
Other regions
If your region is not represented, or you want to start a new campaign within the global statistics, register to the #1Lib1Ref global dashboard! Just log in with your Wikimedia account and click here, and then select “Create New Program”->“Basic program”. Fill out the required information, and make sure you select which language Wikipedias you want to track for edits during the campaign, and also if you would like to track Wikidata edits! And that's it! You can send any questions you want to 1lib1ref@lists.wikimedia.org
May's GLAM events
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