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Results of the This Month in GLAM survey (part 1)

At the beginning of July, I announced the first This Month in GLAM survey. Thanks to all that filled it in; we had 16 responses - a regrettably small number but it still gives an interesting insight to what channels people receive the newsletter through and what's good and lots of potential ideas for the future of the newsletter. In this month's edition, I will look at answers to the first few questions on the survey.

Subscription

Do you subscribe to This Month in GLAM

The majority of those filling in the newsletter did subscribe to this newsletter. The fact that so many of those filling in the survey did not probably has less to do with readers of the newsletter not subscribing than the survey being filled in by people who do not read the newsletter. Hopefully this has changed now

It's difficult to get accurate reader statistics for the newsletter due to it being spread between so many channels. It is delivered to several hundred people but most of those are via mailing lists; it would be interesting to see how many people read the newsletter.

How did you find out about the newsletter?

If readership of the newsletter is to be increased, it must be publicised in different places. The second question tried to explore where people found out about the newsletter (with a view to working on improving on the areas which lack) by offering. The graph (see right) cites "on-wiki" as the most common method of discovering. This is quite an ambiguous option but it means that whatever we're doing there, we seem to be doing it well.

How do you subscribe to the newsletter?

Putting the "I don't" results to one side, on their user talk page and via a mailing list are the two biggest results here. The newsletter can be delivered to user talk pages by bot - on any Wikimedia wiki (or similar). Around 100 people subscribe using this method. A links-only version of the newsletter is sent to three different mailing lists: cultural-partners-l, GLAM-l and WikimediaAnnounce-l (the most-subscribed-to of the 3).

I have no solid statistics as to click-through data for articles (toolserver tools which count page-views, for instance, don't work on the Outreach Wiki where This Month in GLAM is hosted - perhaps this could be a task for someone more literate in coding that I). A tool such as this could provide a much broader insight into what subscription methods people read the newsletter through than a survey could.


GLAM US Mid-Year Report, Philadelphia Museum of Art updates, Society of American Archivists

US GLAM Coordinator Mid-Year Report

The Mid-Year Report for the position of US Cultural Partnerships' Coordinator is now available for review. The report includes highlights from the past months, details on the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium, challenges, and implications. Please share any questions or feedback on the report's talk page.

GLAM: Philadelphia Museum of Art

A cooperation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) has moved forward this month, thanks to the efforts of Ocaasi and Jessica Milby, Collections Information Project Manager at the PMA, who attended Wikimania in July. Jessica was looking for ways to improve articles on Wikipedia about the Museum and its artists/collections. Ocaasi and Jessica met a few weeks later at the Perelman building in downtown Philadelphia where they discussed ways to increase participation in the GLAM:PMA project. The first idea is to increase outreach to the GLAM:PMA project members, including a mass message updating them about plans and seeking feedback about ideas they have. The next step is a drive to improve the main Philadelphia Museum of Art article on English Wikipedia. The article is currently 'B-Class', but Jessica was confident that with the abundance of high quality sources about the Museum that it could be improved even further. Another idea that came out of the meeting was a project within the Museum to assess which PMA-related topics are missing articles on Wikipedia. Jessica also shared her idea to have the knowledgeable curators of the Museum provide recommended reading lists for PMA-related articles. That should be a great first step to guiding editors towards the information they need to expand and improve that content. Also raised for discussion were some hypothetical ideas about how to engage the broader community. There is interest in setting up a tour/edit-a-thon, but this remains in the preliminary stage. It's encouraging to have a partner in Jessica Milby and there should be a lot of good work coming out the collaboration within the next 3-6 months.

Society of American Archivists presentation

Wikipedians and archives professionals gave a joint presentation on August 10, at this year's Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA. The talk, titled "80,000 Volunteers Can't Be Wrong: The Case for Greater Collaboration with Wikipedia, was presented by Sara Snyder of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Pamela Wright of the National Archives, and the National Archives' Wikipedian in Residence Dominic McDevitt-Parks; Karen Weiss, of the Archives of American Art, moderated. The presentation by unique in allowing professionals from the field to hear directly from their colleagues on the benefits of Wikipedia collaboration. There were over 40 audience members, and there was a lively question-and-answer session (including the suggestion from one audience member that an "Archivist in Residence" on Wikipedia might help build understanding between the two groups). Wikipedia was also mentioned elsewhere during the conference, including in David Ferriero's opening plenary and references to OCLC's authority control efforts in other sessions. Finally, in the annual meeting of SAA's Visual Materials section, Helena Zinkham, Chief of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, gave a short talk on her proposal for citation of archival imagery used in Wikipedia articles in the article text itself (quote: "this is not about making a link farm... it's about historical practice, to follow their own criteria that the more you can cite your sources, the more authoritative, or authentic, or reliable [Wikipedia will be]"; recording here [part 5).

In brief


QRpedia in a pub; British Library music manuscripts; UK GLAM abroad

By Rock drum, Andy Mabbett and John Cummings

QRpedia at the Bartons Arms

Wikimedia UK volunteer and long-time QRpedia advocate Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) this month installed QRpedia codes in the historic Bartons Arms in his home town of Birmingham, England. This is the first installation of the codes in a pub, outside of Monmouthpedia.

hamburgmuseum

Andy also visited Germany, to participate in a hamburgmuseum workshop, where he assisted local Wikipedians in preparing a QRpedia installation and translating articles into English, as well as sharing his experiences of UK and US GLAM collaboration. This visit, Andy's second to work with the museum, was jointly sponsored by Wikimedia-UK and Wikimedia-DE.

British Library music manuscripts

The first page of William Herschel's Symphony No. 15.

The first part of a set of c. 300 musical manuscript images from the British Library has recently been uploaded. These were originally digitised to provide samples of the handwriting of specific composers and copyists, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Around one hundred individuals are represented to varying degrees of prominence.

GibraltarpediA

Roger Bamkin's video address to announce the project at Wikimania 2012, John Cummings presented in person.

GibraltarpediA is the first Wikipedia project to not only embrace a whole city, but also aspires to bridge two continents. The project aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, plant and animals in en:Gibraltar in as many languages as possible. This is a large WikiProject; it's at least three times the size of MonmouthpediA. The area of interest includes the British Overseas Territory of en:Gibraltar, the en:Strait of Gibraltar, the Spanish municipalities along the coast of the en:Bay of Gibraltar, the northernmost coast of en:Morocco and en:Ceuta, it is around 14 Miles from Morocco. Many people in Gibraltar are bilingual and speak both en:English and en:Spanish, Berber and en:Arabic are spoken by the Moroccan community, as are en:Hindi and Sindhi by the [:en:[India]]n community of Gibraltar. Hebrew is also spoken by the Jewish community and the en:Maltese language is still spoken by some families of Maltese descent.

The project came about when Tyson Lee Holmes a Gibraltarian Wikipedian saw the press coverage for MonmouthpediA, he got staff from the Gibraltar Museum involved including Prof. Clive Finlayson who contacted the Government of Gibraltar. Victuallers and I were invited to come to Gibraltar and a few weeks later I launched the project at Wikimania. Gibraltar has such and amazing variety of special things, in the week I have been there I visited the last place Neanderthals were known to have lived, been in the largest cave I have ever seen, saw killer whales and monkeys, walked down a small bit of the over 30 miles of tunnels and saw Africa for the first time.

  • en:Government of Gibraltar press conference on en:Gibraltarpedia, 18 July 2012.
    en:Government of Gibraltar press conference on en:Gibraltarpedia, 18 July 2012.
  • As part of the project we aim to cover every plant in the en:Gibraltar Botanic Gardens which spans around 6 hectares (15 acres).
    As part of the project we aim to cover every plant in the en:Gibraltar Botanic Gardens which spans around 6 hectares (15 acres).
  • Oussama Larhmich with a trial GibraltarpediA plaque in Morocco, we want to use QRpedia and multilingual en:NFC
    Oussama Larhmich with a trial GibraltarpediA plaque in Morocco, we want to use QRpedia and multilingual en:NFC
  • Jim Crone who runs VisitGibraltar the largest Gibraltar tourist website has kindly released it's text and images to give the project a boost of material
    Jim Crone who runs VisitGibraltar the largest Gibraltar tourist website has kindly released it's text and images to give the project a boost of material
  • Africa is really, really close
    Africa is really, really close
  • Did I mention there were monkeys?
    Did I mention there were monkeys?


Engaging librarians in Catalonia

A whole network of public libraries begins Wikipedia collaboration in Catalonia

Librarians during a Wikipedia workshop
150 librarians from all over Catalonia have been trained about Wikipedia to spread it among library users.

Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, with its own language, culture and history. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona.

During the months of June and July 2012, 150 librarians from all over Catalonia have received training about Wikipedia so they can later inform their library users. Meanwhile, the Catalan Ministry of Culture has reprinted 1,500 copies of the Welcome to Wikipedia guide for distribution through the network of libraries.

It is a pioneering collaboration between the Catalan Ministry of Culture and Amical Viquipèdia. The partnership is based on the principle that Wikipedia, as the online door to knowledge, and libraries, as the offline door to knowledge, should work together to provide new levels of access.

Engaging librarians and library users

One of the attendees to a Wiki Workshop in Palafrugell's library is now a local-focused active Wikipedian

Wikipedia is hugely popular, but how it works internally is a mystery for many. Amical Viquipèdia chose to demystify the inner workings of Wikipedia by organizing Wikipedia workshops for librarians in five of the main cities of Catalonia. During these workshops, librarians learned about the wiki interface and the benefits of open knowledge. They also became familiar with ongoing GLAM-Wiki projects (collaboration between the cultural sector and the Wikimedia movement) from around the world, as well as how to edit Wikipedia. The librarians now not only understand how to edit Wikipedia, but also how to use it as a tool for engaging their users and to reassess their collections and local funds. These newly-trained librarians will now return to their libraries and encourage users to expand their experience by contributing knowledge acquired through their research into Wikipedia.

One of the pioneering experiments within this collaboration has been at the local library of Palafrugell, a municipality on the Costa Brava. During July and August, a volunteer has been serving as a Wikipedian in Residence for the town. The Wikipedian in Residence is based at the local Library of Palafrugell, in collaboration with other local cultural centers. The Catalan Ministry of Culture wants to improve the role of local Wikipedians in Residence at libraries in order to improve local history and heritage presence in Wikipedia and its sister projects. This will also serve to offer a network of local Wiki-contact points across Catalonia.

Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons

The project also aims to facilitate increased access to existing bibliographic resources and to the public libraries' catalog system, as well as to upload existing public domain texts and pictures to Wikimedia Commons. There is also a plan for 2013 to use Wikisource, the online digital library of free content textual sources, as one of the tools of the government's National Reading Promotion Plan. The editors of this project will scan, reproduce and validate free content sources to make them available online for free.

Lori Phillips, US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation, and longtime GLAM-Wiki volunteer, stated, "This cross-institutional collaboration among Catalan public libraries is unprecedented in its breadth of outreach to cultural professionals and in the depth of engagement and access it will provide to the public. Barcelona cultural organizations have been leaders in the GLAM-Wiki initiative since 2010, and this bold project continues that tradition, illustrating the impact that partnerships between Wikimedia and cultural institutions can truly have." 



Italian institution case studies

By Elitre
Four courses were held at NABA which resulted in hundreds of articles for Wikipedia, making it the most successful Italian project for Wikipedia and academy.
This is a mask used by Ekoi people, also known as Ejagham.

The WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge team is glad to announce August's case studies showcasing two Italian institutions: NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and Raccolte extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco.

Since 2007, students taking economics of the arts classes at NABA, an art and design academy in Milan - the largest and most innovative private one in Italy - write Wikipedia articles in English and in Italian as part of their exam, most of them about African contemporary art. The case study about their contributions gives details about their hard work; beside the 190 Italian pages and the 27 English ones, the students also created some books, using the Collections tool, a feature which is well known on the English site but is still being discovered on the Italian encyclopedia.

In the very same city, the Sforza Castle holds a treasure of beautiful art collections from many places outside Europe: the Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco partnered with Lettera 27 last year and are now sending hundreds of pictures of African artefacts complete with their extremely detailed inventory descriptions. The upload process is still ongoing and once it is complete, it will have enriched Wikimedia Commons with almost 1,000 files. English translations of these case studies will be available in the next weeks and linked from the Italian versions.

Wikipedia editing in museums

GLAM Germany update

This month, there were many opportunities for GLAM activists. At the Hamburg Museum several volunteers wrote more than 20 articles on the museum's collection and added almost 200 photos to Wikimedia Commons at the Photo Workshop arranged by Peter Weis. In Berlin the 31st so called Night of Museums took place and Wikipedians invited visitors to experience work on Wikipedia articles at the Ephraim Palais and to help edit the article on Werner-Viktor Toeffling, a known Scenic designer, who is honored by an exhibition in the Stiftung Stadtmuseum. The Stadtmuseum invited to a very exclusive back pass tour for one Wikipedian to the local collection of bird eggs - to be continued (GLAM Stadtmuseum). At the WikiCon in Dornbirn, Austria, Wikimedians and Wikipedians in Residence presented their work to the community. In discussions following the workshops, many participants agreed that uncertainty regarding copyright issues is a main obstacle for institutions, when it comes to content liberation. However it is very encouraging to see that the interest shown from GLAM institutions is steadily increasing.


Collaborations taking off

Collaboration with Council of the Central museums

The letter of intent signed by the Council of the Central museums and Wikimedia Sweden has so far resulted in a photo safari at the Hallwyl house followed by an edit-a-thon back in june. In august Axel Pettersson did a presentation to the general directors of all the National museums to give them a better understanding of what Wikipedia is and how it works. During the presentation, Christina Mattson, director of Nordiska museet, came out as a Wikipedian and told the other directors that she had been editing for a long time already. In september the pilot will start and the next item on the agenda is a staff workshop at Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (The Swedish Museum of Natural History).

In residence at the National Heritage Board

GLAM is the right thing to do

At the Wikimedia Sweden strategy meeting a short summary was done trying to find out how close our projects fell within the scope of what we should be doing. Content donations was at the top with a grade of 9.7 on a 0 to 10 scale. Runners up was building partnerships with educational institutions (9.3) and Wikipedia Education Program (8.9). This work is the start of putting our operational plan for the next year together.


GLAM Cooperation with Aeronautical Museum - Belgrade; WLM first time in Serbia

By Mile K. & Tamara Petrović

GLAM Cooperation with Aeronautical Museum - Belgrade

Aeronautical Museum-Belgrade

Aeronautical Museum in Belgrade and Wikimedia Serbia have signed on August 24th a Memorandum of cooperation concerning project of installing QR-codes in this institution which will help Aeronautical Museum in providing accessibility of information in Museum. Using Wikipedia and QRpedia's QR-codes, Museum visitors will be able to get informed about exhibits in several dozens of languages.

Installing QR codes is part of Wikimedia Serbia project Open Wiki GLAM of Serbia, started at the beginning of 2012. with goal of fostering a two-way cooperation between Wikimedia Serbia and GLAM institutions in creating and improving availability of cultural and historical heritage of Serbia on Internet.

By installing QR-codes, Aeronautical Museum in Belgrade will become the first institution in Serbia and the first museum on Balkans to use QRpedia QR-codes. Aeronautical museum will thus join numerous institutions around the world that cooperate with Wikimedia, some of which are Germany Federal Archive, British Museum, British Library, Art Museum Indianapolis, National Library of France, and many other.

"We are very pleased to start a cooperation with Wikimedia Serbia. Aeronautical Museum is one of the museums in Belgrade that will be implementing and using new technology. Installing QR-codes will be a big step towards the better communication with visitors, especially from abroad. Visitors will be able to use one very modern tool to get much detailed story about exhibits from our museum", said Museum custos, Petar Nedeljković.

Belgrade Aviation Museum is founded in 1957, and since 1989 it is on current location. Until 2012 Museum had one million visitors. BAM is in top 5 European aeronautical museums, and in top 10 in the world. Shape of building is very noticeable and it is one of city symbols. The biggest treasure of museum is collection of airplanes, that shows history between 1909 and 1999.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 - Serbia

Wiki Loves Monuments is a public photo contest around cultural and historical monuments, which is organized in a federative fashion, so the details on a national level might differ from country to country. The basic concept of uploading images of monumental objects under a free license for usage on Wikipedia resulted in around 168.000 photos submitted in 2011, with contestants from 18 participating countries. This year that number has almost doubled, giving a total number of 35 countries worldwide, with Serbia taking part in this project for the first time.

First steps have been made by sorting the official lists of monumental objects in Serbia, given to public usage by the Institute for Monument Preservation of Serbia. Currently, these lists contain 2409 monumental objects, which are separated into four subcategories: cultural and historical monuments (2110), places of great importance (71), cultural and historical sites (72) and archeological sites (156). Addresses and coordinates, as well as other missing data that could be found through other sources, were added manually and the lists were uploaded to Wikipedia as tables with templates. Having unified templates as the other participating countries helped harvesting the data from the tables, so it could be put in one common database.

Most of the monumental objects, as well as their photographs, were then linked to the corresponding articles and media on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Our local WLM website wlm.wikimedia.rs was designed and put online in the middle of August, and it now contains all the relevant information for participants from Serbia. It has a section in English as well, for all the foreigners who would like to take part in the competition by taking photographs of Serbian monumental objects. We have also started promoting the project on Facebook daily by sharing information about the contest as well as last year winner photos.

So far, we have made a multimedia presentation which is to be run during the month of September on tv-screens in public transport in Belgrade. It is supported by Masel Group, the leading company in Serbia when it comes to bus advertising. One of our sponsors is “National Geographic Serbia” which will take part in funding the 3rd prize – a one-year subscription to the “National Geographic Serbia” magazine. We are still waiting for sponsorship approvals from other major companies working with photo equipment and computer hardware.



Image donation; 2 new GLAM projects

Donation of images by the Miss Lupita Project

Poster announcing an event related to the project

The Miss Lupita project is a government-sponsored initiative run by artist Carolina Esparragoza to revive and modernize the craft of making dolls from a very hard kind of papier-mâché called "cartonería." The project has consisted of workshops on making the dolls in Mexico and Japan, as well as exhibits and "beauty pageants" of the finished "Lupitas" (name derived from a common nickname for Guadalupe). The project authorized the use of the photos that exist on its website [1] as of August 2012 and over 130 photos were imported over to Commons. Images from the donation can be found on the English and Spanish articles for cartonería, dolls, Mexican handcrafts and folk art, the Portuguese article on the Brinquedo Museum and of course the article on the project. The photos can be seen here [2]

Beginning projects with Corredor Cultural Roma-Condesa and SEDUVI

Building in Colonia Roma

Wikimedia Mexico is begining two GLAM projects related to the preservation of monumental heritage in Mexico City.

Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa

Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa (Condesa-Roma Cultural Corridor), is a civic organization presided by Ana María Mallet, that performs the most bigger cultural event in the area two times at a year. The Condesa and the Roma neighborhoods are both cultural and bohemian zones with a vibrant atmosphere, which houses some of the more relevant city art galleries and alternative art forms and a great trendy studies. Like Wikipedia says, "The area is considered to be fashionable and popular with younger businesspeople, artists, students and intellectuals". It's our Soho, Palermo or Latin Quarter zone. Because it was builded on XIX Century and later XX, the area have too much pretty Art Noveau and Art Deco architecture.

The agreement, projected to be developed in the next years, includes:

  • Two editathons as a part of the activities of the corridor about Cultural Heritage in the zone
  • Collaboration with local experts to improve some key articles in Spanish and English Wikipedia
  • Support for donation of photos by individuals to Commons
  • Links with universities, cultural institutes, art galleries and schools in the area

The first event of this agreement will be an Edit-a-thon in the Universidad de la Comunicación, next November 24th.

SEDUVI project

Derived from the contact with Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa, Wikimedia México will participate in a project by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda del Gobierno del Distrito Federal (Urban Development and Housing Secretary of Mexico City, SEDUVI). This project will aim provide an improvement in quality of references in the Wikipedia articles of the main 100 monuments of Mexico City, with updated bibliography and extend them, if necessary, in collaboration with experts of SEDUVI.


A month in Africa's GLAMs

The following newsletter is an update of GLAM activity from the last month (and a bit) across the African continent and beyond. The activities listed below have come from the work of two Wikimedia chapters, South Africa and Kenya, and from the WikiAfrica Project.

GLAM Content partners sharing knowledge

The GLAM side of WikiAfrica's Share Your Knowledge project has been very well supported by the 55 content partners from across Africa. It has received content (including images) from the M-Net African Film Library, Blackitude Museum, Hyrax Hill Museum, First Floor Gallery, Mus’art Gallery, Abasuba Community Peace Museum, Africa Centre, Phuthidikabo Museum and Sungani Zakwathu Cultural Heritage Promotions. Many of these related articles are being worked on in the WikiAfrica Incubator and shall be moved over to the main site once they are finished. Much more content is pouring in and will be uploaded over the following month.

Heritage Western Cape

During the last week of August, a three-day GLAM training session and workshop was held with the museum managers of 18 museums across the Western Cape of South Africa. During the session, the managers were introduced to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, GLAM, Creative Commons and the Wiki Loves Monuments Competition. They also uploaded and worked on 11 new articles about their specific museums. These articles that are being finalised, are currently in the WikiAfrica Incubator, and can be viewed there.

South African Heritage Institutions Supports Wiki Loves Monuments

Wikimedia South Africa and WikiAfrica have been working to get South Africa's heritage institutions involved in and participate as upload sites for the upcoming Wiki Loves Monuments 2012. The National Heritage Council (NHC), South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA), Western Cape Heritage and City of Cape Town Heritage are all eager to be involved, especially in an upload marathon at local museums to the South African Wiki Loves Monuments and thus to Commons, that will take place on Heritage Day (Monday, 24 September), a public holiday. The official launch of the Wikilove monuments will be held on the 1st of September 2012 at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town.

Potential GLAMs - Still in Talks

The following have expressed interest in working as GLAMs with Wikimedia Kenya:

  • Nairobi Railway Museum have partially accepted to collaborate with Wikimedia Kenya to have their content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The senior management requested for copies of proposals to review them in detail.Wikimedia Kenya is in discussions on the best way to undertake this project being the first of its kind. A preliminary study revealed that they have none of their collections digitized.
  • Kenya National Archives are still reviewing a proposal that was sent to them regarding GLAM. Hopefully the results shall be out by the time the next newsletter shall be published.

The following have expressed interest in working as GLAMs with WikiAfrica:

  • National Museum Malawi
  • Shimoni Slavery Museum, Kenya
  • Bamako-London Exhibition, UK/Mali
  • South African Heritage Resource Agency, South Africa
  • Name your hood, South Africa
  • IZIKO Museums of Cape Town (14 museums in the Cape Town area) www.iziko.org.za, South Africa
  • Western Province Government – Department of Heritage, South Africa
  • City of Cape Town Heritage Department
  • National Herbarium of Tanzania (http://vimeo.com/11736032), Tanzania
  • TARA – Trust for African Rock Art, Kenya, www.africanrockart.org
  • Kuona Trust, Kenya www.kuonatrust.org
  • National Commission of Museums and monuments, Nigeria, http://www.nigerianmuseums.org
  • Digital Archive,Rock Art Research Institute, Origins Centre, Wits University, South Africa, www.SARADA.co.za

African GLAMs: Cultural Institutions Contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Projects with African Contents

The following GLAMs are at different stages of the Share Your Knowledge path. For in-depth Case Studies of long term partners, please see below, or look at this month's Italy report.

GLAMs related to Africa based outside Africa

Wikimedia chapters supporting the collaborations with institutions in Africa and with African contents

  • Wikimedia South Africa
  • Wikimedia Kenya
  • Викимедија Србије (Wikimedia Serbia)
  • Wikimedia CH
  • Wikimedia España
  • Wikimedia Italia


Freopedia

Freopedia

A new project is developing in Fremantle: Freopedia, a project to install QRpedia codes around the port city in Western Australia. It is being organised by the Fremantle Society (a local heritage- and community-advocacy group) and Wikimedia Australia members, and has in-principle support so far from the Fremantle Council, Chamber of Commerce, Fremantle History Society, and others. A Wikipedia edit-a-thon is in the works for December, along with possible collaboration with the local history center — which has a large collection of original documents, photographs, and other material that is of great use for Wikimedia-related research. Anyone interested in helping should put their name down on the list at w:Wikipedia:GLAM/Freopedia or contact w:User:Roel loopers.


Open Access Media Importer ready for code review; Featured content

Open Access Media Importer tests continued

The bot tests begun last month have continued in August and led to a number of changes in the code in order to render file names and categories more useful, to increase user friendliness and to improve error handling. A good number of issues remain but the basic functionality is stable, and code review is welcome.

To provide an idea of the breadth of the materials imported this way, a few examples are embedded below.

WikiProject Open Access

The following notes from WikiProject Open Access have been posted this month:

Combat between two forked fungus beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus) males.
A female Trogloraptor marchingtoni on the cave cailing
A female Trogloraptor marchingtoni on the cave cailing
A female Semachrysa jade
A female Semachrysa jade
The shell of an oblong rocksnail. Scale bar: 5 mm.
The shell of an oblong rocksnail. Scale bar: 5 mm.
Alavaraphidia: Only known female.
Alavaraphidia: Only known female.

Open Access File of the Day

The following files have been featured as Open Access File of the Day this month:


Wiki Loves Monuments worldwide: started!

The number one of 2011: Winter picture of Chiajna Monastery. The monastery is situated on the outskirts of Bucharest.

The beginning: 2010 & 2011

Wiki Loves Monuments was organized for the first time in the Netherlands in September 2010. It is the successor to Wiki Loves Art in the Netherlands organized in 2009. With Wiki Loves Monuments in 2010, participants were encouraged to photograph some of the more than 50,000 national monuments (so-called "Rijksmonumenten") throughout the Netherlands as part of a photo competition. In total 12,501 photographs were made of the national monuments in the Netherlands. It resulted in many monuments having pictures on Wikipedia shown in lists of monuments and in articles. See the top-10 at Wiki Loves Monuments 2010 and the uploaded pictures at Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2010.

In 2011 we up-scaled the project to a European level wherein 18 countries participated. This was mostly organized by the chapters in co-operation with users of Wikipedia, or by users of Wikipedia alone. In total 169.150 pictures of European monuments were uploaded. In each country winners were selected. The best 10 pictures of each country also participated in the European Contest. See for the uploaded pictures: Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 and for the winning pictures of each country: Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 winners.

Wiki Loves Monuments worldwide

Map of countries participating in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012

In 2012 we up-scaled the project to a worldwide level wherein 30 countries participate. It wasn't easy to receive the information to create lists of monuments on Wikipedia's, but in many countries it went successfully. Our goal is again to get as much pictures as possible of monuments worldwide to make our heritage visible to the public. The pictures are uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, and used in lists of monuments and articles in Wikipedia.

The contest started on September 1 and we got in about two days time already more than 15.000 pictures spread over the countries. These are uploaded by more than 1200 participants. In 2011 we noticed that in the last few days the number of uploads was peaking, we are curious how it will be this year.

This year we also have an app for on location, so that users can use their mobile phone. The app works on an Android phone and needs a good camera. It shows on a map where there are monuments and if they already have a picture or not. Then with the app a picture can be taken and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

In each country a jury decides what are the best pictures and the winners receive a prize which is arranged by this country. The best ten pictures of each country go to the international contest. The winner of the international contest will go to Hong Kong as first prize.

Nice to know: Wiki Loves Monuments is the largest photo contest in the world, based on the number of participating pictures of 2011. Let's make it larger!

For more information: see at Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 and http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/.


September's GLAM events

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