GLAM/Newsletter/February 2014/Contents/India report
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National Museum, New Delhi, India (January 2-5, 2014)
The National Museum, New Delhi
The National Museum at New Delhi is one of the largest museums in India and despite some spectacular holdings, the number of local residents who have visited the museum remains small. The museum management has in recent times made some great advances through the introduction of volunteer guides to help visitors interpret the artefacts. When Wikimedia's Indian Chapter representative Sowmyan Thirumurti visited the Director General Dr Venu Vasudevan, the idea of a GLAM-Wiki workshop did not require selling. A talk by Andrew Gray on 23 December 2013 preceded the actual workshop.
The Workshop
At four days, this must be the shortest ever GLAM event but even this entailed considerable organization and discussion on infrastructure, travel, stay, deciding the volunteers, topic coverage and schedule.
The workshop participants were first introduced to editing on their own user pages. Understanding key policies, referencing and other aspects took the greater part of the first two days. On day three and day four, some artefacts were chosen for research, photography and article creation. This however was fraught with troubles of notability and choice of title but the decision was taken to be bold. Some new articles were created and a small set of QR codes were printed and placed near selected artefacts. The library of the museum was an especially important and critical resource and it was quite clear that finding published content, research and referencing was critical, one that could take considerable time, well beyond the workshop.
The participants continue(d) to work on these articles and were (and still are) supported after the workshop through interaction via a Google Community. An informal follow up meet was organized by Rohini Lakshane on January 31, 2014.
One of the best outcomes from the workshop was the article chauper Gyan chauper - a Jain version and precursor of the modern board game of "Snakes and Ladders". More on the workshop at [1].
One article on a popular exhibit which has defied an encylopaedic naming scheme has already gone through an AfD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_carved_tusk_depicting_Buddha_life_stories
