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< GLAM‎ | Newsletter‎ | July 2018


Collaborating with GLAM Structures: Armenian Content Replenished in 45 Wikipedias

By Khazhak Drampyan (User:XenonX88)

Wiki Loves Yerevan International Edit-a-thon

This year Yerevan is celebrating its 2800th anniversary. In the frames of the wide range of events dedicated to Yerevan 2800, Wikimedia Armenia organized a one month international edit-a-thon contest in different language Wikipedias in collaboration with Yerevan Foundation. The aim of the contest was to increase the number of Yerevan-related content in the Internet in different languages. The edit-a-thon took place on June 15 - July 15. Editors from 45 Wikipedias were engaged in enriching Yerevan-related content and translating articles. Overall, 1165 articles were translated into 45 languages during Wiki Loves Yerevan International edit-a-thon only. The winners of the first 18 Wikipedias with the most earned points will visit Armenia in September and participate in Yerevan 2800th anniversary celebrations. The first 3 Wikipedias with the most earned points are Hebrew, Arabic and Serbian Wikipedias with 1268.5, 1031,5 and 936.0 points respectively. For more details see Meta The topics covered during international edit-a-thon included Yerevan history, architecture and architects, streets, Yerevan districts, notable people, writers, sportsmen born in Yerevan, as well as Yerevan landmarks.

Wiki Loves Yerevan GLAM collaboration

Prior to international edit-a-thon, Wikimedia Armenia continues the active collaboration with Yerevan cultural institutions (galleries and museums). By July 1, Wikimedia Armenia collaborates with 11 Yerevan museums and galleries. Saturday workshops are usually attended by editors and GLAM representatives who are also engaged in editing articles in Armenian Wikipedia and contributing to the dissemination of quality knowledge. One of the most successful collaborations with GLAM institutions is the collaboration with Alexander Tamanyan National Museum-Institute of Architecture. Established in 1990, this museum has unique materials on Armenian architecture both in Armenia and abroad, the history of Armenian architecture, urban development and more. In July 20-27 during Wiki camp organized in Aghveran and in collaboration with National Museum-Institute of Architecture one of the most important articles of Wiki Loves Yerevan project (article Alexander Tamanyan) was improved and replenished. Ani Grigoryan, Deputy Director of National Museum-Institute of Architecture, says: “This is a very good initiative. We hope to continue the collaboration with Wikimedia Armenia in the future and help to develop the content in Armenian Wikipedia on Armenian art, architecture and culture.”


A land of ragged mountains

One man's trash

WLE 2018

Australia's third year of Wiki Loves Earth participation has produced many more wonderful images. This year we fell a handful of entries short of our 1 000 image target. Those images none-the-less were an amazing contribution. To me the most significant highlight is the return of contributors from past years. Of particular note is User:Katieleeosborne whose 2017 image of a Weedy Sea Dragon made the top 10. This year her image of a Leafy Sea Dragon made the top 10 but it was her image of an octopus living in a can under Rye Pier that was judged as the best for 2018. We can only lament at how our environment must adapt to our actions. Along with the Octopus, other aspects of our climate were well documented, with fires in the Blue Mountains, and a lightning storm also from the same location making it into the top 10.

On a personal note after 3 years of running Wiki Loves Earth for Wikimedia Australia I'll be stepping down to enable a new perspective to the process, which will also enable a potential change to judging panel which over the years has relied on my circle of photographer friends here in Perth. Judging-wise the process has been: I first do a review of every image, checking they meet all the WLE rules (watermarks, size, location, subject), basic technical aspects (straight horizons, noisy, or over-exposed). Then we get together as a group and work through the remaining images slowly, breaking it down to the final 10.

I suspect that there will be a lot of images in 2019 which will lay bare the scars of this year drought in the east, and the cold wet winter in the west. For me Dorothea Mackellar's poem really sums up the range of images submitted to WLE in Australia over the years. I'll look forward to continued images of ragged mountain ranges and sweeping plains being submitted WLE Australia in 2019 and beyond.

Thank you all Gnangarra (talk).



Rare cartographic collection uploaded by Brazilian GLAM

The Museu Paulista Wiki-GLAM initiative took another step towards the goal of uploading and sharing on wiki all the documents from the institution. During the months of June and July, Brazilian Wikimedians who help with the project successfully made the upload of metadata on Wikidata and images on Wikimedia Commons of more than 3,000 files that are part of the Aguirra Collection, a cartographic set from the museum.

This collection consists mostly of maps, topographic maps and floor plants that the Brazilian historian and archivist João Baptista de Campos Aguirra compiled during his career. The files, for the most part, portray the XIX and early XX centuries.

The collection is important for the Brazilian community and culture mostly because it depicts the process of territorial formation and urbanization of São Paulo, the largest Brazilian city. Amidst the documents, files that show how the city's housing division functioned are of special relevance, as well as real estate plans and public structures, such as city sewage.

In addition, these documents are important to foster possible research projects in the geographic and historical areas, as well as architectural and even law studies of the state of São Paulo.

Also, some maps of colonial Brazil were upload, plus maps from other Brazilian cities and states. Exceptionally, some maps depicting Europe were also among the files.

Photographs that show São Paulo city or Aguirra's family during the XIX century were also compiled by the archivist. Those files were uploaded to Wikidata, but only with its metadata. The institution has not yet digitized this part of the collection.

The uploading process carried out by Wikimedians, however, was arduous. The museum collection did not have complete metadata for categorizing and structuring data on Commons and Wikidata.

For the uploading, therefore, it was necessary to perform a difficult process of compiling historical data, especially on authors (usually engineers) of the maps. Interested Wikimedians can assist in continuing this activity, which is still in progress, even after the upload.

The images now can be found on the Commons category Aguirra Collection at the Museu Paulista or at the GLAM’s page, on the tab "maps".


Wikidata workshop around heritage

Wikidata workshop around heritage

On 20th July, a Wikidata workshop took place at the Musée de Bretagne. The two goals were to share knowledge about Wikidata between the participant ("How to do this?" or "Which tool to use for doing that?") and to improve the data around the heritage (in order to get better data for Wiki Loves Monuments in September). 3 hours were not enough to clean all the data but thanks to with 8 - more or less - seasoned Wikimedians a lot has been corrected already.


The European Cultural Heritage Summit in Berlin and two visits in Potsdam

Attendance on the European Cultural Heritage Summit „Sharing Heritage – Sharing Values” in Berlin

announcing the workshop
presentation of heirlooms


Wikimedia Germany participated in the Summit by leading the session “#Denkmaldigital – Cultural Heritage Transfer between digital and analog” at the “Transmitting Cultural Heritage to Young People” workshop, the presentation of heirlooms together with the Goethe Institute and an information stand at Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin at the join-in market “Cultural Heritage Fair”. The European Cultural Heritage Summit took place from 18–24 June 2018 in Berlin, Germany. This Summit, with the motto “Sharing Heritage – Sharing Values”, has been recognised by the European Union as one of the key public events of the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) and is supported by the EU’s Creative Europe programme.

The “Transmitting Cultural Heritage to Young People” workshops will present best practice examples on this topic and offer cultural institutions, heritage communicators and specialists the opportunity to keep up-to-date and network.

“Erbstuecke/heirlooms” is a digital project designed by the Goethe-Institut and will be organised and realised in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. and in consultation with the German Cultural Heritage Committee (Deutsches Nationalkomitee für Denkmalschutz, DNK) in several European cities and towns. The DNK itself is responsible for all activities of the European Year of Cultural Heritage within Germany.

The aim of “Erbstuecke” is to tell the story of our common roots, of how much of Europe can be found in the cultural heritage of Estonia, Portugal and Serbia for instance. We want to encourage as many people and as many European countries as possible to participate with a variety of their “heirlooms”. Cultural cooperations and influences have constituted the European cultural agenda long before the European Union was founded. Our common European heritage keeps on influencing our lives. “Sharing heritage: where the past meets the future” is this year’s slogan.

Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. will contact active and interested Wikipedia chapters all over Europe. Together with these Wikipedia chapters, the Goethe-Institut is planning to organise “Edit-a-thons”, research and editing festivals, that will take place in their libraries, in partner libraries, or GLAM institutions.


Two Wikipedian KulTours at the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG)

at the Archive of the Foundation
walk through the exhibition


A one-day event that brings Wikipedia contributors together with a cultural institution is often a good way to initiate a mutual relationship. A Wikipedian KulTour offers an excellent framework for such an event, consisting of a guided tour and writing workshop or a Wikipedia workshop, for example. Two of these events take place in June. Volunteers from the Wikimedia projects visited the foundation's archive in Potsdam. The second trip to Potsdam was dedicated to the visit of the special exhibition "Kaiserdämmerung" of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg. The tour of the exhibition was conducted by the curator himself.


Monuments and minorities

PaestumWiki

The National Museum of Paestum hosted on 21st of July an edit-a-thon on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery, made by the archaeologist Mario Napoli in 1968, of the Tomb of the Diver.


WLM 2017 Exhibition @ BASE and tour

On July 13th WMI inaugurated the exhibition of Wiki Loves Monuments winner photos together with the winners of the local editions and of the special awards. The exibition is displayed at BASE Milano, where WMI are hosted, and will last until August 24th. For the inauguration, WMI, BASE and MuseoLab6 association also organized a wikitour in the neighborhood to catch new photos of industrial archeology buidings for the 2018 contest!

Discovering a German linguistic minority in Italy

Visit to the historic rural building

On the 28th of July members of InFormAzioni association and of Trentino-Alto Adige Wiki have been hosted by the Istituto culturale mòcheno (Bersntoler Kulturinstitut) to discover history, culture and traditions of the mòcheni, a population located a isolated valley of Trentino that is still speaking the Mòcheno language. This language is closely related to Bavarians, it comes from medieval migrations and is spoken by ~1.000 people, all recognized as linguistic minority and protected by the local government. The valley is known as "Val dei Mòcheni" in Italian, "Fersental" in German and "Bersntol" in Mòcheno.

The event started in the morning with a guided tour of Maso Filzerhof, an historic rural building owned by the institute since 1994 that, after a renovation, is open to the public as an ethnographic museum. During the two hours of the tour we discovered the origins of this particular population, their lifestyle and the difficulties of subsistence in an impervious territory like that of the Alps. At the end of the morning we also visited the "Bersntoler Museum".

Edit-a-thon at the Town hall

During the lunch, gently offered by the local pro loco, all the 11 participants had the possibility to taste some typical food, as the kropfen, a kind of local tortelloni.

In the afternoon we moved to the town hall of Palù del Fersina/Palai en Bersntol for an edit-a-thon with the aim to create and improve articles about the linguistic minority, with the collaboration of the guide and an expert from the cultural institution, that helped us to understand the sources written in "Mòcheno". At the end of four intense hours 3 new articles were created and 8 articles were improved on the Italian Wikipedia, 59 new images were added in Commons, 11 items were created and/or edited in Wikidata and 1 new tourist itinerary was added in Wikivoyage (here the details).

This event was the first "encounter" between Wikimedia and a linguistic minority in Italy, and we are happy that everyone has been satisfied, both Wikipedians and the cultural institution. They are a member of the Committee of the Historical German Language Islands in Italy, and we hope that it could be the start of a good collaboration.
Next event in Trentino will be on the 15th of September in Castel Ivano. Stay tuned!

Wiki 4 dummies meeting & webinar

On July 2nd and 10th WMI organized a meeting (open to everyone) and a webinar (for GLAMs) about the five pillars and basic contributions to Wikipedia. A dozen people attended the live event and fifteen to the webinar, mostly from libraries and archives. Here are the video e the presentation.

Edit-a-thon at Biblioteca San Giorgio

Biblioteca San Giorgio, Pistoia

On 19 July 2018 the Tuscan Wikimedians organized an edit-a-thon at the San Giorgio library, a collaboration between the Wiki Loves Monuments and the Project: GLAM / San Giorgio Pistoia.

More information: Wikipedia:Raduni/Editathon e Incontro Wiki Loves Monuments Pistoia


The month of Festivals covered on Wikipedia

Photohunt on the D Festival in Dojran

"D Festival" is the biggest open air festival that is organized every July in the lake resort and town of Dojran in southeastern part of Macedonia where several Macedonian and foreign popular artist and musicians are preforming on a three day program on 4 different stages including the main stage, the Mosquito stage in the camp where most of the attendants of the festival are setting up tents, lakeside stage and church stage in the old church of St. Elijah above Dojran. This year we used the chance within the project of Photohunt through a lottery to grant a ticket for the all stages of the D Festival with a task for the lucky winner to take photographs of the artist, bands performing in order to create and improve articles on the Wikipedia on Macedonian and other languages. Regarding that the applicants who did not have an account on Wikimedia had the advantage for being chosen for granting the ticket and conducting the photohunt, the newly registered User:Ntnmstchk have been granted the ticket and made dozens of high quality photographs which are in process of uploading and will be used for creating and improving articles in the forthcoming period.

WikiBeer project at Pivo Fest in Prilep

WikiBeer project have continued with the visit of the city of Prilep which is a home of the second biggest brewery founded in 1924 and the oldest and first Macedonian beer festival "Pivo Fest" which is organized since 2002. The trip was organized on the opening day of the festival on 12th of July, where the members of the team with a new volunteer and the newly registered user ПрИлеП киН have visited and took several photographs of the production facilities of the Prilep Brewery around noon. In the afternoon hours the team visited the opening and the stages of the beer festival Pivo Fest where several other pictures have been taken.


Matching the GTAA thesaurus with Wikidata; Hands-on Pattypan training

Matching the GTAA thesaurus with Wikidata

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision holds a large collection of Dutch audiovisual material. This collection has been described using its own thesaurus Gemeenschappelijke Thesaurus Audiovisuele Archieven (or GTAA). The person names from this thesaurus have been added to the Mix 'n Match tool, to be added to relevant terms as identifier. Sound and Vision would like to expand the number of matches made, by providing more and better quality data and automated matches. The last step of manually confirming the GTAA to its Wikidata item, we would like to do together with the community. After these matches have been made, we will have a much better idea of which data is still missing on Wikidata, which we will then try to provide as new items and properties to existing items from our catalogue and other datasets. Also, the information on Wikidata will assist us in finding parts of our collections that are in the Public Domain and can be made available through Wikimedia Commons. If you want to help link the GTAA to Wikidata, check the instructions here.

Hands-on Pattypan training

On 26 July, Erfgoed Gelderland's Wikimedian in Residence and Wikimedia Nederland co-organised a hands-on Pattypan training for staff of the Dutch Nationaal Museum voor Wereldculturen. Staff was asked to each bring a spreadsheet with metadata of a (small) collection that could be donated to Wikimedia Commons. During this and subsequent meetings, they are asked to work on the metadata and convert them to a format that can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. During this first of 3 (planned) meetings, staff was given a general introduction to Wikimedia Commons, a rundown of the pattypan workflow and were involved in a detailed look at their own metadata and what needs to be done. Three staff members of the NMvW participated. Further meetings are in preparation.


Seminar at The National Archives of Norway and Sami music and culture festivals

Bodil Biørn seminar at The National Archives of Norway

From left: Anette Alsvik, The National Archive, Per Ottersland, The National Archive, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, professor in history and writer of a bibliography about Biørn, Jussi Flemmig Biørn, Bodil Biørns grandson

The first part of our Bodil Biørn project is soon done. Wikimedia Armenia is working on the final translations of the image descriptions from English to Armenian. In June Wikimedia Norge organized a Bodil Biørn seminar together with The National Archives of Norway. The second part of this project will be to transcribe and translate letters Biørn wrote about her stay in Armenia. The already digitalized images and letters will provide a unique documentation collected by a woman from the Armenian genocide.

Images are uploaded to Commons and image descriptions will be added in August 2018

Northerns Sami project on the road: Riddu Riđđu festival and Márkomeannu festival

Jorid Martinsen and Astrid Carlsen at Márkomeannu
Minister of Culture opening speech at Riddu Riđđu 2018
Festival library at Márkomeannu

This summer Wikimedia Norge has visited two music festivals. Riddu Riđđu festival is an music and cultural festival promoting and developing the Sami coastal culture. It also has a lot of international artists on the program. Márkomeannu is a Sami cultural and music festival held near the border of the municipalities of Skånland in Troms and Evenes in Nordland in northern Norway. The idea behind Márkomeannu is to celebrate the culture and traditions of the Sámi villages. At Márkomeannu Wikimedia Norge took part by joining the festival library organized by the county library of Nordland.

At the festivals we held editing workshops, had meetings with different Sami institutions and talked to a lot of the festival participants on how and why they should contribute to the Northern Sami Wikipedia. Both festivals will share their photo collections from this year's festivals under a free license as well. Images will be uploaded to this category on Commons,


Wikipedian in Residence at the Museum of Yugoslavia: History of Yugoslavia on Wikipedia

Wikipedian in Residence at the Museum of Yugoslavia: History of Yugoslavia on Wikipedia

This year's first Wikipedian in residence in cultural institutions was carried out at the Museum of Yugoslavia, being the first project funded by the Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information. The aim was to present the cultural and historical heritage, and the results are 100 articles on Serbian Wikipedia and 533 released files on Wikimedia Commons. Of that number, as many as 418 images have already been used to illustrate Wikipedia articles in nine languages!

The residence is a continuation of the successful cooperation with the Museum of Yugoslavia, whose leadership recognized the importance of visibility on Wikipedia and was eagerly awaiting the continuation of this program, which began at the end of last year. In addition to the highly successful edit-a-thon, Wikipedian Dušan Ružić spent one month in this institution, and for the first time numerous figures from Yugoslavia history had their Wikipedia pages created and illustrated.

However, all parties agreed that the job was not over and that there are many more subjects and figures from the history of Yugoslavia that deserve a place on the largest online encyclopedia. It was decided to repeat the residence, but this time the project was financed by the Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information. This time, master historian, Marko Stanojević was chosen for the task, being a dedicated Wikipedian with great interest for the period of Yugoslavia.

Marko Stanojević in the Museum of Yugoslavia

During the two-month residence at this institution, Marko devoted himself to creating new and improving existing articles using the literature kept in the museum. At the same time, the museum was releasing the photographs needed for their illustration. Marko's commitment, as well as the professionalism of the museum staff, who have always tried to provide adequate literature for the articles, successfully led to the article about the First Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement to be selected as a good article on Serbian Wikipedia.

Marko Stanojević, Wikipedian in residence, confirms that this article is unique because it currently exists only on Serbian Wikipedia:
- Jovana Nedeljković, the curator in the Museum of Yugoslavia, suggested me to write about this Movement and provided the sources. Thanks to that, I’ve created the best article of this internship project. The images donated by the Museum helped me demonstrate the real situation in Belgrade and during the Summit itself - Marko said.

Mirko Lovrić

Out of the 100 written articles, as many as 79 are about the Yugoslav national heroes, which means that Serbian Wikipedia now practically contains information about every notable hero of Yugoslav wars. Still, Radovan Cukić, Curator and head of the Museum of Yugoslavia’s Department of fund research and preservation, and Wikipedian in residence Marko specially mention the articles about photographers Mirko Lovrić and Aleksandar Simić. Mirko Lovrić, as an official photographer of president Josip Broz Tito, made a lot of photos during his visits to Africa and Asia. On the other hand, during the World War II, Aleksandar Simić was a photographer of Dragoljub Draža Mihajlović. He made a great number of images, including the one that made him famous. In that way, both of the anti-fascist movements are covered on Wikipedia.

- Even though we have now finished an important topic that was started a long time ago, and we have pages about all Yugoslav national heroes in Serbian Wikipedia, at the same time we started a new important topic of Industry of Yugoslavia. I would say that this time the most important articles are the ones that represent our new collections for the first time. Here I want to mention photo-legacy in the Museum of Yugoslavia, gifted by the photographers Mirko Lovrić and Aleksandar Simić. This time, we have showed to the public just a fragment of the historical treasure that is being preserved in our Museum, says Radovan Cukić.

In addition to the articles on Yugoslav heroes, Wikipedia has been enriched with pages on widely known companies that at the time were the bearers of the economical development, such as Prva petoletka, Ivo Lola Ribar, Belgrade cotton company, Sugar Factory Crvenka ... Radovan Cukić came to the idea to link these topics with an exhibition of the Museum of Science and technology "Time Keepers: Forgotten Industrial Heritage". This museum gladly responded to the invitation to contribute to Wikipedia and released 51 photographs of the companies in Yugoslavia, to illustrate the articles.

- Through analyzing the content of Serbian Wikipedia, we realized that there are extremely few pages on former Yugoslavia’s industry, and it really had to be corrected. The Museum of Science has been engaged in the topic of industrial heritage for a long time, thanks to Mr. Rifat Kulenović. After being transferred to the Museum of Yugoslavia in 2014, he continued leading the project under the auspices of the Museum of Yugoslavia, and when he returned to his primary institution in 2017 to become its director, the conditions for a more comprehensive cooperation between the two institutions on this topic were of exceptional significance. This resulted in an photo exhibition by Rifat Kulenović and Ada Vlajić "The Time Keepers: Forgotten Industrial Heritage" which could be seen in the Museum of Yugoslavia, and now, after several visits, it was installed at the Museum of Science. In that sense, Marko's article writing in cooperation with colleagues Ada and Rifat from the Museum of Science was the logical choice. Especially since, there are Ada’s and Rifat’s photographs on Wikipedia, showing the current state in which the factories that represent the industrial legacy of Serbia and Yugoslavia are - concludes Cukić.

As for the rare photographs that were missing on Wikipedia, we can mention the images of student demonstrations in Belgrade in 1968, Brioni Plenum in 1966, when Aleksandar Ranković was replaced, and photograph of President Tito with Theodore Castro, Kostarican Ambassador to Belgrade, who was actually a disguised Soviet operative.

- I would single out the page about Theodore Castro, the official ambassador of Costa Rica in Belgrade, who was in fact Stalin's agent with a task of killing Tito, written by Marko with excellence. It is, of course, illustrated with a very interesting photograph from his reception with Tito, from the photo archives of the Museum of Yugoslavia - explains Radovan.

We would also point out the encyclopedic value of the material, but also the novelty for the general public, which was the digitization of five photo albums, that the famous companies gave Tito as a gift. These are Energoprojekt from Belgrade, Ivo Lola Ribar from Železnik, Prva Petoletka from Trstenik, Red Flag from Kragujevac and Copper Mill from Sevojno. As they say in the Museum, it is enough to find out what kind of treasure for the researchers lies in over 2500 photo albums, mostly from the period of the Socialist Yugoslavia, which the Yugoslav Museum has inherited.

Everyone was pleased by the results, the process and the organization of this residence. The wider public - because it was given the opportunity to further learn the history of Yugoslavia on the most visited site of the modern age; the Museum of Yugoslavia - because for the first time new museum collections were presented; the Museum of Science, which increased the visibility of a great exhibition on industrial heritage; the Wikipedian Community - who got the materials that were missing to improve the encyclopedia, but also the Wikipedian in Residence, who enjoyed in his professional work and contributed to free knowledge.

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to the Head of the Department, Radovan Cukić, who provided me with unselfish help and guided me in the elimination of the many dilemmas that I had. Also, Jovana Nedeljković, as well as other employees of the Museum. It was a pleasure to work in this eminent institution. I am pleased that with this internship, the number of digitized material on Commons has increased and that the cooperation between the Museum and Wikimedia Serbia will continue in the future.
Marko Stanojević

Marko Stanojević really deserved all praise for his engagement in the Museum of Yugoslavia. He is a young man, but fully developed in a professional sense, educated and formed historian, with a developed critical apparatus, but also a commitment to the period and topics he had the opportunity to deal with in the Museum of Yugoslavia. In short, an associate for every recommendation. Radovan Cukić

Wikimedia Serbia wants to thank all the participants of this project, especially regarding the satisfaction in establishing professional and exceptional partnership with the Museum of Yugoslavia, whose stability and long-term cooperation is of great importance for the development of the GLAM program in Serbia. We are planning new joint actions with this institution, which, we believe, will bring a lot of new, free knowledge to the largest encyclopedia in human history.


National Library of Sweden

WMSE is cooperating with the National Library of Sweden to bring more bibliographic data to Wikidata.

National Library of Sweden

This summer marks the beginning of a new project at Wikimedia Sverige. We're working with the National Library of Sweden to upload some of their rich datasets to Wikidata. The Libris database, hosted by the National Library, contains records on millions of books, magazines and articles in the collections of libraries all across Sweden – and it's available as open data. We're starting off by examining the most commonly cited sources on Swedish Wikipedia; with this information in hand, we'll be able to plan our work so that it truly benefits the editor community. While Wikidata already contains the bibliographic data of millions of scientific articles, there's a lot to be done when it comes to books, especially ones relevant to non-English language communities. We're looking forward to making a dent in that.


Oxford GLAMs and Celtic Knot 2018

Oxford University

Martin Poulter's activities this month as the university's Wikimedian In Residence:

  • Meeting with Oxford's Museum of the History of Science about sharing a dataset and images of astrolabes: more to come in August.
  • Sharing data about John Sibthorp and Ferdinand Bauer's 1786-88 botanical expedition to the eastern Mediterranean. A previous upload jumped the gun and included some dubious data, so I deleted the properties and started again.
  • Sharing data about manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. This is a gradually growing data set that I have been adding to manually, while also building a tool to bulk share data and images from the Bodleian to Wikidata and to Commons.
  • Reviewing a pottery ware dataset from the Pitt Rivers Museum for possible sharing on Wikidata.
  • Giving a lecture at the Digital Humanities Summer School urging researchers to use Wikidata as a starting point for humanities data, and to improve what is there.
  • Publishing a blog post, "Wikidata and GLAM catalogues: a round-up" explaining some of the projects using Wikidata in GLAMs.

While looking for biographical information about scientific instrument-makers in the Museum of the History of Science dataset, I found one had authored a short instruction booklet which is available in Google Books. This is now set up as a Wikisource transcription project. Help is welcome!

The Celtic Knot Conference

The National Library of Wales ran the second Celtic Knot conference, organised by Wikimedian in Residence Jason Evans in partnership with Wikimedia UK on the 5 and 6 July. The conference brought together wikimedians and other wiki partners from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, Catalan, the Basque country and the Northern Sami to discuss ways in which Wikipedia can help support and preserve minority or endangered languages. SLIC Wikimedian in residence Delphine Dallison produced a blog post giving an overview of the conference. There was also a Wikidata track running through the conference and you can read more about some of the tools and ideas discussed on the Wikimedia UK blog.

Jason Evans and Ewan McAndrew are currently looking for the next hosts of Celtic Knot for 2019. Get in touch if you think that could be you!


Summer in July

WikiConference North America/2018

WikiConference North America is being held on October 18-21, 2018, at Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio. Please submit your scholarship application, and talk proposals here - WikiConference North America 2018 – Columbus.

DC Historic Sites Workshop

Wikimedia DC and the DC Preservation League held a workshop, DC Historic Sites Wikipedia Editing Workshop, at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in the Watergate building complex.

Black Lunch Table

Black Lunch Table held meetups, Black Lunch Table/Cape Town 2018, and Black Lunch Table/Johannesburg2 2018

ACMAA EaT

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art held a meetup, ACMAA EaT



Commons transcription tool

By Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing)

Commons transcription tool

A new Wikimedia Commons OCR script makes it easier to transcribe text in images. It is available as toolbar button on Commons and creates a OCR text. It pops up a little dialog box with the image and its text, permitted correction and then insertion into the page. You can easily use it by adding the code in grey from this page to your your common.js on Wikimedia Commons.


Books & Bytes–Issue 29, June–July 2018

In this issue, we highlight Wikimania, global developments and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

New partner

This month The Wikipedia Library is announcing a new partner:

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high-quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!

Wikimania

Wikimania ran from 18 to 22 July in Cape Town, South Africa. This year's conference theme was "Bridging knowledge gaps, the ubuntu way forward" – a focus on addressing gaps in coverage. The conference had more than 700 attendees from over 80 countries.
The Preconference this year included Wikipedia 101 for Librarians, a workshop on 19 July to train librarians and library staff on how to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The session included a #1Lib1Ref edit-a-thon. Facilitators for the event were Jake Orlowitz, Felix Nartey, Alex Stinson, and Samuel Guebo.

The #1Lib1Ref session described the campaign to have librarians around the world add a single citation to Wikipedia, resulting in over 15,000 edits in 24 languages across the three years that #1Lib1Ref has run so far. It highlighted the Citation Hunt and hashtag tools, and discussed methods of promotion and engagement. "WikiCite: Lifting a veil on the sources of free knowledge" discussed how the WikiCite initiative "has brought together community members, librarians, researchers and developers to build a structured knowledge base of sources, leveraging Wikidata as its infrastructure". It outlined tools, workflows, and strategies for potential participants to engage with this initiative. A third libraries-related session showcased the the Library Card, a TWL platform to streamline the provision of database access to Wikimedia editors. The demo walked through the site's current features and upcoming development, particularly plans for the "bundle" to provide immediate access to a set of sources for qualifying editors.

See the complete program for selected session recordings and notes.

User Group

The Wikimedia and Libraries User Group wrapped up its month-long poll gathering input from user group members to help steering committee plan activities for 2018. Engage with libraries in communities with historically low participation in Wikimedia projects received the most support with 57 responses. The steering committee is analyzing the results and exploring ways to reach out to projects with low participation. The user group also organized a book swapping campaign at Wikimania in Cape Town; participants submitted 50+ books to be swapped or picked up by anybody who wished to read them. The remaining books were donated to a local public library.

Global

CIS-A2K led a Wiki Advanced Training for the India community which featured a TWL session for the various language leaders. The Global Coordinators of TWL joined remotely to provide insights on the TWL Program and to inspire activities around the creation of branches for the various Indian languages. This event follows a growing interest in TWL-related activities in India which has stemmed from the second round of #1Lib1Ref campaigns. By the end of the second round of the #1Lib1Ref campaign, 1462 edits had been completed in 12 languages, 32 countries had made 1200 posts, reaching 1.8 million people, 3.6 million times.

Lastly, the quest of improving sources on Hindi Wikipedia has resulted in the creation of the first TWL Branch in India. Congratulations to all coordinators of the Hindi TWL Branch and welcome to the family of TWL Global Branches!

Bytes in brief


News from Cape Town, Aberystwyth, Berlin, Milan and Everywhere

By Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing)

Special Report: Conference season

GLAM news

Further reading, listening and viewing

Tech developments

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here.

New GLAM-related properties

General datatypes

External identifiers

You are invited to comment on all open property proposals.


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