GLAM/Newsletter/June 2011/Contents/News in brief
By Rock drum, HstryQT, HaeB and Tom Morris
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European conferences, British Museum featured and more
A GLAMorous future for Belarus?
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Following his week in the UK, Wikimedia Foundation Cultural Partnerships Fellow Liam Wyatt (Wittylama) visited Belarus. His first stop was the EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) General Assembly where he gave the keynote presentation on why libraries should work with Wikipedia to make their content more accessible. Viačasłaŭ Bryčkoŭski from the National Library of Belarus even proposed ideas for collaboration to the Wikimedians.
That evening Wyatt took part in a meetup with local Wikimedians. Among other things, the participants debated Wiki Loves Monuments and agreed to officially join up. Pessimist2006 also announced that he was starting a school program, to teach young people about Wikipedia.
- Further reading
- Blogposts:
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is the First to Hire Wikipedian in Residence
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This June, Lori Byrd Phillips was formally hired as part-time staff at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Lori is serving as Web Content Specialist and Wikipedian in Residence, following her initial nine month internship serving as Wikipedian in Residence from August 2010 to May 2011. As part-time staff, Lori will continue to work closely with curators to coordinate image donations, known internally to the museum as "batches."
The Children's Museum's image donations are unique in that images are handpicked by curators for their usefulness within the encyclopedia and lack of copyright restrictions; the manageable batches of images, which now total 68 images, are then uploaded manually by the Wikipedian in Residence. Lori will also be organizing future outreach efforts, including a forthcoming Backstage Pass and Edit-a-thon, and will be working closely with curators and volunteer coordinators to formalize an E-Volunteer program, among other GLAM initiatives.
Briefly
edit- British Museum Featured Article: To co-incide with the opening of their latest exhibition, the British Museum-related article Holy Thorn Reliquary was featured on the Main Page of the English Wikipedia where it received over 38,200 views on the one day, and like other FAs on British Museum objects is linked to by the British Museum from their Highlights page on the object. June 23rd marked the opening of the British Museum's latest exhibition, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe which will be at the British Museum from June 23 to October 2011.
- National Portrait Gallery rectifies Wikipedia plagiarism: In March of this year, a number of Wikipedians reported that some text on the website of the UK's National Portrait Gallery had obviously been copied from Wikipedia without any attribution. After the matter was brought up again on Foundation-l in early June ("NPG still violating copyright"), the NPG was contacted a second time by the WMF's "Cultural Partnerships fellow" Liam Wyatt, and removed the offending text. In 2009, The National Portrait Gallery began a widely publicized controversy by threatening a lawsuit in English courts against Derrick Coetzee, a Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons administrator, who had used a software tool to retrieve and upload photographs of out-of-copyright paintings from the gallery's website to Commons. While such copying is legal under U.S. law according to Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., the legal situation in the UK is unclear. The November 2010 GLAM-WIKI conference in London saw a dialogue between Wikimedians and a representative of the NPG.
- NARA Wikipedian in Residence interviewed by Wikinews: Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives, Dominic McDevitt Parks (Dominic) has been interviewed for Wikinews about the position of Wikipedian in Residence at the National Archives and Records Administration. He answered questions about the role of a Wikipedian in Residence and the Archives' partnership with Wikimedia.
