GLAM/Newsletter/March 2020/Contents/Sweden report
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FindingGLAMs; Wikipedia in libraries; Art from the Thiel Gallery Collections; Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete
FindingGLAMs – sharing learnings from the project
Wikimedia Sverige has published Expanding what is possible around GLAMs on the Wikimedia projects: A White Paper as Guidance for Future Work. The paper is a result of the work we did within the FindingGLAMs project, focusing on content partnerships with cultural heritage institutions both in Sweden and abroad. The aim of the paper is to present a sample of the wide variety of material we encounter in our partnership with GLAMs and use it as a starting point for discussions about the development of the Wikimedia platforms. What tools do we, and other community members, use to work with material from GLAMs? How can they be improved? What is missing, and how are we currently making do?
Since 2019, Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia Foundation have been working towards building a thematic hub for institutional content partnerships – a socio-technical support structure for GLAM communities of practice. We wrote the white paper with this ambitious project in mind, as our experience provides us with real, practical problems to solve.
We invite the Wikimedia community to read the white paper. You are more than welcome to comment and share your insights with us on its talk page!
Wikipedia in libraries – next step online meetings
The libraries in Sweden do not close their operations and commitments. Instead, they try to switch to digital channels as far as possible. We had planned to do regular editathons after the courses, which were conducted in five locations around Sweden. Here we have to think in other ways and the next step is to test editathons online. What generally applies to all libraries in Sweden is that they each have the best control over their local authors. So we didn't need that much time to discuss that it would be a good theme to start with. In addition, there is a structure and similar projects already on Swedish Wikipedia.
What you also can do is to make objects in Wikidata for the books and to link the content and the places described in books and novels – in cases where they write about the place or about another local history. There are also opportunities to take pictures from the places in cases where that can work in the articles. We have tested different tools for video conferencing and follow other online editathons to find out how they best work. A project site is often needed for the project on Wikipedia as it usually is for ordinary editathons. But it will be exciting to see what can be added through video meetings and that hopefully, we can start a new edit culture through these online editathons.
Art from the Thiel Gallery Collections
The Thiel Gallery in Stockholm has uploaded 780 images as part of the digitalization project ”The Home Museum as Digital Heritage”. Many of the works have never been published online before. Works by Carl Larsson, Edvard Munch, Anders Zorn and Eugène Jansson, but also more unknown works of art by Aron Gerle and Ester Almqvist to name a few. Some of the images and creators need additional categories and creator templates, so feel free to find your favorite images and give them a bit of extra love and add them to articles and Wikidata objects.
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Albert Engström: "What the hell is a toothbrush for?
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Attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder: Portrait of St. Bridget of Sweden
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Bruno Liljefors: Swans in Reeds
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Ester Almqvist: A Farm House in Själland
Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete
During March the students working with project Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete since September published their articles and presented their work. The 35 students created 29 new articles and edited 52, and added 609k bytes data. They also uploaded 71 images to Commons with a lot of historical value. Boosted by a new article about the Spanish flu in Sweden, and a small addition of a link in the article about the Spanish flu the number of views for the articles are up to 387k so far. Our plan, both with Nordiska museet and all involved teachers, is to continue with the project next year but to expand the topics to make it easier for the students to find where they can make valuable contributions.