GLAM/Newsletter/March 2024/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue III, March 2024

Albania report • Australia report • Belgium report • Brazil report • Colombia report • Italy report • Netherlands report • New Zealand report • Poland report • Sweden report • Switzerland report • UK report • USA report • Biodiversity Heritage Library report • Content Partnerships Hub report • Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report • WMF GLAM report • Calendar

WikiGap Tirana 2024

By Vyolltsa

Celebrating Women in Entrepreneurship

This year WikiGap Tirana delved more into bridging the gender gap on women in entrepreneurship in Albania and Sweden.

For the 7th year, WikiGap event took place at the Swedish Embassy in Tirana with 10 women to contribute to the visibility and representation of women entrepreneurs on SqWikipedia. The event shed light on the achievements and business women from Albania and Sweden.

For 3.5 hours, all the participants worked on translating and editing Wikipedia articles resulting in a total of 13 new articles and editing 14 articles.

During the event, as a group we discussed the importance why women should focus on encyclopedic content creation for women by women; and increase the network exchange among women participants and create connections and collaborations with one another.

Pictures from the event.

Diaspora Edits Wikipedia Campaign, 2024

From February to March, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group organized the one-month Diaspora Edits Wikipedia Campaign. This aimed to promote the values and culture of Albanian articles by translating them into various foreign languages.

During the campaign, we had 7 editors translate several Albanian articles into foreign languages. Topics ranged from Albanian history, literature, cuisine, and traditions providing insights into Albanian culture to a broader audience. Participants learned how to enrich Wikipedia with Albanian perspectives improve the existing ones, and the addition of valuable references and citations.

Social media

We have a public Telegram channel (language used mostly Albanian) if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects.

If you want to see more about our activities, you canː

Like our Facebook page, follow us on X formerly Twitter or Instagram.

Art+Feminism in Australia

By Pru Mitchell & Belinda Spry

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

In the lead up to International Women's Day and as part of the National Gallery of Australia's regional Know My Name touring exhibition, Wikimedia Australia partnered with Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery for an edit-a-thon on 10 February. The theme "Making Women Count" was a great motivation for 11 new editors to increase the visibility of their regional women and non-binary artists.

Entrance to the Know my Name exhibition at the NGA November 2020.
Alice Woods facilitating the Know My Name edit-a-thon at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.
A group photo of some Mornington Peninsula Regional Galley editors.
Jane German and Dunja Rmandic, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Pru Mitchell and Paralympic athletics competitor Jan Randles at the Know my Name event at Mornington Peninsula Regional Galley.

See more details and photos on our website here. The event Dashboard shows the articles that were improved:

Know My Name Edit-a-thon Event Dashboard

Women's Art Register

On Saturday 9 March, right after International Women's Day Victorians met at the Richmond Library for an annual Art+Feminism workshop hosted by the Women's Art Register and the Library.

The Event Dashboard shows the 17 mostly new editors created 6 new articles on Australian women artists and updates to another 12 artists. New articles feature:

National Gallery of Australia

On Saturday 16 March in Canberra, Wikimedia Australia partnered with the National Gallery of Australia to celebrate Art+Feminism in 2024 with our annual edit-a-thon in the gallery library.

We have been partnering with the NGA for four years with regular edit-a-thons, some online but also in person. This year was no exception, building on previous years especially the 2023 event.

A group of 15 mostly new editors joined some of the NGA staff, volunteers and WMAU staff. It was a productive afternoon using the National Gallery's library to access artist's files, books and journals for quality references and a chance to see some rare books 'behind the scenes'.

26 articles have been expanded and improved, and three new articles include:

See our impact from the day here:

Event Dashboard

To help us track our overall impact we have created a Know My Name Dashboard for all the events over the 4 years.

Wikimedia Australia is proud to be part of the global Art+Feminism community and contributing to increasing the visibility of women and non-binary artists, as well as introducing more new editors to Wikipedia and Wikidata in the near future.

Belgian Public domain day and Wiki Loves Heritage awards on March 7

By Geertivp

On March 7, 2024 the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), meemoo, and Wikimedia Belgium organised the Public Domain day and the prize session of Wiki Loves Heritage, Wiki Loves Living Heritage, Wiki Loves Momuments, Wiki Loves Pajottenland Zennevallei.

In the morning national institutions presented their projects. At noon Wikimedia Belgium announced the winning photo’s of the Wiki Loves 2023 photo compaigns. In the afternoon, international organisations demonstrated the value of free licenses.

The winners and the jury
Winner of Wiki Loves Heritage
Winner of Wiki Loves Living Heritage
Winner of Wiki Loves Monuments
Winner of Wiki Loves of Pajottenland Zennevallei

A GLAM focus on Rio de Janeiro; Archivos en vigília

By Sandra Soster & Juliana Cunha

A GLAM focus on Rio de Janeiro

For more than two centuries, the city of Rio de Janeiro was Brazil's capital and, even with the transfer of the capital to Brasilia in 1960, Rio remains one of Brazil's main cultural centers. The concentration of GLAM institutions means that this state has great potential for partnerships with Wikimedia platforms, not only for uploading collections, but also for expanding the community that contributes to projects on a wide range of topics.

Because of Rio's relevance, at the end of 2023, Wiki Movimento Brasil chose a resident in Rio de Janeiro city as its new member. Juliana Cunha is why you've been seeing more and more of Rio in our latest newsletters. She had dedicated some attention to increasing even more the activities of WMB in this very important location, rich in history, culture and science. Her work includes supporting Education and GLAM partners, and assisting in the creation and implementation of wiki-activities.

These activities are part of our strategic axis called foster and diversify partnerships for open knowledge in Brazil. We have been expanding our list of partnerships with Rio de Janeiro institutions of different natures, sizes and themes, thinking not only about the number of uploads, but also about acting on knowledge gaps.

This led us to five new partners since September 2023:

Our long-term partners in Rio de Janeiro

National Archives is a Brazilian public agency created on January 2, 1838 as the Public Archive of the Empire. It is responsible for the management, preservation, and dissemination of federal public administration documents.The National Archive's GLAM project aims to expand free access to its collection of documents and photographs, and improve the quality of information about Brazilian public documents available on Wikimedia platforms.

On the left, you may see the cover of the Brazilian Constitution of 1824.

See the National Archives' GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Instituto Moreira Salles, founded in 1992, is an institution known for its extensive collections of photography, music, literature, and iconography, curated by the collector Walther Moreira Salles. Currently, the institute operates three units in different Brazilian cities and it hosts temporary exhibitions featuring external collections. The Instituto Moreira Salles's GLAM Project aims to make its content and collections accessible and disseminate them on Wikimedia platforms.

On the right, you may see a picture of Niemeyer Avenue (Rio de Janeiro), in the 1940's.

See the Instituto Moreira Salles' GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Musica Brasilis is an online project created in 2009 that aims to provide free music sheets, and audio and video of musical pieces by Brazilian composers, from the colonial period to contemporary times, in addition to interactive resources that aim to stimulate research about the musical pieces that have been made available by them. The objective of Musica Brasilis's GLAM project is to structure and improve the quality of information about Brazilian music available on Wikimedia platforms, especially in projects in Portuguese.

On the left, you may see the cover of the sheet music of "Bacurau", by Viúva Guerreiro.

See the Musica Brasilis' GLAM page and the uploaded media.

MAG Seguros holds the historical collection of the former "Montepio Geral de Economia dos Servidores do Estado Primeiro", the first official social security institution in Brazil. It was created on January 10, 1835, by a decree of the Triune Regency, which governed in the name of Pedro de Alcântara, successor to D. Pedro I. The documents record the creation and development of private pensions in Brazil (from 1835 to 1977) and the collection of 43 books with the Minutes of Board Meetings was recognized as "Memory of the World" by UNESCO in 2017.

On the right, you may see one page from this collection.

See the MAG Seguros' GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz is a technical-scientific unit of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation created in 1986 for valuing institutional memory and disseminating the history of science and public health policies in Brazil. The COC's GLAM project aims to expand free access to its archival, bibliographic and museological collections, and to promote activities for disseminating good information about history, science and health in Brazil.

On the left, you may see a drawing representing a right wing of Anopheles lutzii Cruz, a mosquito that spreads malaria in Brazil. This was one of the researches of Oswaldo Cruz.

See the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz's GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Outreach of GLAM-Wiki partnerships

Founded in 2013, Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) aims to expand, qualify and diversify the Brazilian content and community in Wikimedia projects, which includes supporting the work of institutions and social organizations in the free knowledge ecosystem. The wiki initiatives supported by the WMB arise from voluntary partnerships with institutions with the aim of making media and metadata available on Wiki platforms and also carrying out activities to expand their use, especially on the Portuguese Wikipedia. In this sense, we currently have almost 60 institutions or projects that saw the potential of the various Wikimedia platforms as communication channels of obvious affinity to assist their mission of preserving and disseminating their collections.

The partnership with the Brazilian National Archives demonstrates WMB's commitment to continuing projects to disseminate the collections of its GLAM partners and the potential of these initiatives:

Total media files: 26,742
Used in 9,020 articles
Used in 201 projects
Used in wikipedias in 190 languages

Source of data: GLAMorgan.

In addition, in 2020, WMB and National Archives held a Wikicontest which had hundreds of participants, 288 articles created, 887 articles edited. More than 5.6 million bytes were added and 388 images from the National Archives' collection were embedded in Wikipedia articles. By the time the results were released, the improved and created articles had more than 1.6 million views!

Archivos en vigília

In 2024, Wiki Movimento Brasil joined the campaign Archivos en vigília: por la Verdad, los Derechos y el Acceso a la información organized by Wikimedia Argentina with the Archivo Histórico UNLP (La Plata University) to advocate for the opening of archives, specially related to Memory and Democracy, because on the March 24th (the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice) in allusion to the victims of military dictatorship.

The campaign was composed of one online panel and one upload activity.

1. The online panel

The panel "Memórias invisibilizadas-desaparecidas: Arquivos pessoais no Brasil e na Argentina" (Invisibilized-disappeared memories: Personal archives in Brazil and Argentina) gathered João Alexandre Peschanski (executive director of Wiki Movimento Brasil), Guillermo Clarke (director of Archivo de la Memoria de la Provincia de Buenos Aires) and Celina Torres Molina (artist and daughter of people imprisoned during the Argentine dictatorship).

Peschanski presented about digital curation and human rights in the Brazilian context. "Projeto Wikipédia da Cásper Líbero" was proposed in 2014 on the Journalism course at Cásper Líbero University, in São Paulo. The activity had three main objectives:

encouraging the students to take ownership of Wikipedia
presenting an alternative to conventional academic performance evaluation methods that has greater impact
contributing to Wikipedia with content on the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil

The activity led to the production of 156 Wikipedia articles on killings and disappearances during the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil. 30% of the contributions were considered excellent, 22% good, 34% average and 14% minimal.

Among the excellent ones: Jeová Assis Gomes, Aluísio Palhano Pedreira Ferreira e Alceri Maria Gomes da Silva.

See the slides presented by João Alexandre Peschanski and an article in Portuguese about the project.

Watch the panel on Youtube in Portuguese or in Spanish.

2. The files uploaded

For this activity, our GLAM partner National Archives shared some funds of documents related to the period of Brazilian dictatorship:

Among the files uploaded we would like to talk about two sets:

1. Three sets of documents related to Colônia Juliano Moreira, a mental institution located in the suburb of Jacarepaguá (West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), that used to shelter psychiatric patients, alcoholics and deviants. Many of them stood there for decades until their death.

See file 1, file 2 and file 3.

2. A fund with documents related to Sidney Fix Marques dos Santos, a young Brazilian man who was the leader of the "Partido Operário Revolucionário Trotskista (PORT)". In 1972, he went into exile in Argentina and, on February 15, 1976, he was kidnapped in Buenos Aires by agents of the Federal Security Superintendence. Sidney Fix disappeared at the hands of the Argentine dictatorship, which was established in the country after the coup d'état of June 28, 1966.

On the right you may see a clipping from the newspaper Clarín where Cherubim Marques dos Santos, Sidney's father, appeals to Argentine authorities for news about his son.

See the documents about Sidney.

Making the public domain visible on Wikidata; In Colombia Women are historical

By Hiperterminal & Paula Duran (WMCO)

Work in the public domain of Colombia, by Ricardo Rendón
Obra en dominio público de Colombia, por Ricardo Rendón

Making the Colombian public domain visible on Wikidata

During mid-March we presented the project Making the Colombian public domain visible on Wikidata. The project takes the data published by the National Library of Colombia, on the people who entered the public domain between the years 2000 and 2023, and we published as linked open data on Wikidata. The presentation can be found on the Wikimedia Colombia YouTube channel. We will hold a virtual workshop to participate in the project (in Spanish).

In Colombia Women are historical

In March, "insist" was our word of encouragement.

This month, WMCO reached another goal on the reduction of the gender gap in the Wikimedia Ecosistem. Thanks to the initiative of a group of women art historians, we developed a writing and article creation lab in partnership with the Cultural Network of the Red Cultural del Banco de la República, a network that involves libraries, museums, cultural centers and many other cultural institutions along the country. Through this lab, we found a valious place to get the most of the repositories built by this institution, which turned out to be a valuable source of information for the reconstruction of the trajectories of Gabriela Pinilla, Rosario López, Laura Campaz and María Teresa Vieco recognized for their contribution to the art field in Colombia. Wikimedia Colombia remains committed to addressing representation gaps within the Wikimedia Ecosystem. In line with this ongoing effort, we will be participating in the Colombian Women Artists Edit-a-thon 2024, which will take place in April.

Visibilizando el dominio público en Wikidata; En Colombia las mujeres somos históricas

Visibilizando el dominio público colombiano en Wikidata

Durante mediados de marzo se presentó el proyecto Visibilizando el dominio público colombiano en Wikidata. El proyecto toma los datos publicados por la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, sobre las personas que pasaron al dominio público entre los años 2000 y 2023, y los presenta como datos abiertos enlazados en Wikidata. La presentación se encuentra en el canal de Youtube de Wikimedia Colombia. Realizaremos un taller virtual para participar en el proyecto.

En Colombia las mujeres somos históricas

En marzo "insistir" fue nuestra palabra de ánimo.

Desde WMCO hemos alcanzado un logro más en la lucha por disminuir la brecha de género en el Ecosistema. Gracias a la iniciativa de un grupo de investigadoras de la historia del arte, desarrollamos un laboratorio de escritura y creación de artículos en alianza con la Red Cultural del Banco de la República, una red de bibliotecas, centros culturales, museos y más instituciones culturales con presencia en todo el territorio colombiano. A través de este laboratorio, se encontró un espacio para aprovechar los repositorios que se han construido desde esta institución, los cuales resultaron ser una fuente de información invaluable para la reconstrucción de las trayectorias de Gabriela Pinilla, Rosario López, Laura Campaz y María Teresa Vieco reconocidas por sus aportes al campo del Arte Colombiano.

Wikimedia Colombia se encuentra interesada en insistir en la reducción de las brechas de representación dentro del Ecosistema Wikimedia, en esta vía, estaremos participando en la Editatona Mujeres Artistas Colombianas 2024 desarrollada durante el mes de abril.

GLAM call winner projects

By Marta Arosio

The winners of Wikimedia Italia's GLAM call 2024 have been selected. These are nine projects selected out of over sixty applications received, that will support digitization and sharing projects of collections owned by large and small cultural institutions scattered throughout Italy.

3D scans by Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa

Established in 1591 by Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa is one of the oldest in the world and preserves a heritage of great historical and scientific importance, spanning six centuries of history. The Museum has recently opened a Sketchfab profile in which it has made some 3D models of its collections available for free download to students, researchers and enthusiasts. These are 50 models of current and fossil cetacean skeletons displayed in the museum's Cetacean Gallery and other specimens belonging to the zoological and paleontological collections.

With the new funded project, the museum wants to extend this type of sharing of museum heritage also to smaller-sized finds, integrating the use of latest generation high resolution 3D scanners. The new and existing models will be published on Wikimedia Commons, for a total of one hundred models.

Incunabula and miniatures digitized in Brindisi

The Annibale De Leo Archiepiscopal Library of Brindisi plans to digitalize and publish eight manuscripts and seventeen rare incunabula. The eight manuscripts date back between the 13th and 15th centuries. Written in Italian Gothic character and dedicated to very varied themes, they are known for the "maniculae", dating back to the 16th century: hands drawn along the margins of the text to highlight a word or a phrase, but also for the miniatures of Byzantine and Giotto style. Among the incunabula that will be digitized there will also be the Confessionale Defecerunt, of Sant'Antonino archbishop of Florence, recognized as of extreme value by Dennis E. Rhodes, former director of the British Library, whose very rich collection is missing four of the texts preserved in Brindisi.

Opening an ecclesiastical directory

The Association of Italian Ecclesiastical Librarians (ABEI) is the author of ACOLIT, a list of authorities for Catholic authors and liturgical works, useful to all librarians in their daily work of conservation, research, and cataloging of works. With the OpenAcolit project, ABEI aims to transform this directory into Linked Open Data format, mainly utilizing Wikidata and Wikibase.

Thanks to the support of Wikimedia Italy, it will be possible to organize study days on these topics to expand the network of collaboration among expert Italian librarians and practitioners of theological disciplines, to complete the data transfer consistently. Potentially, OpenAcolit could also accommodate non-Italian forms of access points, becoming an international tool.

Urbino's typographic art on Wikipedia

The University Library of Urbino will use the funding to digitize 300 documents related to Urbino's typographic art, developed between the XVI and XVIII centuries. Print laboratories spread in Urbino from the Renaissance, with the first duchy typography born in Cagli in 1475. The documents will also be useful for creating oenriching Wikipedia entries dedicated to the subject.

Rediscovering a university venue in Turin

The Library of Economics and Management of the University of Turin will use Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource to document and enhance the history of the "Poveri Vecchi" building, a noteworthy but little known civic monument, originally built as a residence for the elderly and now a university venue soon to be restored. Through a wiki excursion and involving professional photographers, the current state of the building will be documented. An open event will be dedicated to the presentation of Wikisource, used to digitize the most significant works of the historian and economist Giuseppe Prato, belonging to the "Prato Fund" of the library. New pages on Wikipedia will be dedicated to the scholar and other colleagues associated with the University of Turin, or existing ones will be improved.

Rebuilding the children's library of Bologna

Inaugurated in 1954, the Children's Library of the Giardini Margherita in Bologna was one of its kind in Italy. The project by the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Sector of the Municipality of Bologna plans to digitize the handwritten entrance registers of the library, closed in 1977, but whose heritage is now mostly preserved in Salaborsa Ragazzi. In addition to virtually rebuilding the Children's Library by fully digitizing a selection of texts no longer under copyright, a selection of Wikipedia entries will be created with corresponding Wikidata elements of authors or publishing houses connected to the project themes. A path will also be created with a high school class for the transcription on Wikisource of a text among those digitized.

The Museums of Strada Nuova in Genoa on Wikipedia

In Genoa, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Palazzo Doria-Tursi are the Museums of Strada Nuova and constitute a single exhibition path dedicated to ancient art, preserving a varied artistic and cultural heritage of international relevance. The Museums are part of the Rolli System, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and each year welcome thousands of visitors. Thanks to the project, photos of the original museum setup curated by Franco Albini in the post-war period will be digitized. The Wikipedia entries dedicated to the museums will also be enriched, including photographic material (paintings, architectural images of interiors and exteriors, sculptures, frescoes, and other objects from the collections).

From La Sapienza to Commons, Ugolini's photos

Luigi Maria Ugolini was an Italian archaeologist of the first half of the twentieth century, among the most renowned of his time, active in Malta and especially in Albania, where he founded the Italian Archaeological Mission and conducted excavations and research in the main archaeological sites of the southern part of the country, especially Phoinike and Butrint, both sites rediscovered by him and the latter now inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Thanks to the project proposed by the Department of History Cultures Religions Art Entertainment of Sapienza University of Rome, it will be possible to digitize and publish on Wikimedia Commons Ugolini's archive, which includes images of sites and archaeological finds related to the scholar's study trips and research, many taken and annotated by himself on the back. These documents will be useful to scholars of antiquity, as well as historians of the twentieth century intending to reconstruct a difficult and much-discussed historical moment of Italian archaeological research at home and abroad.

GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category

By Olaf Janssen

GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category

This month a new release of the GLAMorousToHTML tool was published.

This tool can be used to create a HTML page (and a corresponding Excel file) listing all Wikipedia articles (in all languages) in which (one or more) images from a given category on Wikimedia Commons are used. It shows the number of unique Wikipedia articles in which media files from a given Commons category are used, as well as a manifest overview of those articles, grouped per Wikipedia language version. Check the screenshot to see the details.

It does so by converting the XML output of the GLAMorous tool into an HTML page and an Excel file.

Developed by the KB, national library of the Netherlands, it has been used to create reports for other GLAM institutions in Europe and the USA as well. Some examples:

Netherlands

Images from Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) are used in 5,141 articles in 145 languages
Images from Nationaal Archief are used in 95,069 Wikipedia articles in 265 languages
Images from Rijksmuseum Amsterdam are used in 4,333 articles in 119 languages

USA

Images from the Library of Congress are used in 252,342 Wikipedia articles in 310 languages (page load & scrolling might be slow, big numbers!)
Images from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration are used in 57,751 articles in 279 languages (page load & scrolling might be slow, big numbers!)
Images from The New York Public Library are used in 12,584 articles in 195 languages

Scandinavia

See more usage reports via LinkedIn:

Don't forget to check the the documentation and how to run this tool yourself.

Update on Wikidata:WikiProject Te Papa research expeditions and the Wikipedian at Large

By Ambrosia10 & Giantflightlessbirds

Update on WikiProject Te Papa research expeditions

This 12 week project is now a third of the way complete. Multiple Wikidata items for research expeditions related to the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa have been created and more are likely to be brought into being after Ambrosia10 has completed interviews with interested staff. The work being undertaken during this project continues to inform and improve the WikiProject Research Expedition Wikidata schema for research expeditions and will, in turn, feed into the best practice documentation currently being worked on by the Biodiversity Information Standards Association (TDWG) research expeditions working group. At the end of the project it is intended that documentation will be produced to report back on the challenges and successes of the project and to give guidance to other natural history institutions on how to replicate this type of project. Planning is also underway to provide at least one, possibly two, Wikipedia editathons to be held at Te Papa on Te Papa research expeditions. It is intended that editathon attendees will create or improve articles on the research expeditions, their participants, locations visited, specimens collected and species described as a result of those collections.

Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large

We had our first official meetup in Christchurch, New Zealand this year, the beginning of a monthly series in the central library Tūranga. Edit-a-thons are also being planned: the first will be on May 18th in the Christchurch Art Gallery, focussed on the Ink on Paper exhibition artists and works. Collaboration with the Biology Department of the University of Canterbury to release historic photos of the Cass area is ongoing, and in April collaborations begin with Christchurch Libraries and the Canterbury Museum entomology collection. The Critter of the Week project was reorganised after an online meeting of volunteers with the creation of a list of weekly tasks. Giantflightlessbirds presented at Auckland Wikicon on 24 March on "How to be a Wikipedian in Residence/at Large" (slides). He also gave a presentation to the Entomological Society of New Zealand on entomology and Wikipedia, which turned out to be relevant to the next item.

A front-page New Zealand news story in March was the rediscovery after 65 years of the moth known as the Frosted Phoenix (Tiatanomis sisyrota) by a Swedish tourist in Stewart Island / Rakiura. After uploading his photographs to iNaturalist on returning home, the unidentified large moth was confirmed as T. sisyrota by a New Zealand lepidopterist, and garnered newspaper and TV coverage. Giantflightlessbirds contacted the photographer and (after explaining copyright law, Creative Commons, and iNaturalist's incompatible default settings), convinced him to change his photo license so the image could be used on the moth's Wikipedia page. This is the beginning of an education project working with iNaturalist NZ to show citizen scientists the advantages of using a truly open licence.

What's up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland in March

By Kamila Neuman

WikiMatejko wrap up event

gallery tour with Dixit MNK cards
gallery tour with Dixit MNK cards
group photo of WikiMatejko participants
gallery tour with Dixit MNK cards
gallery tour with Dixit MNK cards

At the end of March, a meeting wrapping up the WikiMatejko edition action was held at the National Museum in Krakow. This time we hosted the event at the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art at Sukiennice.

During the event we had the opportunity not only to make a draft summary of the activities carried out as part of the action, but above all to meet with the participants of the action. It was a unique time not only to thank the participants for their engagement, but also full of conversations that revealed what was valuable in the action for newcomers. There was also time for lighter activities, as in the first part of the meeting we visited the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art using the Dixit MNK card game for play. It was an extremely meaningful time to meet in person after several months of the process conducted online. We will share the follow-up data on the action with you next month.

New Wikipedian in residence at the National Museum in Krakow

March is also the month in which Agata Stadnicka, a graduate of art history at Jagiellonian University, became the new Wikipedian in residence at the National Museum in Krakow.

Agata started an internship a year ago in the GLAM-Wiki area at the Wikimedia Poland Association, where for a period of 6 months she became familiar with the specifics of GLAM-Wiki collaboration. Agata also actively participated in the preparation of the WikiMatejko editing campaign by contributing her expertise in the area of art. Agato welcome on board and congratulations on starting a new adventure!

At the same time, we would like to thank Filip Jankowski for his months-long involvement in working with the Museum as WIR.

GLAM-Wiki related topics at Annual Conference of Wikipedians in Opole

Kamila Neuman during a presentation about WikiMatejko
Grzegorz Gogacz during a workshop on categorizing files on Commons based on the example Warsaw Public Library
Wzlot 2024 group photo
Tomasz Gruszkowski from the National Library during his presentation
WMPL president welcoming Wikipedians at the start of the conference
Agata Jablonska representing the National Museum in Krakow at the conference

At this year's Wikipedia conference, several topics related to the GLAM-Wiki field appeared.

Grzegorz Gogacz - Wikipedian in residence at Warsaw Public Library talked about how different styles of file uploading by GLAM partner institutions are, what results from this, how it affects indicators. Grzegorz demonstrated what we can do over a morning coffee for fun and at ease, without using gadgets for mass categorization to increase the use of such files.

Kamila Neuman - Open Culture Manager at Wikimedia Poland, shared her initial thoughts on WikiMatejko's editing action, i.e. how we can better do thematic campaigns aimed at both novice and experienced editors.

Tomasz Gruszkowski from the National Library explained where and how to download image files, sharing interesting knowledge about file compression and its impact on the quality of shared resources.

Grzegorz Zalewski led a workshop on downloading image files from national digital archives using National Digital Archives and Gallica as examples.

We are pleased to see such a presentation of topics that are associated closely with digital cultural resources.

More photo memories – and the community is helping out; Yearly student project

By Axel Pettersson & Alicia Fagerving

More photo memories – and the community is helping out

Wikimedia Sverige and the Nordic Museum in Stockholm have been working on the project 100 000 Bildminnen, where a selection of previously unpublished photos from the museum's archives is being published on Wikimedia Commons. The project is now coming to an end.

In March, we made another big addition to Wikimedia Commons, with a couple thousands additional photographs. This in preparation for a seminar which will take place at the museum in April, where Wikimedia Sverige will be participating, sharing our insights and experiences from this fantastic partnership. There will also be an edit-a-thon where both Wikimedians and GLAM partners will get a chance to collaborate and work with the photos, improving their descriptions and categorization, and illustrating Wikipedia articles.

One of the goals of the project was harnessing the collective knowledge of the Wikimedia community to improve the information about the photos, many of which have very little metadata. The museum will be able to use these improvements to get a better understanding of their collections. It's been inspiring seeing users notice the new photos just as they were being uploaded and adding relevant categories.

Photo added to the category Military pontoon bridges.
This photo depicts a Browning M1903 weapon...
...and this one a Kulsprutegevär m/37.

Yearly student project

As usual this time of the year it's time to report the result of the project Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete where upper secondary school students from Enskilda gymnasiet writes Wikipedia articles as part of their final thesis. This year resulted in 27 new and six updated articles, and 52 images uploaded to Commons. The topics covers both fashion, spies, ice hockey, male contraceptives and furniture, and after the move from sandboxes to main namespace the Wikipedia community has continued to improve and work with the articles.

History of high heeled shoes
Women as police officers in Sweden
Restructure of land use in Dalarna
Amelie Posse, founder of Tisdagsklubben.
Students during one of the lectures.

Swiss GLAM Programme

By Medea7 WMCH

Wiki Science Competition

The winners of the Wiki Science Competition are nominated in March 2024. The winners from Switzerland will be celebrated at the wiki market event 27th of April in Berne at Welle 7. Images are uploaded in different categories and go from analytical images to presentations from Swiss archives as Wax Cylinders and other objects. The competition took place internationally in November and December 2023 and has been financed by Wikimedia Switzerland. There were many natural phenomens captured as the sunspots and the icebergs in Iceland. Videos on the Swiss sky as well as on astronomy observations can be found in the different categories. More details on the contest are listed here.

Digital Archive of Women Artists

In Biel/Bienne there are now regular GLAM Meetings at the KBCB. In March the project ArtWomenUp has been presented. 30 years of analogue fotography by Simone Kornfeld is now little by little transfered on Commons. In the presentation the working process was presented. With the help of user:1rhb it could all be uploaded and made accessible to a wide audience.

Swiss National Library

In 2023 the Swiss constitution celebrated its 175th anniversary. Wikimedia Switzerland supported the campaign with the ediatathon in Neuchatel. The Swiss National Library uploaded several images from the founding of the Swiss constitution. As the Swiss National Library is well perceived by all other Swiss Libraries they also start to engage and upload their images of their collections. Besides the one day Edtitathons called Atelier it continues spreading the word and getting more and more libraries engaged. The partnership with the Swiss National Library this year developes further and will lead to a GLAM-on-Tour in June.

A small problem with the Ottoman Empire

By MartinPoulter

Khalili Foundation

The Featured Article review for Empire of the Sultans still continues and has involved me substantially changing the Background section that introduces the reader to the Ottoman Empire. A reviewer pointed out that a map of the empire (the only image in the article not provided by the Khalili Collections) was not properly sourced. There was a properly-sourced alternative, but its text labels are hard to read. So I have had to recreate the map in the SVG format to make the text more legible and to make it easy to internationalise.

Wikimania 2024 will take place in Katowice, Poland in August. I have put in a session proposal to show how, in my Khalili Foundation work, I use various tools to track and promote cultural diversity across multiple versions of Wikipedia.

I have been working on a project to adapt text from Simple English Wikipedia and English Wikipedia in educational materials that are published by the Khalili Foundation. I created a spreadsheet into which I can post Wikipedia links and which automatically generates an attribution statement. In this spreadsheet, I have adapted Wikipedia text to create short explanations of a dozen topics. As part of this work, I have also been working on a calendar of religious events for the coming five years.

The Cultural Content newsletter is publishing my article on Thursday 4 April at lunchtime. This describes how I represented the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam exhibition in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, and offers it as an example of how the cultural heritage sector can make use of these platforms.

I have worked with Khalili Foundation staff to create a web page which clarifies the copyright licence of some images that have been shared on Commons, and which makes some new images available under a Wikimedia-compatible licence; these will be uploaded early in April.

Among the Khalili Collections uploads on Wikimedia Commons, there are images of important religious significance. I have added a template to all of the Islam-related images prompting users to show respect to the religious and cultural context from which these images came.

There is one new article this month: the Falnama article, greatly expanded by this project, has been translated into Persian, including the section about, and images from, the Khalili Falnama. GLAMorgan reports 6,126,483 image views in March.

GLAM CSI and WikiPortraits launch and more meetups

By Slowking4 & Fuzheado

GLAM CSI initiative

GLAM Wiki CSI - Contribution Study Initiative

In 2024, Andrew Lih will be working with the Smithsonian Institution on the GLAM CSI – Contributor Study Initiative, a WMF-supported project to assess the contribution pipeline in the Wikimedia technical infrastructure for supporting cultural and heritage partnerships and projects. A key output from the process will be the creation of key user stories to better document the GLAM wiki community's needs for future software development.

Contact Andrew, or visit the meta page for more information. For a longer writeup, consult the WMF GLAM report.

WikiPortraits launches at South by Southwest

The WikiPortraits project was started in 2024 by WikiConference North America users in the United States Wikimedia community to capture high-quality portrait photographs for Wikimedia Commons, through in-person outreach and event coverage. It was formally launched at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, a multi-week film, music, and interactive festival from March 8-16, 2024.

The project had more than six photographers working over the course of the conference, both capturing photos at the conference venue, while also hosting a dedicated nearby studio for taking portraits by appointment and as a space to learn about Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The reception area had signage explaining the basics of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons copyright, and the WikiPortraits project.

WikiPortraits Studio at South by Southwest 2024
WikiPortraits Studio space at 811 Congress
Explanatory banners at WikiPortraits Studio
WikiPortraits Studio area

Photographers included:

Jay Dixit
Andrew Lih
Kevin Payravi
Frank Sun
Jason Weinrich

See https://wikiportraits.org or refer others to the site for a time slot and activities. More details can be found at the after-action report or the main Commons page for the project.

Given the general interest in projects like these, a new meta page was started: meta:Wiki Covers Events to better document and coordinate event coverage events across the movement.

Example WikiPortraits at SXSW 2024
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD
Kausar Mohammed, American actress, comedian, and writer
Caila Quinn, lifestyle and travel blogger
Jen Guyton, NatGeo photographer and evolutionary biologist
Rohit Bhargava, author and futurist
Errin Haines, American journalist
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
Sterlin Harjo, filmmaker
Sue Bird, basketball player
Ron Livingston, actor, Office Space
Hina X. Khan, actress
Theresa Nguyen and dog
Cast of the film Switch Up
Delaney Rowe, comedian and actress

“It’s all the Rage,” Women’s History Month

Georgetown University and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Georgetown University Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for Women’s History Month

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Women's History Month

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Wikimedia DC held an online seminar, DCCAH WHM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Becoming Visible

Smithsonian American Women's History Museum and Wikimedia DC held an online seminar, SAWHM Becoming Visible Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

Search for GLAM avatars

Glamphant

BHL-Wiki Working Group March monthly highlights

By Ambrosia10

Updating Wiki and BHL communities on the working group

The chair of the working group Ambrosia10 has submitted an abstract to the Wikimania 2024 organising committee proposing to update the Wiki community on the BHL-Wiki working group. She will also be delivering the BHL-Wiki report at the BHL Annual Meeting in Chicago in May as well as a presentation at the BHL public symposium.

BHL-Wiki Working Group and the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation staff members of the BHL-Wiki working group intend to recommend supporting biodiversity work (which includes the BHL-Wiki group and the WikiProject Biodiversity) around themes of closing knowledge gaps, images for underrepresented geographies, and expansion of topical communities and networks during WMF Annual Planning discussions.

Work items of note

Giovanna Fontenelle continues to make progress developing the BHL-Wiki Meta portal.
The Wikimedian-in-Residence Schedule of Work has been finalized; solicitations will begin in United States Summer of 2024.
The BHL-TECH team will schedule Wikidata Q item updates in the BHL catalog for BHL Creator IDs and BHL Title IDs quarterly.
The agenda has been set for Part II: Transforming Biodiversity Heritage Library Images with Structured Data on Commons. All are welcome to come.

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 10th, @ 2:00 PM EST

Event Page

Zoom Meeting Link

GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category

By Olaf Janssen

GLAMorousToHTML - a tool to list Wikipedia articles that include images from a given Commons category

This month a new release of the GLAMorousToHTML tool was published.

This tool can be used to create a HTML page (and a corresponding Excel file) listing all Wikipedia articles (in all languages) in which (one or more) images from a given category on Wikimedia Commons are used. It shows the number of unique Wikipedia articles in which media files from a given Commons category are used, as well as a manifest overview of those articles, grouped per Wikipedia language version. Check the screenshot to see the details.

It does so by converting the XML output of the GLAMorous tool into an HTML page and an Excel file.

Developed by the KB, national library of the Netherlands, it has been used to create reports for other GLAM institutions in Europe and the USA as well. Some examples:

Netherlands

Images from Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) are used in 5,141 articles in 145 languages
Images from Nationaal Archief are used in 95,069 Wikipedia articles in 265 languages
Images from Rijksmuseum Amsterdam are used in 4,333 articles in 119 languages

USA

Images from the Library of Congress are used in 252,342 Wikipedia articles in 310 languages (page load & scrolling might be slow, big numbers!)
Images from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration are used in 57,751 articles in 279 languages (page load & scrolling might be slow, big numbers!)
Images from The New York Public Library are used in 12,584 articles in 195 languages

Scandinavia

See more usage reports via LinkedIn:

Don't forget to check the the documentation and how to run this tool yourself.

WikiLearn course for OpenRefine on Wikimedia Commons

By SFauconnier

New: WikiLearn course for OpenRefine on Wikimedia Commons

There is now a free and publicly accessible course on the learning platform WikiLearn, to learn how to upload and edit files on Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine.

This online course is available at any time, for free. Anyone with a Wikimedia account can enroll with one click of a button. It can be followed at your own pace, with computer-graded exercises.

The course is suitable for Wikimedians, Wikimedia affiliate staff, and partners (e.g. GLAM staff). Following the course takes an average of 6 to 8 hours.

This course was developed as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's training and sustainability grant to OpenRefine. It is currently available in English and can be easily translated to other languages as well. Translations in French, Spanish and Portuguese are being worked on.

Learn to upload to Commons with OpenRefine and get up to date on the International Museum Day, GLAM CSI, WiLMa Network, and WikiWorkshop

By Giovanna Fontenelle (WMF) & Satdeep Gill (WMF)

New OpenRefine course to edit and upload files to Wikimedia Commons

We are happy to announce the course OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons: the basics is finally available. By taking this training, you will be able to learn how edit Wikimedia Commons' Structured Data using OpenRefine, as well as how to upload files with the tool.

The course is available on WikiLearn, a learning platform developed by the WMF's Community Development team. This OpenRefine training is available for anyone and it takes around 6 to 8 hours to finish. For those who complete all the exercises, a certificate will be issued. We recommend this course for Wikimedians in Residence and staff from affiliates and GLAMs.

This course was developed as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's training and sustainability grant to OpenRefine. It is currently available in English and can be easily translated into other languages (more about the translation process here and here). The translation for French is already available and the ones for Spanish and Portuguese will be available very soon.

International Museum Day 2024

This year, the Culture and Heritage team is supporting the International Museum Day on the Wikimedia projects together with Wikimedia Switzerland. The celebration happens traditionally on May 18th, but we will have activities planned throughout May, including translation, media, and structured data calls to action.

On May 17, we will have a panel discussion about Wikimedia, Museums, and Education and, during the month, we will also launch videos with interviews about the same topic, as this year's official ICOM theme is Museums for Education and Research.

This celebration occurs all over the world and is organized by ICOM, the International Council of Museums. For the last few years, the Wikimedia campaign has been organized by Switzerland with the involvement of other affiliates. In 2024, the IMD on Wikimedia will become more global, encouraging the participation of other countries and affiliates.

For more information, check the 2024 page, as well as the general page. To get into the mood for the International Museum Day, watch the special video by WMCH about the New Museum Definition:

Museum and Wiki experts talking about the new museum definition

GLAM CSI initiative

Throughout 2024, our team will also support the GLAM CSI – Contributor Study Initiative, a project to assess the contribution pipeline in the Wikimedia technical infrastructure for supporting cultural and heritage partnerships and projects.

The Smithsonian and Andrew Lih are running this initiative, which will examine the ongoing efforts not only from this institution, but from other cultural and heritage partners, to produce real-life user stories from various GLAM-Wiki efforts, with a particular focus on heritage institutions in the United States.

The deliverable will be a report that will document the needs and practices of content partners when participating in Wikimedia-related activities. At the same time, it will also identify opportunities for improvement and prototype possible solutions, particularly with knowledge gaps.

To gather some initial input, we are sharing the GLAM Wiki Contribution Survey. Please, find the time to complete this if you are interested and involved with the researched topic. It should take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete the questions. All responses will be kept confidential and will only be used to inform the GLAM-Wiki CSI's research objectives.

WiLMa Learning Partners Network conclusion

Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WiLMa) Learning Partners Network concluded in March 2024 after 6 months of trainings and workshops. 12 community members were certified finishing the training and workshops during the cohort, and showing interest to expand the Wikisource Loves Manuscripts project to their language.

More details about WiLMa and the network are available on Meta-Wiki.

WikiWorkshop 2024

We would also like to highlight the Wiki Workshop 2024, co-organized by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Research team and members of the Wikimedia Research community. It will take place on June 20th, from 12:00 to 19:00 UTC, and it will be a space that brings together researchers exploring all aspects of Wikimedia projects.

Timeline:

Submission deadline: April 29, 2024
Author notification: May 13, 2024
Final material submission deadline: June 6, 2024

For more information, check the event's page.

April's GLAM events

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