GLAM/Newsletter/May 2012/Contents/France report
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Cultural lobbying; current and future projects
Meeting at the French Ministry of Culture
On May 4th, Rémi Mathis and Adrienne Alix attended a meeting at the French Ministry of Culture, organized by the Chief of Public Policies in the General Direction of Heritage. The meeting was the result of our common letter with other associations involved in the defense of photographs in museums. We campaign for free photography in museums when the collections are in the public domain. The meeting gathered 25 people from different departments of the ministry. We will work together to write a “charter” for visitors and museums to clarify the rights of each and promote free photographs and sharing.
- See the blogpost : Photographs in museums : to get a solution ? (fr)
Future project with the Mundaneum, ancestry of Internet?
On May 21th, Adrienne met several people from the Mundaneum, a museum in Mons (Belgium). This institution collects archives and collections of Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, two lawyers who have invented the Universal Decimal Classification at the end of the 19th century. They wanted to create a new way of classification and knowledge sharing, with a lot of similarities with Wikipedia and Google. They are often called “grand fathers of internet”.
As part of a collaboration between Wikimédia France and the Mundaneum, we discuss to enrich their exhibitions with QR Pedia, to liberate content from the Mundaneum and to do other projects to value the links between Mundaneum and the Wikimedia projects.
Open Glam (part 2)
We had the second workshop “OpenGlam” organized with the Open Knowledge Foundation on May 29th. We continue to work about Public Domain and cultural content. We were about 12 people to work with the notes of the first workshop (April 27th), to give some recommandations to the new cabinet of the ministry, and to the policy and administrative makers. The final document will sum up, in 4 or 5 pages, the main problems and solutions about release of cultural content. It will be published in mid-June.
Manuscripts of the Archives of Alpes-Maritimes
The small group working on Wikisource about manuscripts from the 18th century are soon in holidays. They made a good job with the wikisourcians, and in a few month almost 150 manuscripts pages are corrected. They will resume the workshop in November. In the French archivists community, this project was well-received. Several blogs and website discussedthe project .
- See on Wikisource (fr)
Wikipedia takes the Cadre Noir
On May 19th, a group of wikipedians went to Saumur, to visit the Cadre Noir, the national school of Equistrianism. This is a very old military institution (sixteenth century) which aims to train high-profile riders. The rules of dressage of the Cadre Noir are listed on the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Wikipedians have first visited the Cadre Noir with squires and took hundreds of photographs. They also worked on the articles about Cadre Noir with staff of the institution.
The Cadre Noir also uploaded some very high quality photographs on Wikimedia Commons. This meeting will continue with other actions.
- See the category on Wikimedia Commons