GLAM/Newsletter/May 2012/Contents/Spain report
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Wikipedian in Residence at National Art Museum; Wikimedia representation at MuseumNext
200,000 hits for African films' entries on Wikipedia, in CC-BY-SA thanks to the FCAT
New case studies about partnerships within the Share Your Knowledge project are being written on it.wiki (more can be read on the Italy report for this month).
The one about the African Film Festival of Còrdoba-FCAT (which is also available in Italian) tells the story of a multilingual donation; although Share Your Knowledge is an Italian project, contents by FCAT Còrdoba are in English, French and Spanish, so they were uploaded on the corresponding encyclopedias. FCAT texts are mainly about "African" movies, directors and actors. The tutor of the project, m.casanova, had some difficulties in the process. Communities tend to be cautious if an OTRS ticket is not immediately issued for a given website and/or if it is not meticulously attached to attribution templates; users might also raise questions about whether a certain donation is legally plausible, a field in which laws vary from country to country and getting legal counsel for each case is the only way to figure something out. Also, differences amongst admissibility criteria on several Wikipedias sure do not help. Should these issues be notified in the GLAM mailing list? Would the GLAM processes benefit from the make-up of a "GLAM task force" of experienced users willing to intervene and help arbitrating similar disputes? To get back to FCAT, it is worth noticing that despite the problems, Michele Casanova got a barnstar for his work. 1270 articles were created or improved thanks to this partnership's contents; 200.000 hits were recorded only between March and May 2012, the most visited page being Black Venus, the sad story of the Khoikhoi woman exhibited as freak show in the 19th century in Europe, which won the Equal Opportunity Award in Venice in 2010. While formal quarrels are just memories, more quality contents about Africa are now a reality on Wikipedia.
Wikimedia representation at MuseumNext conference in Barcelona
From May 23 to 25, five Wikimedians participated in the MuseumNext Conference in Barcelona. They had been invited to organize a Wikipedia lounge at the event's venue, where museum professionals had an opportunity to network with Wikipedians from the GLAM-Wiki initiative. MuseumNext brings together cultural professionals from around the world to discuss emerging trends in museum technology. This year's conference was framed around the themes of Digital Participation, Digital Marketing and Digital Challenges. The lounge was organized by Amical Viquipèdia, and was modeled on the 2011 Communicating the Museum event at Düsseldorf.
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The conference organizers had requested that five Wikipedians represent the top five countries that were present at the conference, including Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. Wikipedians included Maarten Dammers of Wikimedia Netherlands, Daniel Mietchen for Wikimedia Germany, John Byrne of Wikimedia UK, US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator Lori Phillips, and Àlex Hinojo representing the local community. Hinojo and Phillips also had the opportunity to present a session about QRpedia, which was met with much interest and questions from attendees. QRpedia projects were discussed as best practice in QR code usage in museums, with linkage to Wikipedia an important component to this success.
The Wikipedian contingency was greeted with much enthusiasm by conference attendees, and Wikipedia emerged as a thematic thread throughout the presentations. Most notably, Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution, mentioned Wikipedia several times while keynoting the conference. This interest led the Wikipedia Lounge to be a popular space during breaks and lunches, where dozens of museum professionals stopped to learn more about how to begin Wikipedia projects.
Wikipedian in Residence at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC)
During MuseumNext conference was officialy announced that Àlex Hinojo, User:Kippelboy, will be collaborating with the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) as a Wikipedian-in-Residence for the next months.
The MNAC museum embraces all the arts (sculpture, painting, objets d'art, drawing, engraving, posters, photography and coinage) and has the task of explaining the general history of Catalan art from the Romanesque period to Modern Art. Is also very important the material conserved in its Library and at the General Archive. A museum is made by its collections, but, as well as conserving them and being responsible for them, it also has to spread knowledge of them, and here is where a Wikipedian-in-Residence can Help.
The project is part of the internationalization process of the museum. It aims to add value to the museum and its collection by the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, in different languages, thus improving the online presence both of museum, Catalan Art and its most representative artists.
MNAC has a huge collection and loads of masterpieces that must be better known worldwide. MNAC needs to be explained. I believe that Wikipedia is one of the most powerful tools to contextualise a museum collection within a global discourse on the history of art. We need the reach of a project used by people from all around the world who will help us to translate and improve the global knowledge of our National Art collection. Wikipedia is one of the main gateways to knowledge and MNAC must be well represented.
During the next months we will plan several projects and activities, such as content donations, backstage passes, edit-a-thons, Wikipedia workshops for museum professionals....We want to establish new links of cooperation: Start projects of co-creation of content with universities, art centers and even the general public, using Wikipedia as a workplace.
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