GLAM/Newsletter/May 2013/Single
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Australian participation - east and west; urban and outback; at home and away
Freopedia Launch
By Gnangarra
On the 26 May 2013 Freopedia was launched in Fremantle, Western Australia, by the city's Mayor Dr Brad Pettitt. Representing the partners in the project was Craig Franklin, President of Wikimedia Australia and President of The Fremantle Society, Henty Farrar. Freopedia is a WikiTown project based on the original Monmouthpedia.
Project initiation
The project was originally initiated by two separate approaches to the City of Fremantle in August 2012, one from the Fremantle Society after the then president Roel Loopers saw QR codes being used by a local photographer to sell his artworks. The other approach was from local Wikimedians who had been enthused with the QRpedia concept after attending Wikimania in Washington and saw Fremantle with its significant historical buildings - including the World Heritage listed Fremantle Prison - as an ideal location for a Wikitown.
Deployment
When we became aware that The Fremantle Society was also interested, local Wikimedian Gnangarra contacted them and suggested a collaboration that utilised the vast information already on Wikipedia. Five introductory workshops at the City of Fremantle library were followed by an edit-a-thon in the Fremantle Heritage Collection library, kindly opened for the event by staff. The Western Australian State Records Office generously provided a number of its records including official diaries from the principals of local schools during the gold rush period of Fremantle's development. The diversity of articles associated with Fremantle is best demonstrated by the range of people who have shaped the city. They include its early politicans, an Australian Prime Minister and a President of United States, sporting heroes and shadier individuals such as bushrangers, bank robbers and murderers.
Initially, 70 plaques are being placed at various locations across the city with an estimation that some 300 locations within the suburbs and a further 100 within the city will result in some 1,000 plaques being attached. Additional plaques will be placed within the many museums, galleries and other locations within Fremantle.
Results
Fremantle has borne witness to much of Western Australia's trials and tribulations, including some its greatest moments and celebrations. It was also the place that offered great opportunities and a new life for many migrants. Bringing these stories to life within the context of Wikipedia has been both enlightening and challenging. Wikitown projects help to share knowledge with even wider audiences. They are more than worth the time and effort needed for their success.
Wikipedian-in-Residence Part III
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The projects in which the State Library, its Wikipedian-in-Residence and Wikimedia Australia are involved continued to produce engagement and results during May. Library staff are updating the list of New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards as part of their monitoring of this important set of awards.
The Newspaper project
The Wikipedia:GLAM/State Library of New South Wales project page is being developed and readied to enable the Library to share its results - and more importantly, its procedures - with other libraries across the country. This is especially important in regard to the Newspaper Project which has developed a clear architecture and processes that can be repeated by other States and regions. The whole is steadily becoming more coherent.
The main article - List of newspapers in New South Wales - forms the basis for the development of articles on each of the individual papers. Being sortable will mean that the article List of defunct newspapers of Australia will eventually no longer be needed except to direct readers to the key list. Individual newspaper articles can be developed from it.
Other areas of focus
Staff are producing articles on the other areas of focus such as exploration. The new article 1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains is ready in time for the bicentenary of the first successful colonial crossing of the Blue Mountains and is beautifully illustrated with images from paintings in the Library’s collection.
Training
Australian Wikimedians have been busy all across New South Wales running wiki workshops for regional librarians. Users Bidgee and Peterdownunder went to work at Wagga Wagga; Users Ariconte and Whiteghost.ink trained staff at Campsie in Sydney and then Whiteghost.ink travelled more than a thousand kilometres west to Broken Hill in the Australian outback to train librarians in that very remote part of the country. Half the group had to drive more than three hours each way to attend. Wikipedia now has articles on the city's library and hospital and Broken Hill’s memorial to the Musicians of the RMS Titanic now helps illustrate the article.
European fashion edit-a-thon
By 99of9
In the Netherlands, far from home, Australian Wikimedian 99of9 participated in the interesting and well attended Fashion edit-a-thon in Utrecht and the Amsterdam Hackathon.
Belgian cultural institutions interested in Open Data
Masterclass Open Culture Data
Belgian cultural institutions are becoming interested in Open Data and start to work on making their collection open. That became clear on 21 May in a Masterclass Open Culture Data in Brussels which was attended by about 20 data providers and was organized by PACKED vzw (Expertise Centre Digital Heritage), Creative Commons Belgium, Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium and FARO (support for the cultural heritage field in Flanders and Brussels). Another second day of the masterclass went more into the depth of the subject.
On the 21st of May five presentations were given. First there was an introduction about what copyright is, the second presentation explained Open Data, then a presentation was given about the Creative Commons licenses, the fourth presentation was about Wikipedia and Wikimedia including examples of GLAM projects and the final presentation was about clearing the rights of the material the institutions host.
The definition given in the presentation for Open Data was:
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Open Data is data which is publicly accessible and reusable. |
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This definition reminded me on the vision of the Wikimedia Foundation:
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Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. |
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If we compare the definition of Open Data with the Vision of the Wikimedia Foundation, we notice that both are almost identical but are only written with different words and different focus.
Data providers become more and more aware of their role in the changing world. The biggest change is the shift from analogue to a digital environment. Flanders wants to be in a leading position in the information society, and to get there, there is a need for a reliable, qualitative and durable digital memory. (Dutch)
Another remarkable and important quote to keep in mind is:
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Copyright is temporary. — Presentation introduction about copyright
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Afterwards works will enter the public domain and then they are entirely free. Even if an organisation holds a piece of art of which the author died more than 70 years ago, the work is in the public domain and the organisation who has the work in its collection does not own the copyrights on the work. Interesting in relationship with this is the Public Domain Charter.
A report in Dutch about the masterclass of 21 May can be found at this page.
Other projects in Belgium
Currently there is no chapter yet in Belgium, but we are working to establish one this year, and we are organizing at the moment three projects for the coming months: two edit-a-thons and Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium and Luxembourg in September. The coming edit-a-thon will be at the end of June and is about the World War I which had a big impact In Flanders Fields. (project page)
QRpedia codes in Silesian Museum Opava
QRpedia codes in Silesian Museum Opava
The Silesian Museum is the oldest public museum in the present territory of the Czech Republic. Founded in 1814, the museum will celebrate the 200th anniversary next year. With 2,400,000 exhibition items in its collections it is the 3rd biggest museum in the country.
Wikimedia Czech Republic has arranged a long-term cooperation with the Silesian Museum. GLAM took part in event called "The Silesian Museum Night" for the second time this year. We organized short lectures on Wikipedia, presented projects "Wiki Loves Monuments", "Students write Wikipedia", "Protected Areas Project", too.
More than 50 QRpedia codes were installed in the museum expositions of The Historical Exhibition Building in Opava: On the Wings of Thought, The History of Silesia, Nature of Silesia and in the temporary exhibition on a writer Jan Balabán.
Improvised digitalisation workplace was available for visitors to digitalise their photographs, documents or small objels connected with history of Silesia. A curator of Silesian Museum was examining the objects, the wikipedians were digitalising them.
A meeting with museum top management was held in the museum on the same day. The result of which was cooperation schedule beetween the Museum and the chapter Wikimedia Czech Republic for the next twelve months including the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the museum in 2014.
Maps; WLPA; Workshop material
Wikimaps
Our member Susanna Ånäs has been actively promoting Wikimaps, a new project to collect and enrich old map files online. Its main goal is georeferencing and interlinking old maps so that they are connected not only by space but by time. The total amount of public domain historical map material is vast. By giving them spatial and temporal references, they can be brought together and used to illustrate and explore historical topics. Every event has a place associated with it, and chances are there's a contemporary map showing the neighborhood of that place at the relevant time. Making maps available and building connections between them is a mammoth task, but a wiki framework will lower the threshold of participation, so getting more brains to participate should be easier.
Wiki Loves Public Art
May was also the month for Wiki Loves Public Art, a photography competition where participants take photos of public artworks. To my pleasant surprise, we got participants from outside the Helsinki area. Ten of the photos will be selected to take part in the international contest. Finland is a relative newcomer to the club of urbanized nations. Most works of public art fall within the scope of URAA limitations and as such are not accepted on Commons. These include all recent and interesting works as well as some iconic landmarks of cities. This caused some protest that I found reasonable: whose rights are infringed upon if someone shares their photo of the Three Smiths Statue on Commons? The artist passed away in 1940, so the only limiting factor is US copyright law. Despite situations like this, all Wikimedia projects must follow the law. I have no easy solutions in mind, but it would be wonderful if copyright policies had a little more common sense in them.
Workshops and Study Material
Wiki-related workshops are a great way to coordinate efforts on wikiprojects and to share knowledge of Wikipedia to new people. I find that successful outreach activities can take many forms, from regular small gatherings to massive edit-a-thons. Kiasma's Wiki School is one of the former. The scope is contemporary art, especially by artists whose work is exhibited by Kiasma. Having access to material in the museum's library makes it easier to expand articles. It's often the case with art books and catalogues that their print runs are tiny and copies cost a fortune, so finding sources would be very difficult without the library's help.
Outreach is most rewarding and effective when done in person, but sometimes it's useful to target a wider audience. We printed some leaflets with the help of a grant from WMF. They contain the basics of expanding or starting a Wiki article as well as some knowledge of Wiki culture. There's also a cheat sheet of sorts to help people unfamiliar with Wiki markup. These will hopefully come in handy.
Edit-a-thon in Quai Branly
Quai Branly
For the Long Night of Museums,on May 18th and 19th, Wikimedia France organized an edit-a-thon in Musée du quai Branly.
Being online on air - TV cooperation
A new Wikipedian in Residence at the public mediacorporation "Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen"
Since a two weeks we have a new official Wikipedian in Residence. Tim Moritz Hector is coordinating the exchange in-between the public media corporation Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) and Wikimedia projects. The ZDF agreed to liberate all content produced within the online format ZDF check under a CC-BY license which is pretty much the first time ever a public media house approves it in Germany. Wikipedians and other felt members of the net community are invited to participate in the online fact checking procedure. Due to the coming elections politicians in Germany are sensible to it only after a few days the format has been online. The project was discussed controversially within the German Wikipedia-Community. The project will run until fall. Than there is time to balance.
Until now the outcome are several info graphs and video clips on different topics produced to serve the needs of the online platform but liberated under the CC BY license. Links to the project: Projectpage ZDF check in German http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ZDFcheck ZDFcheck Please share Your experience on cooperations with media corporations. This cooperation is part of the WMDE programme "Excellent partnerships"
New edition of the German GLAM-brochure
The brochure addresses staff in German speaking GLAM institutions. It informs about the potentials in cooperating with the Wikimedia movement. Keeping the lay out we have revised the entire text to make it easier to understand for non Wkimedians.
The complete text and the images are open for co-edition. The the print file is available by sending an email to kultur@wikimedia.de
Edit-a-thons in Puebla and Mexico City; Möebius radio program
Edit-a-thon at Puebla City and Museo Universitario del Chopo
In May, Wikimedia Mexico held two edit-a-thons. First, the second in Puebla City past May 4th, commemorating the Battle of Puebla. This event was attended by 42 people who worked on Wikipedia in Spanish, Nahuatl, French, Catalan and Danish. The event was held at the HUB Emprendedor of the historical downtown of Puebla city, for the second time. Astrolabio, which organized the event in collaboration with Wikimedia México, achieved several sponsorships for the event, including a package of books to all the participands and the round trip of Wikipedians of Mexico City to Puebla. For the second time, Wikimedia Spain and members of Amical Viquipedia translated into Catalan.
On May 25, we edit in the Museo Universitario del Chopo of UNAM, where we write about the history of the site and articles related to one of the cultural centers that has been present in the history of Mexico City for decades. Originally intended for an international exhibition, the museum traveled in the beginning of the XX century deconstructed from Dusseldorf and was placed in Santa Maria la Ribera.
For this edit-a-thon, the documentation center (Mediateca) opened its archives in order to have historical references, including the original documentation of the decade of the thirties. The event was curated by Brenda Caro, coordinator of the documentation center. It was insufficient time to edit in Wikipedia about the long history of the museum, so we are planning to come back to a second marathon in the next months.
Möebius radio program
From June 8, Wikimedia Mexico will co-produce "Möebius" a weekly radio program in Ibero 90.9 FM [1], one of the trendsetter media in Mexico City. The creative concept of the program is to find two topics allegedly disconnected, but united by four or five Wikipedia articles, with a sound design that will reinforce the concept.
It has been several months of planning the concept, which will serve to further spread our mission in Mexico, thanks our GLAM partnering with the Universidad Iberoamericana and their radio station, Ibero 90.9 FM.
This program will be conducted by Almendra Hernández, Carmen Alcázar and Iván Martínez and will be transmited every saturday at 08:30 (-06:00 GMT) in 90.9 FM or ibero909.fm.
Europeana Fashion edit-a-thon; First Dutch Wikipedian in Residence; Wikimedia Hackathon; Wiki loves libraries
Europeana Fashion Editathon
(Centraal Museum Utrecht and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision), two partners of the Europeana Fashion project, organised a fashion themed edit-a-thon in cooperation with Wikimedia Nederland and ModeMuze. The goal of the edit-a-thon was to improve the information and visibility of fashion articles on the Dutch Wikipedia and to projects.
The day started with a general introduction about Wikimedia projects and editing Wikipedia pages. 37 participants have edited, translated or created 27 pages in total.
More information:
Wikipedian in Residence
The National Archives of The Netherlands(NA) and the National Library of The Netherlands(KB) are looking for the first Dutch Wikipedian in Residence (WiR). The group of Special Scientific Libraries will start looking for two more WiR's later this year. Currently there is one more project in preparation for WiR's. The expectation is that there will be 3 to 4 Dutch WiR's by the end of the year.
More information:
- The project page the WMNL wiki (Dutch)
- The WiR at position at NA/KB in Dutch
- Information on the Group of Special Scientific Libraries WiR's
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Hackathon
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2013 took place from may 24 to 26 in Amsterdam. Participants have worked on several projects that are very useful for GLAM projects, like Wikimetrics and translation tools.
More information:
Wiki loves libraries
The project Wiki loves Libraries has been given a new impulse after an inactive period. Wiki loves bieb is a project of the Public Library and Wikimedia Nederland (WMNL) to promote the use of and improve the quality of articles on Wikipedia. A brainstorm session will be organised in August by BiSC Utrecht and WMNL to make an inventory of activities in the province Utrecht for 2014. Possibly these activities will also take place in the provinces Zeeland, Friesland, Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland.
Wiki Loves Catalan Public libraries
Wikitour around Catalan Public libraries
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During May several volunteers have been doing a Viquipèdia tour among 7 Catalan public libraries, organized by Amical Wikiemdia. Depending on the city or village it was just a wikipedia workshop or a whole GLAMmeeting with representative of the local GLAM institutions.
Wiki Takes Olesa and a Wiki Corner at Olesa de Montserrat Public Library
At the public Library of Olesa de Montserrat, they have installed a Racó Wiki (Wiki Corner) with some information. This is a very pioneer library, where they have organized themselves a whole Wiki Takes for their town, with more than 30 people attending, of all ages. When a GLAM starts doing wiki activities and programs themselves, it's a good sign that the Wiki Loves Catalan Libraries project is going great.
Edit-a-thon at Museu Jaume Morera
During Museums Night Esther Solé, Amical Wikimedia's member and Wikipedian in residence at Museu Morera in Lleida, organized an edit-a-thon at night at the museum.
Students create graphics under expert advice
May has been particularly active for wikiArS initiative that seeks to involve the educational artistic field. In last days of the month several students began to publish some images or animations in which they have been working, thanks of collaborations by Amical Wikimedia and Wikimedia España with their schools. Four students from the Rubí School of art (EDRA) and three of Manresa are working on illustrations advised and supervised by geologists. Four Llotja school students are creating illustrations of extinct animals advised by one of the most active promoters of Mammals wikiproject in Viquipèdia. At the University of Cádiz students of the "Publicity and Public Relations" degree program have been working on movies created by synthetic animation, advised by experts in Health, Construction, Physics, Oceanography and Illusionism.
Also during this month has been incorporated Roger Fuentes as students tutor. Roger is Wikipedian in residence at the Museum of History of Catalonia and he will monitor students working in historical recreations, advised by the historian Xavier Hernandez. A student from Serra i Abella school (l'Hospitalet) has already started with them the task of creating illustrations of XVIII century characters from whom exist documented information about their clothing.
Fesabid 2013
Fesabid'13 or the 13th Spanish Conference of Documentation was celebrated in Toledo the last week-end of May, and the GLAM projects were also in that conference. Organized by the Federación Española de Sociedades de Archivística, Biblioteconomía, Documentación y Museística, this conference hosted a debate moderated by Tomás Saorín, member of Wikimedia Spain, about Open and Free Knowledge in real world, and open GLAM.
A month full of art
Wiki Loves Public Art
During the month of May Wiki Loves Public Art took place in five countries. In Sweden we focused on the great artworks that we have in our museums. A total of nine different art museums participated and cooperated with WMSE for the first time.
As part of the contest five different and very appreciated photo safaris and wiki meetups with fika were organized in Stockholm and Gothenburg. They had a total of circa 30 participants all in all (with around 20 different persons). Around ten of them had not taken part in any event organized by WMSE prior to this. However, not all of the participants uploaded their images in time before the contest ended.
The contest was also advertised on a few of the participating museums websites and in the museums, creating awareness of our new cooperations.
Wikimedia Hackathon Amsterdam 2013
André Costa participated at the Wikimedia Hackathon Amsterdam 2013 and worked on preparing the Open Database of Public Art in Sweden (ÖDOK) for WLPA 2014. Together with Maarten Dammers he also bug fixed a tool for uploading images from Europeana, named "Europeana search tool query" that has been very helpful for preparing for the upcoming edit-a-thons in June. During the hackathon André had good opportunities to network and informed other developers about the WLPA contest and discuss the use of WikiData in conjunction with this.
QRpedia Pilot at the Natural History Museum in Bern
Analysing the Usability of QRpedia
Three students of the Bern University of Applied Sciences are cooperating with the Natural History Museum in Bern to learn more about the usability of QRpedia-Codes. As part of a pilot project, 20 QR-Codes with links to Wikipedia articles have been installed at different dioramas in the museum’s “Africa” section. The aim of the project is to analyse the usability of QRpedia and to make suggestions for its improvement.
Looking at Usability from a Holistic Perspective
The project is taking a holistic approach by analysing the QRpedia installation as a QR-Code system: Thus, we are not only studying the different technical components, such as the WLAN access, the size and colour of the QR-codes, or the scanning software, but also the perceived usefulness of the content, or the impact of the installation on the interaction between visitors.
Characteristics of the Museum and the Installation
A large share of the visitors to the Natural History Museum is made up by children and their parents. Often, they aren’t here for the first time. They walk past the dioramas and have a look at the mounted animals, often with the children asking and the parents explaining – a form of interaction the museum tries to foster. So one aspect the museum is particularly interested in is to find out how the QRcode installation affects the way parents and children interact with each other. Another particularity of the installation is that it is in a rather dark area of the museum, as the mounted animals shouldn’t be exposed to too much light. This means that scanning the codes sometimes requires scanning software that uses the smart phone’s flash. At the same time, the relative darkness prevents the museum from displaying a lot of extra information about the animals. In fact, the only information that is displayed is the name of the animal in various languages as well as its conservation status. Thus, giving the visitors access to complementary information by pointing them to Wikipedia might prove quite useful in this context.
Methodological Approach
First we carried out a literature research in order to identify best practices that would guide the design of a first test installation. Once the first test installation was in place, 30 visitors were interviewed to gather information concerning the positive and negative aspects of their user experience. Based on this information, the setting of the pilot was changed. And again, interviews were carried out in order to verify the impact of the changes.
Preliminary Findings
So far, we have found the following positive results:
- Most visitors appreciate the use of the QR-Code system to get more information; in particular because there is rather scarce information provided in this exhibition.
- The reactions to use the system for knowledge transfer were positive; parents were for example found using the information from Wikipedia to give further explanations to their children.
- The amount time spent by visitors in the exhibition increases with the use of the QRcodes.
- The exhibition gains in attractiveness thanks to the QRpedia codes.
However, there were also some drawbacks:
- The complexity of the WLAN key was a barrier to using the system (WLAN is necessary because there is no mobile signal in some areas of the exhibition).
- The absence of a QRcode-reader app on visitors’ smart phones was also an important barrier to using the system.
- The linked Wikipedia articles contained too much text; often it was difficult to find the requested information in the relatively large amount of text; furthermore, the different articles vary with regard to structure and content, which doesn’t make it easy to find a given type of information.
- The light conditions in this exposition were pretty bad, so older phones were not able to scan every code.
- Most visitors are not used to using QR-codes; they need guidance to use the system (in our case a poster with all the necessary information).
Next Steps and Wrap-Up of the Pilot
During the coming month we will focus on the final evaluation of the data gathered; the findings will be made available in form of a report that describes our experiences and makes recommendations with regard to the installation of a QRpedia system in a museum.
Monmouth; Museums; More
Roger Bamkin has this unusual report laid out as a diary entry. Its in the UK list but it involves Switzerland, Wales and South Africa.
Monmouthpedia a year on is ... Joburgpedia
Oh May was a good month. It ended when I realised that I was in Cardiff having completed a meeting in the morning and had six hours to drive a three hour trip back to an important weekly meeting (with my wife in a pub) in Derby. I had just had an email from Luis Corvini who was doing his masters final piece on the subject of QRpedia. He said he was keen to meet people in Monmouth and he was based in Cardiff.
How would Luis react to a phone call asking him for his post code so that I could come and get him? immediately? I proposed that we could drive to Monmouth and introduce him to the main people. I'd met Luis only once before at GLAMwiki so I was impressed that he took less than 15 minutes to rearrange his day. So an hour later Luis, his girlfriend and I arrived on a sunny day to the town that is described by hundreds of geocoded Wikipedia articles and a thousand QRpedia codes.
OK the meeting wasn't entirely "on spec" as I had been helping the Joburgpedia project to get plaques manufactured in Monmouth. At odds with ecology, it had made sense for Dumisani Ndubane to source the new South African plaques in Monmouth (and new plaques were coming out of the kiln today.) The work was assisted by the enterprising Swiss Chapter and Ashley van Haeften who had put us in touch.
Monmouth had changed little and the dozens of street banners still declared "Monmouthpedia" and the plaques are there as understated as they always were. The main improvement is the free wifi which was installed by the council but Monmouthpedia had acted as the catalyst to the funding. Luis was taken around one of the pubs where every picture has a QR code and we went into the local newspaper and emerged with the editor who followed us up the street to find the new plaques. The newspaper knew it was a year since Monmouthpedia had been declared open and they were intrigued that they were being introduced to the second Brazilian post grad researcher who had come to Monmouth.
The "Monmouth plaques" are made at a sheltered craft business where John Cummings was once a volunteer. Cathy Yeates the manager had reused the Monmouth plaque design to meet the need to deliver plaques "by June" to Johannesburg. The locations chosen in Johannesburg are impressive. They include Bishop Tutu's house, Mahatma Gandhi's house and the main football stadium in Soweto. (I have linked all of these in the hope that you might assist and start to create some stubs). The new plaques have a wonderful Joburgpedia logo, the QRpedia QR code and an invitation to scan in two languages. This is the second Wikitown project funded by the Swiss chapter in Africa and only the third Wikitown to make an impression on that continent.
Oxford - Queen Victoria's Journals
On 24 May Liz McCarthy of the Bodleian libraries and Wikimedia UK ran an editathon in Oxford using resources that included Queen Victoria's journals, which the Bodleian and the Royal Archive have launched online in a site with different versions of the text, indexes, essays, and other facilities. The site is free to users in the UK, and until the end of June 2013 only to all global users. Nearly 20 people took part, in Oxford or just online, and articles worked on included:
- w:EN:George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, generally touched up, lead expanded, bits from journals added.
- w:EN:John Russell, 1st Earl Russell bits added from Journals, (diff)
- w:EN:Queen Victoria's journals - this article about the overall topic has now been nominated to appear on the main page in the Did You Know? section.
- w:EN:Coronation of Queen Victoria ran on w:EN:WP:DYK on June 2nd, 60th anniversary of the w:EN:Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and received over 12,000 views
- w:EN:Marquis, w:EN:Viscount, w:EN:List of marquesses in the peerages of Britain and Ireland, w:EN:List of marquessates in the peerages of Britain and Ireland
- w:EN:Sir William Molesworth, 8th Baronet
Queen Street Mill Museum
Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) continued his residency at Lancashire County Council's Queen Street Mill textile museum in Burnley with a backstage pass and editathon on 5 May. Participants travelled from as far away as Derby and Kent! In addition to contributing Wi-Fi, a fine lunch and delicious cakes, the museum relaxed their restrictions on photography (hopefully a permanent move) and had several staff in attendance to answer questions and guide the tour. A number of articles were written on the day or subsequently, including one which has already achieved "Good Article" status. Many photographs and several videos were made. See WP:GLAM/QSMM for details. New editors were signed up and welcomed. Thanks to participants, QSMM staff, Lancashire County Council, and to Museum Development North West for their support for this project.
The New Art Gallery Walsall
Andy also continued his residency at the The New Art Gallery Walsall, where a series of public events, including backstage tours, and editor training were held. Several significant artworks, including Oscar Wilde's tomb and Van Gough's Sorrow were documented. The gallery generously uploaded a further number of high resolution images of artworks in their collection, including some of local topographical interest. Sorrow has been voted a 'Featured Image' on Wikimedia Commons. One of these, shown above, has already been included as a result, in a new book currently at the printers. See WP:GLAM/NAGW for a list of articles and links to images.
Amsterdam Hackathon and Rijksmuseum
Andy attended the Amsterdam Hackathon (covered elsewhere) where he had a number of GLAM-related conversations with Wikipedians from around the world, including helping with several planned QRpedia installations. He also accepted an invitation, extended at April's London GLAM conference, to address a staff meeting at the recently-reopened Rijksmuseum, about his work as a Wikipedian in Residence, and the roles of Wikipedians in Residence in general.
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums
Wikimedia UK has had a Wikipedian in residence at Tyne and War Archives and Museums. Successes include outreach to relevant Wikiprojects (Tyne and Wear used to be a centre of the world's shipbuilding). Results include a number of pictures now used in featured articles, such as at w:EN:Minas Geraes-class battleship#Bidding and construction.
Future WikimediaUK GLAM events
People can now sign up for the following future events:
- British Black Music Editathon 30 June
- Bloomsbury Group editathon 19 October
Wikipedian in Residence in the Smithsonian; News in brief
Dominic McDevitt-Parks joins the Smithsonian as Wikipedian in Residence for Summer 2013
At the end of May, Dominic McDevitt-Parks joined the Smithsonian as its Wikipedian in Residence intern for summer 2013. Founded in 1846 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian is the world's largest museum and research complex, consisting of 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park, and nine research facilities. Dominic will work closely with Smithsonian staff to assess the state of the current Smithsonian WikiProject and advise on strategies to further our shared goal of increasing access to knowledge for people around the globe.
First editathon at the National Library of Medicine
The first National Library of Medicine Editathon was held May 28th and 30th in Bethesda, Maryland.
We had a backstage tour of the National Library of Medicine, as well as presentations, meetings with staff, and editing training. Our outcomes included improvements to articles on womens' health.
This was a truly inspiring event, held in collaboration with Wiki Project Med, and we were all impressed by the commitment of NLM/NIH staff to getting reliable health information out to the public! We hope this event will spark ongoing efforts to improve Wikipedia's health-related articles.
News in brief
- World Digital Library project launches on Wikipedia with the aim of improving Wikipedia content in seven different languages. Get involved here.
- Kent County Michigan Library System (KDL) offers Wikipedia editing classes and Wikipedia meetups at various branches this summer.
GLAM and Early Telescopes
Everyone knows the earliest record of working telescopes is from 1608 in the Netherlands. Right?
Did you know that Galileo always insisted that the ancients had telescopes?
Ever spend time looking at the paintings in an art gallery, reading books from a library, searching through archives, or wandering through a museum in awe of the past?
Take a look at the painting on the right.
It is of the god Kronos castrating his father Uranus, and it's from the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Ceiling of the room of the Elements.
It was painted circa 1560 by artist Giorgio Vasari who died in 1574. Saturn (Kronos), center right, is about to castrate Uranus, lower center left. Behind them both are the remains of an armillary sphere for observing the heavens. Directly above Uranus' head and directly to the left of Saturn's head is part of the sphere that looks like, for want of a better term, a telescope, with the eye-piece at its right end.
What do you think it is?
At left for comparison is a schematic of an idealized refracting telescope.
Maybe Galileo was right.
The images are from an ongoing original research project at Wikiversity about early telescopes. And, you can help! Now, when you're GLAMing it up, you can keep a keen eye out for something special.
Visit the early telescope research project and add your find to the discussion page.
Bugfixes; over 10,000 files from PLOS; conferences
Milestones
While PeerJ (who started publishing this year) saw their first files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons this month, the number of files originating from PLOS - who started PLOS Biology as their first journal in 2003 - rose above 10,000, in large part due to the Open Access Media Importer.
Conference sessions
The provisional Wikimania programme includes a session entitled Open Access & Wikipedia: Opening the world's academic research to improve the world's most popular reference source.
A breakout session "Reusing Open Access materials - a Wikimedia perspective" will take place in Geneva on June 20 as part of the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI8).
Conference abstracts on the Open Access Media Importer and related topics have been submitted to OKCon, the Creative Commons Global Summit and JATS-Con (a conference dedicated to the XML standard in use at PubMed Central and thus also the bot).
Open Access Media Importer
In a code sprint, a number of bugs have been fixed, resulting in the facilitation of the import of back files and thus an increase in the number of imports by a few hundred files with respect to April.
With the back files largely imported (save about a hundred that failed to convert properly due to non-standard media files), the focus of coding is now shifting towards enabling routine operation.
Gallery
The following represents a selection of the 714 files that have been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month, bringing the total over 11,800. If you can think of wiki pages where these files could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.
Open Access File of the Day
The following files have been featured as Open Access File of the Day this month:
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May 31: Dendrelaphis inornatus timorensis, a snake from Timor-Leste -
May 30: Scanning electron microscopic image of the shell of a Tarebia granifera snail. -
May 29: The butterfly Papilio hospiton. -
May 28: A minor and a major worker of the ant Pheidole pilifera. Scale bar: 1 mm. -
May 27: parietal bones of Einiosaurus procurvicornis -
May 26: A Microcaecilia dermatophaga caecilian with eggs. -
May 25: Varanus timorensis from Timor-Leste. -
May 24: the nudibranch Peltodoris atromaculata -
May 23: operative repair of esophageal atresia -
May 22: the moth Antispila oinophylla on the grape Vitis vulpina -
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May 20: Aptostichus barackobamai, the spider named for Barack Obama -
May 19: The ground beetle Cymindis platicollis. -
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May 17: Flowers of Silene species -
May 16: Tiered rice paddies in the Baucau district, East Timor. -
May 15: Podarcis pityusensis, the Ibiza wall lizard scavenging fish scraps -
May 14: Ophiocordyceps unilateralis controls behavior of its host ants -
May 13: human cortical development between 26 and 39 week gestational age -
May 12: The snail Tamayoa decolorata. -
May 11: A pair of Herennia multipuncta spiders. -
May 10: events in alpha-synuclein toxicity -
May 9: Pelochelys cantorii from Luzon in the Philippines -
May 8: A male Craspedisia spatulata spider. -
May 7: the greater noctule bat Nyctalus lasiopterus -
May 6: floodplain around Lake Ira Lalaro in East Timor -
May 5: love dart of the snail Bradybaena similaris -
May 4: axon guidance in Drosophila -
May 3: Copa kei male from Cwebe Nature Reserve -
May 2: dispersal of seeds by the airflow of vehicles
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May 1: holotype of Homo cepranensis
_-_ZooKeys-245-001-g040.jpeg)
_scavenging_on_fish_scraps_leftover_from_another_predator_-_journal.pone.0060797.g001-B.png){kind=small}
June's GLAM events
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6 Wikipedia in the Valley. 3 days focus group in Vall Fosca (Catalonia)
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8 Edit-a-thon 1864 at the National Archive (DK) and in Wikimedia Sverige's office in Stockholm
Joint Back-stage event at the National Library & National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands Editatón Museo San Fransico en el Centro Cultural - Museo San Francisco, La Paz, Bolivia. |
9 A first edit-a-thon focusing on 1989 and Polish history at the Dom Spotkań z Historią (History Meeting House) in Warsaw, Poland.
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20 Chemical Heritage FoundationEdit-A-Thon #GlamCHF (USA)
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