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GLAM/Newsletter/May 2016/Contents/Macedonia report

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Macedonia report

1963 Skopje earthquake 300 photos

1963 Skopje earthquake

First hours after the earthuake: The citizens are searching for trapped and wounded.
A few days after the earthquake in Skopje arrived the famous French team of the tragedy in Agadir. With megaphones and other appliances they were searching survivors under the rubble, ten days after the disaster. Thanks to their efforts, were rescued several dozens trapped citizens.

The 1963 Skopje earthquake was a 6.1 moment magnitude earthquake which occurred in Skopje, SR Macedonia (present-day Republic of Macedonia) then part of the SFR Yugoslavia, on July 26, 1963 which killed over 1,070 people, injured between 3,000 and 4,000 and left more than 200,000 people homeless. About 80 percent of the city was destroyed. Relief, in the form of money, medical, engineering and building teams and supplies was offered from 78 countries.

Sts. Constantine and Helena Church, which was destroyed in the earthquake

In several meetings, there was an agreement between Wikipedian in residence at the State Archives of Republic of Macedonia, and the management of the Archive Department in Skopje, that Skopje Department is going to release at least 50 (fifty) files about this disaster event for Wikipedia. There were a few photos (18 total) in the category 1963 Skopje earthquake at that moment.

After two weeks negotiations and almost two weeks working on digitizing the files, we end up with 518 released files, ready to be uploaded on commons, donation from the Skopje department of the Archives:

  • 300 from the 1963 Skopje earthquake,
  • 13 from the 1962 Skopje flood,
  • 164 from the parts of Skopje photographed before 1940, and
  • 41 other files.

300 photos

Wikipedian in residence managed to get 300 photos donation about 1963 Skopje earthquake. There are photos from the first hours after the disaster happened, and photos showing the citizens trying to find their people. Almost every building was photographed, and many buildings were damaged too much, so were never rebuilt again. Example: Sts. Constantine and Helena Church, or Officers Hall building, which were destroyed in the earthquake and couldn't be fixed.

In this amount of 300 photos, there are many photos showing the new buildings which arose in the course of the next months after the earthquake, all of them donation from many countries.

All photos are black and white, and highly valuable for Wikimedia projects.

Integrating GLAM and Community

GLAM Co-ordinator and Wikimedian-in-Residence, Mario Šarevski and Community Co-ordinator Toni Ristovski in discussion

Our GLAM and Community co-ordinators (image to the right) work closely together to ensure good use of resources and integrate the programs as much as possible. This is especially the case with the Library of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), where our Wikimedian-in-Residence constantly provides us with material relevant to our various Expeditions, as well as source material (mainly books) for our Editing competitions and Edit-a-thons.

The role of the Wikimedian-in-Residence is very important for ensuring the quality of our work. All the terrain work greatly depends on the ability and resources of the Wikimedian-in-Residence in order to fulfill its meaningful purpose of spreading free encyclopedic knowledge.

To that end, we are establishing collaborations with the National and University Library "St. Kliment of Ohrid", the Miladinov Brothers Skopje City Library and the Central Medical Library.

Over 725 pages of material scanned at the MANU Library

Map of the types of settlements in the Radoviš region

During May, our Wikimedian-in-Residence had a multiple increased workload. Three books, each over 100 pages (725 pages in total) were scanned and provided to the community and Macedonian Wikipedia, out of which one is about the Radoviš region serving as a main scientific source and material for editing articles of the from the previously conducted Wikiexpedition in Lakavica Region (the Radoviš area) in April, and other two are about Climatology and Linguistics. Also Wikimedian-in-Residence at MANU has improved 21 articles not just in Macedonian but also in several other languages such as English, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, German, Italian, Ukrainian and created 1 new article.


Check back for a new edition next month.
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