GLAM/Newsletter/May 2024/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue V, May 2024

Albania report • Brazil report • Czech Republic report • India report • Italy report • Kosovo report • Netherlands report • New Zealand report • Poland report • Portugal report • Switzerland report • UK report • Ukraine report • USA report • Biodiversity Heritage Library report • GLAM Wiki Meta pages revamp • WMF GLAM report • Calendar

Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in Kruja; Traditional Albanian food photography competition

By Vyolltsa

WikiVoyage 2024

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group organized the Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon 2024 in Kruja, Albania, on May 4th and 5th. Kruja is located in North Central Albania and has a long list of attractions to offer tourists from the ancient castle nestled in the craggy rocks, two museums, stunning views, a nearby national park, sacred temples, natural springs, the ancient city ruins of Albanopolis, and the old bazaar.

Over the course of 2 days, 19 people participated to contribute to enriching the travel guide on Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Commons.

This year, we invited high school students from the nearby area of Kruja. A group of students from Shote Galica High School of Fushë-Kruja joined us. We wanted the local community to engage and become familiar with the Wikimedia Movement.

Throughout the edit-a-thon, we updated and improved articles on various destinations, attractions, and travel tips regarding Albania and Kosovo. Overall we made:

Wikivoyage and Wikipedia: 22 pages created and 120 pages edited
Wikidata: 47 total revisions
Wikimedia Commons: 76 uploads

Traditional Albanian food photography competition in 2024

In the third year of the Albanian Food Photography Contest, 12 participants uploaded 187 photos of the rich cuisine heritage of Albania and Kosovo. Lasting for one month, March 25th - April 25th, this annual campaign helps increase and illustrate Wiki projects about Albanian food.

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group encouraged people to participate in uploading food pictures of Albanian cuisine to the community and to preserve the traditional food heritage.

Currently, we are in the process of selecting the winners, which will be announced soon.

Pictures from the campaign.

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 can:

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

Open licensing guide from Midiateca Capixaba; Activities in Rio de Janeiro; First batch from LabDOC; New batch from NeuroMat; Hercule Florence photowalk

By Sandra Soster & Juliana Cunha

“

The main challenge of Open knowledge is not technical, but legal. The widespread use of digital technologies, which allow the agile circulation of all kinds of media, has been accompanied by aggressive tactics to expand intellectual property. Contradictorily, as we have developed our technical capacity to circulate information, we have found ourselves increasingly legally prevented from doing so in a digital environment that is increasingly controlled by large platforms. The situation is paradoxical: on the one hand, forms of life and creation compromised by parasitic business models; on the other hand, copyright rules that stifle sharing and uses of social interest, particularly of public collections.

- João Alexandre Peschanski (Wiki Movimento Brasil) and Mariana Valente (InternetLab)

”

This was the starting issue for an one-year-project focused on the institutions gathered under the Midiateca Capixaba platform: Arquivo Público do Estado do Espírito Santo; Biblioteca Pública do Espírito Santo; Conselho Estadual de Cultura (CEC); Fundo de Cultura do Estado do Espírito Santo; Galeria Homero Massena; Museu de Arte do Espírito Santo Dionísio Del Santo; Museu do Colono; Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado do Espírito Santo; Palácio Anchieta; Rádio Espírito Santo; and TV Educativa do Espírito Santo.

The first step was visiting them and interviewing their directors in order to understand the content and the licensing status of their collections. The information collected during these visits guided the production of this open licensing guide for the daily use of all the State GLAM institutions. The final goal is to help GLAM staff make all the state collections available under open licenses at online platforms (especially Midiateca Capixaba and Wikimedia projects).

InternetLab and Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) worked together on writing this document which main topics are:

Central definitions on copyright law in Brazil
FAQ: time limits, orphan works, works of art, limitations and exceptions
Making collections available digitally
Wikimedia in free digital dissemination
Collaborative dissemination
Measuring the media outreach
Expanding the use of your collections

This guide is a pioneer document in the field of copyright because it tries to translate the laws to a more friendly language thinking of the various Brazilian professionals who are responsible for the conservation and diffusion of GLAM collections. It can serve as a basis for other countries that want to carry out a similar project, with a view to facilitating the work of GLAM institutions that want to open up their collections. At a national level, this study may be of interest to GLAM institutions, law schools and university students from different areas. It will certainly be of interest to other Wikimedia affiliates and open knowledge institutions.

Download the Open licencing guide from Midiateca Capixaba (only in Portuguese).

You may see more about the elaboration of this Guide HERE (only in Portuguese).

Activities in Rio de Janeiro

On March 28th of this year, we had a Walking Tour, the first meeting of Wikimedians from Rio de Janeiro organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil. The activity included a coffee break, a conversation with restorers and museologists, and a guided visit to the Eva Klabin House Museum, our GLAM-Wiki partner. Throughout the event, we exchanged experiences, learned about historical and artistic facts, and built new friendships.

On May 24th, we returned to the museum with a new task: to disseminate Brazilian historical collections through the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia. To this end, we invited Wikimedians and newcomers to participate in the Eva Klabin Collection Editathon, where we improved the dissemination of knowledge about a set of art pieces from the museum's collection that were made available in Wikimedia Commons under open licenses. You can find the results of the activity in this dashboard.

See the Casa Museu Eva Klabin's GLAM page and the uploaded media.

First batch from LabDOC

Laboratório de Conservação de Documentos is a lab that aims to preserve and build a digital archive for paper documents relating to the architecture and landscape of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) Seropédica Campus. The main objective of the project is to create and coordinate actions that contribute to expanding free access to documents about the history and memory of the university. This first batch brings to Wikimedia platforms 44 images of architectural drawings of some buildings and details.

This unique neo-colonial style architectural began to be built in 1939 on lands of the former Imperial Farm of Santa Cruz. The urban plan is composed by a landscaped park of great scenic beauty designed by Reynaldo Dieserger. The indoor decoration includes painted tile panels designed by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva in 1943. Some of these buildings are listed as State Cultural Heritage: the Rector's Central Building and Residence, the headquarters of the Chemistry Institute, the headquarters of the Biology Institute, and another two buildings.

See the Laboratório de Conservação de Documentos' GLAM page and the uploaded media.

New batch from NeuroMat

RIDC NeuroMat (Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics) is a long time GLAM partner of Wiki Movimento Brasil and it keeps supporting several other Wiki partnerships, GLAM projects, events, edit-a-thons, and technical training. And, of course, registering these events and uploading images and videos to Wikimedia Commons. Now you may find 86 new media files from this great partner, as the shown below: The dynamical process in neurosystems and the role of mathematics in biology, with Gilles Laurent, from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.

This interview was part of the project called "Pathways to the 2023 IHP thematic program Random Processes in the Brain", a preparatory process for the conference "Random Processes in the Brain: From Experimental Data to Math and Back", held at the Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris, from February 27 to April 7, 2023. The goal of the preparatory process was to frame and pave research practices among the participants of the IHP thematic program that will eventually emerge during the actual conference in Paris.

The project was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and the University of São Paulo (USP).

See the CEPID NeuroMat's GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Hercule Florence photowalk

On May 18, 2024, in the city of Campinas, São Paulo, the 24th Hercule Florence Photo Walk was held, in a Special Edition for the inauguration of the Hercule Florence Room at the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS). Participants walked through the city center, passing historic landmarks such as the bust of Hercule Florence in Largo São Benedito and Hercule Florence's old house at the city's ground zero.

The Hercule Florence Photography Festival is inspired by the isolated invention of photography in Brazil, in Campinas, by Hercule Florence in 1833.

Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence (February 29, 1804 – March 27, 1879) was a Monegasque-Brazilian painter and inventor, known as the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, three years before Daguerre (but six years after Nicéphore Niépce), using the matrix negative/positive, still in use. According to Kossoy, who examined Florence's notes, he referred to his process, in French, as photographie in 1834, at least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography.

See the Instituto Hercule Florence's GLAM page and the uploaded media.

See some of the pictures taken during the photowalk.

International discussion on the role of media and new GLAM partnership on the horizon

By Pavel Bednařík

Wikimedia CR organised discussion on the role of public media

As part of the of the 2024 General Assembly of Wikimedia Europe, which took place between 24 and 25 May, a discussion on Public Service Broadcasting and Public Access - Systemic Ways to Combat Misinformation took place. The patron of the debate, which took place in the renovated premises of the National Museum, was Marcel Kolaja, Member of the European Parliament. The experience from Germany, where this topic has been successfully resonating for several years, was presented by Christian Humborg, Director of Wikimedia Germany. The Czech perspective was followed by representatives of the public media - Oldřich Vágner, member of the Board of Czech Broadcasting service, and David Brabec, member of the Board of Czech Television. The debate was attended by more than forty delegates from all European countries.

Digitization concludes for Behar Herald and a digitization workshop held for libraries in Maharashtra

By Bodhisattwa & Subodh

Digitization concludes for Behar Herald

A GLAM initiative, which was taken by the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group to digitize the oldest English weekly published from the Indian state of Bihar more than a year ago, has concluded recently. With the help of a successful rapid fund application, the program lead Dr. Bir was able to procure a CZUR Pro 18 digital scanner and assign a Wikimedian-in-residence to be stationed at the headquarters of Bengalee Association Bihar in the city of Patna. This association, which publishes the newspaper since 1938 and is the holder of rights, has released the license of all its issues to be shared freely on Wikimedia sites. Under the digitization project, 26,995 pages were digitized and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. A final grant report has been submitted recently.

A news about a 21 days political fast by Mahatma Gandhi in 1943.
An article about Jawaharlal Nehru meeting 14th Dalai Lama in 1959
An issue on Indo-China war of 1962
An issue on liberartion of Bangladesh and surrender of Pakistan during 1971 war

Digitisation Workshop for libraries in Maharashtra

CIS-A2K and Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir library jointly organised a 'Digitisation Workshop' for old libraries in Maharashtra state of India on 15 may 2024 at Pune. The workshop aimed to empower libraries in preserving and making rare and public domain books available to society. It was attended by 50 members from 15 centennial libraries and 12 other libraries, along with digitisation partners and Wikisource editors. The objectives included digitizing and preserving valuable materials, coordinating digitization projects, and optimizing resources. Topics covered included library management systems, digitization project planning, copyright issues, metadata preparation, and making digitized content accessible on the internet. Hands-on training on scanning and image processing was also provided. The workshop aimed to demystify the digitization process and facilitate best practices among participants. The sessions were conducted by PNVM coordinators and A2K representatives. The hands-on training of scanning process and image processing was also arranged at the venue in the second half. Through this activity the digitisation concept was demystified. It was the first such exposure for all the participants. A social media group was formed to exchange information and discuss progress. Follow-up activities include preparing lists of public domain authors and works, supporting libraries with Unicode and KOHA experts, and planning visits to potential libraries.

Participants in the Digitisation workshop
Hands-on training of scanning process
Digitisation process presentation

Edit-a-thons

By Marta Arosio

During the month of May, several collaborative events with cultural institutions were held in various Italian locations. On May 15th in Como, an edit-a-thon took place at the Pinacoteca, while on May 12th in Ceglie Messapica (BR), a wikigita and an edit-a-thon were organized in the surrounding area. Additionally, on May 11th in the Valle dei Laghi (TN), an edit-a-thon was held in collaboration with the local Ecomuseum. These events provided participants with the opportunity to contribute to online knowledge on Wikipedia, enriching content related to the culture and territory of their respective regions. May thus proved to be a particularly dense month of initiatives that fostered collaboration between online communities and cultural institutions in the territory.

Museo Martinitt e Stelline

The edit-a-thon at the Martinitt and Stelline Museum in Milan was held on International Museum Day, organized by Wikimedia Italia in collaboration with ICOM Italia. The event aimed to enrich Wikipedia with content about Italian museums. Participants included both experienced Wikipedians and newcomers. The edit-a-thon resulted in the creation and expansion of numerous articles, with notable contributions including the creation of articles on the De Claricini-Dornpacher Foundation, the Museum of Sant'Eustorgio, and several others. Overall, participants modified and created more than 20 pages, in Italian, Lombard and Catalan.

Museo di storia naturale di Milano

The edit-a-thons at the Natural History Museum of Milan are part of a single project aimed at enhancing Wikipedia's documentation on museum collections and nature-related myths. The first event, "Discovering the Museum," held on April 10, involved participants in creating and improving entries related to the museum's various sections and exhibitions. This effort increased the museum's visibility on Wikipedia and thoroughly documented its collections. The second event, "Curiositur - Myths and Legends," took place on May 27, focusing on paleontological themes and myths. Participants created and updated articles on fossil species and nature-inspired legends. Both events, organized by Wikimedia Italia, encouraged public participation and contributions to the platform, significantly enriching the available resources on Italian Wikipedia.

Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in Kruja & Traditional Albanian food photography competition

By Rita Maliqi

WikiVoyage 2024

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group organized the Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon 2024 in Kruja, Albania, on May 4th and 5th. Kruja is located in North Central Albania and has a long list of attractions to offer tourists from the ancient castle nestled in the craggy rocks, two museums, stunning views, a nearby national park, sacred temples, natural springs, the ancient city ruins of Albanopolis, and the old bazaar.

Over the course of 2 days, 19 people participated to contribute to enriching the travel guide on Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Commons.

This year, we invited high school students from the nearby area of Kruja. A group of students from Shote Galica High School of Fushë-Kruja joined us. We wanted the local community to engage and become familiar with the Wikimedia Movement.

Throughout the edit-a-thon, we updated and improved articles on various destinations, attractions, and travel tips regarding Albania and Kosovo. Overall we made:

Wikivoyage and Wikipedia: 22 pages created and 120 pages edited
Wikidata: 47 total revisions
Wikimedia Commons: 76 uploads

Traditional Albanian food photography competition in 2024

In the third year of the Albanian Food Photography Contest, 12 participants uploaded 187 photos of the rich cuisine heritage of Albania and Kosovo. Lasting for one month, March 25th - April 25th, this annual campaign helps increase and illustrate Wiki projects about Albanian food.

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group encouraged people to participate in uploading food pictures of Albanian cuisine to the community and to preserve the traditional food heritage.

Currently, we are in the process of selecting the winners, which will be announced soon.

Pictures from the campaign.

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 Twitter or Instagram.

WikiconNL 2024

By ThamaraGroenleer

WikiconNL 2024

On Saturday 18 May, 101 people travelled to Beeld & Geluid in Hilversum for WikiconNL 2024. The conference kicked off with a keynote by Dr Mirko Schäfer, associate professor in the focus area Governing the Digital Society at Utrecht University. Schäfer spoke about the history of encyclopaedias as independent sources of knowledge and the undermining they have faced, past and present.

Sessions included ‘Wikipedia & AI: friend or foe?’ in which Marian Grubben, Hay Kranen and Sirous Kavehercy each highlighted a unique aspect of AI in relation to Wikipedia. Marco Streefkerk showed the benefits of using Wikipedia for a museum, and how to use the platform. Edwin Klijn from WO2net talked about the digitalisation of the Central Archive of Special Jurisdiction. The presentation showed how fast technological developments succeed each other within the heritage world and their effects on making documents accessible.

For the first time, de Verbindingsprijs was awarded during WikiconNL. The winner is meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives. Meemoo supports organisations from culture, media and government in everything to do with their digital archive.

We look back on a great conference. Missed it? See the photo impression and presentations on Commons.

Women in Architecture Edit-a-thon, Wikidata Te Papa research expeditions project and 1Lib1Ref

By Ambrosia10, Avocadobabygirl, Prosperosity & Pakoire

2024 Women in Architecture walking tour and edit-a-thon

On 18 May 2024, the second New Zealand Women in Architecture edit-a-thon was held at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Originally inspired by the publication of Making Space: A History of New Zealand Women in Architecture (2022) by Elizabeth Cox, the New Zealand Women in Architecture WikiProject has focused on improving the coverage of women working in architecture and landscape architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand. Events related to the project have been produced in collaboration between Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, the University of Auckland and Architecture + Women NZ.

The May 2024 event began with a walking tour, where architects including Ainsley O'Connell, Yvette Overdyck and Justine Goode showcased buildings within central Auckland that they had made contributions to, including the Ellen Melville Centre, south atrium of Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Auckland Civic Theatre.

At the same time, an edit-a-thon was held at Auckland War Memorial Museum, led by Women in Architecture WikiProject organiser Lisa Maule, focusing on developing new articles, Wikidata items and improving pre-existing articles on women in architecture. The event ended with a tutorial explaining how to upload the photographs taken during the walking tour to Wikimedia Commons.

The edit-a-thon saw over 17 participants making contributions to Wikipedia, and led to the creation of six new articles and the expansion of 19 articles related to women in architecture, 70 new images added to Wiki Commons of the event, and 26 images from the A+W NZ Awards 2023, many of which have been used to illustrate pages of women architects, including Sarah Treadwell, Raukura Turei and Maria Chen.

Highlights from participants included one person saying they used Wikipedia all the time and now they had a much better understanding, another expressing joy of being able to hear from architects about their projects on the photo walk, and another realising what was possible to add to from their specialist knowledge without contravening the conflict of interest guidelines.

Event dashboard

Wikidata Te Papa research expeditions project

The 26th of May marked the completion of the "in residence" portion of the Wikidata Te Papa research expeditions project. Ambrosia10 has sent 12 weeks based at Te Papa in their Tory Street, Wellington facility undertaking work on the project. During that time she has worked with Te Papa staff, most closely with Avocadobabygirl, to trial the current research expeditions schema proposed by the Wikidata WikiProject Research Expeditions by creating or enriching Wikidata with data on research expeditions undertaken by Te Papa/ Dominion Museum/Colonial Museum and institutional staff while employed at the museum.

The next stage of the project will be to hold two edit-a-thons aimed at improving Wikipedia articles related to the research expeditions collated during the project and to finalise the draft project report which is due at the end of August.

Outreach and events

On the 10th of May Ambrosia10 presented to the natural history team on the Te Papa Research Expeditions Project. The slides for this presentation can be found here.

On the 4th of June a Te Papa staff research expeditions edition will be held at Te Papa. This will give an opportunity for Te Papa staff to learn to edit Wikipedia articles relating to research expeditions including articles on the participants, the locations, the vessels used, the species collected, and the publications generated as a result of those expeditions.

A public Te Papa research expeditions edit-a-thon is also being planned for the 13th of July.

500 new references!

On May 29 2024 Te Papa's Wikipedians and Library team held a day-long session to add as many references as we could. We were joined by Ambrosia10, CopperAlchemy and several brand new editors, including some from the Alexander Turnbull Library.

With the motivation of mutual nerding out, good food, and the goal of beating last year's contribution of 410 references, we had an intense and satisfying day of editing.

The swathe of new editors, 500 article references and over 200 Wikidata references show how momentum has built over the last few years. Dedicated digital outreach resourcing and connections with the local community have also paid off.

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

By Kamila Neuman

Heritage Guard Network

Heritage Guard Network Logo
Damage from shelling at the Yelets Monastery
Historical building after being hit by a Russian missile, Kharkiv
Evangelical Church in Żeliszów
Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in V'yazivka

The second live working meeting of the Heritage Guard Network project team took place in Georgia on May 13-15. The meeting was attended by: from Wikimedia Sverige - Eric Luth, from Wikimedia UG Georgia - Mehman Ibragimov, from Wikimedia Ukraine - Olesia Lukaniuk, and Wikimedia Poland was represented by our Open Culture Manager - Kamila Neuman.

The meeting in Tbilisi was aimed at evaluating the activities of the ongoing Heritage Guard Network pilot project so far, making changes and improvements that will increase the effectiveness of our activities and better coordinate them, and planning the next steps in the project.

Heritage Guard Network (HGN): Empowering Communities to Safeguard Cultural and Natural Treasures through Crowdsourced Digital Efforts aims to create long-term, sustainable networks that compile, build, and share best practices on how to successfully crowdsource data and information on cultural and natural heritage in danger.

The project is focused on developing analyses and recommendations on how to use crowdsourcing, especially through the Wikimedia platforms, for the digitization of cultural and natural heritage in danger. The result will be four papers dedicated to legal, engagement, risk and technology related aspects of the topic.

Partners, experts and volunteers are encouraged to get involved in the development of these four papers!

If you represent an organization (company, NGO, institution or other) and you would like to get involved please fill in this survey: Partner Assessment Survey

If you want to join the project (especially the Working Groups) as a volunteer please fill in this survey: HGN Volunteer Survey

The aim of this pilot project to establish a long term network, where continued engagement of partners, experts and volunteers will be crucial. The project team is in the process of preparing future applications for the continuation of the project.

There are several ways to contribute to the project. One is to join working group meetings, which are held regularly and provide a space for organizations, experts and volunteers to provide input, opinions and experiences.

For more information, visit the project website.

This project is funded by the Swedish Institute.

The Cipher Girls project on Wikipedia at the Impact'24 conference

The Cipher Girls project is an initiative aimed at raising awareness of women's contributions to the fields of cryptography, mathematics, computer science, and engineering, with a special focus on their role in breaking the Enigma ciphers during World War II. The project extends the educational activities of the Enigma Cipher Center, whose mission is to disseminate knowledge about the history of Polish cryptography.

The Poznań Heritage Center and the Enigma Cipher Center have reached an agreement with Wikimedia Poland to develop knowledge in Wikimedia projects about women's contributions to the fields of cryptography, mathematical sciences, and computer science, as well as in communication and conspiracy, with particular emphasis on the heroines of Polish ciphers from the 1939-1945 period and the heroines of the digital revolution within the Cipher Girls project.

The collaboration includes educational activities such as edit-a-thons aimed at enriching the Polish-language Wikipedia with biographies and achievements of these extraordinary women.

The first such event was an edit-a-thon about Cipher Girls, organized as part of a prestigious international economic and technological congress IMPACT CEE in Poznań on May 15, 2024. With 8 multimedia stages, 23 thematic tracks and more than 650 speakers, the event attracts more than 6,000 participants, creating a unique platform for the exchange of ideas. This year's guest speakers included Michelle Obama.

Role of Wikimedia Poland Wikimedia Poland, in cooperation with volunteers:

prepared the project page,
ensured the encyclopedic validity of proposed articles through volunteer involvement,
recruited volunteers for the event, and
led the promotion of the event in its promotional channels.

The initiative on behalf of Wikimedia Poland is coordinated by the Manager of Open Culture, Kamila Neuman, and was represented on-site by the Expert in Event Organization, Marek Lewandowski. Katarzyna Kucharska from the Enigma Cipher Center is responsible for the project and event organization. The event accompanied an exhibition about the Cipher Girls. During an edit-a-thon about Cipher Girls, Wikimedia projects were edited by 3 Wikimedia Poland volunteers: Klara Sielicka-Baryłka,Grzegorz Gogacz, Marcin Szwarc and five employees of the Enigma Cipher Center.

We would like to thank all the volunteers for their participation in the event and for their support in preparing it.

Record number of files from Polona in Wikimedia Commons

In May, over a million files from Polona were added to Wikimedia Commons! This is a record number of contributions to the free multimedia repository as part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration with the National Library of Poland!

Polona is a Polish digital library containing collections from the National Library of Poland and cooperating institutions.
Over 4,400 resources from Polona illustrate the Polish Wikipedia and other language versions.
Polona files appear on over 7,500 pages in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including illustrating the article North America.
This has been made possible through the work of Wikimedian-in-residence Wojciech Szczęsny at the National Library as part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration.
As part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration, the Wikimedian-in-residence adds resources to Wikimedia Commons, uses them to illustrate Wikipedia and Wikidata, creates and develops Wikipedia articles, and enhances Wikidata, thereby increasing the visibility of Polona’s resources online.
You can find the category with over a million Polona resources on Commons here: Images contributed by the National Library in Warsaw
These include illustrations from botanical, zoological, and anatomical atlases, but also countless portraits, maps, and old city illustrations. You can easily find them here: Books in the National Library in Warsaw
Selected scans of materials are uploaded from Polona to Commons (e.g., only pages with illustrations, not whole books), as individual page scans are available in Polona.

Illustrations from French, German, and English fashion magazines, circa 1855
Bolesław Biegas in his studio
Engravings of various animals from "Angenehmer und nützlicher Zeit-Vertreib," 1756
On Rospuda Lake
Atlas of the plant kingdom, 1900
Łowicz cutout, 1909
Polish folk cutouts - Łowicz and Kurpie styles, 1924
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, 1902
Catalog of the Archbishops of Gniezno
Irena Krzywicka

The Search for the Lost Manuscripts

By Alchimista

The Search for the Lost Manuscript: the world is such a small place

In November 2023, Rute Correia (WMPT Program Manager for GLAM Partnerships) participated in GLAM Wiki 2023 in Uruguay, where she met User:Bodhisattwa from the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG). During their meeting, Bodhisattwa mentioned that there were some manuscripts in Portugal they were very interested in, and Rute offered to see if Wikimedia Portugal could help in acquiring those manuscripts and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons.

The manuscript in question is a book written by Dom Antonio, titled Brahman Roman Catholic Sambad. Dom Antonio de Rozario, prince of Bhushsna, was born in circa 1643 in a jomidar family of Bhushana in the Jessore-Faridpur areas. In 1663 he was kidnapped by Portuguese Pirates and later rescued by a Portuguese priest named Manoel de Rozario, who converted him to Christianity. The book contained a religious debate between a Brahmin and a Roman Catholic. The book was translated into Portuguese by Manuel da Assumpção and the translated book was published by Francisco Da Silva from Lisbon in 1743. Dom Antonio de Rozario is considered the first writer of Bangla prose.

After the meeting, she returned to Portugal and engaged with Wikimedia Portugal and the Évora Public Library, where those manuscripts were stored. Unfortunately, other issues came along, and the project was stalled for a few weeks.

At the end of April, Berlin was the epicenter of the Wikimedia Movement. I attended the Wikimedia Summit 2024, and while having breakfast alone at the hotel, two unknown individuals sat at my table. As they were talking to the table next to us, I noticed an amazing coincidence on their credentials: West Bengal Wikimedians User Group. All I had to say was, Are you searching for some lost manuscripts in Évora? and a new chapter in this history was opened!

The manuscript was in the Évora Public Library, where, two weeks before, we had held WikiCon Portugal, allowing us to discuss this in depth with the library. Two weeks later, I returned to Évora to participate in the Drupal Iberia Conference, so I scheduled a day beforehand and went to the library, prepared to scan the manuscript if needed. Finally, in May 2024, the digitized copies were in my possession! With so many things to do, only two weeks later I was able to treat and upload some images. At that time, I was attending Wikimedia Europe General Assembly in Prague, and used some free time in the morning of the return flight to compile and upload the generated pdf.

A new chapter is starting now. The file now deserves a Wikisource project, where the collaboration of Wikimedia Portugal and West Bengal Wikimedians User Group will be fundamental to transliterate and translate the content, and later reuse it. This might also be the first of many partnerships among West Bengal Wikimedians User Group and Wikimedia Portugal.

Wikimedia technologies as baseline tools in academia

For some time that Wikimedia Portugal and CODA-FLUP (Centre for Digital Culture and Innovation of Humanity Faculty of Porto University) are exploring new ways of using our technology in academy, and in May we held a small pilot project exploring the use of MediaWiki as a tool for internal works repository, and how we could integrate it with Wikimedia Projects. An internal MediaWiki was set up, where students from a class on Art History wrote their assignments about Porto Baroque monuments, and the professor reviewed and validate the content. The result was a set of articles with academic review that can be used as reference. Parallel to this, images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, leading to more than 200 images uploaded, and a set of structured data.

The results were promising, and we are moving to a more structured phase.

Swiss GLAM Programme

By Medea7

International Museum Day

The Magic of Museums - Dynamic Centers of Education and Innovation

This month we focussed on the International Museum Day, that has been realised also the last years. This year the International Museum Campaign was realised with the focus on education, research and innovative infrastructures together with Giovanna Fontenelle who is located in Brazil. The aim is to support museums in sharing their knowledge in the wiki universe. Each exhibition is done with science, knowledge and huge material resources only for a certain amount of time. On wiki it can stay for longer. The content can be made available for everyone. It can also be used for research and in schools.

Panel

IMD 2024Fascinating World of Museum Education

The panel for the International Museum Day took place on Friday the 17th with four speakers. The first speaker was Emily Hildebrand, an art educator. She was talking about her artistic practice and how she uses it while teaching. The main gift people receive is empathy as all participants enjoy collaborating and getting the inner space of their own perception. Then the Museum ZKM presented their projects on Wikipedia. Anika Wilcox, who is an artist herself, explained how the projects started and why media art heritage is important. The art historian Hanna Steinert was the third speaker explaining how communities are designed exclusively although wanting to welcome everybody. Athina Petsou, PHD-researcher and former ambassador for Europe from Art+Feminism, talked about curatorial practices and the shift in combination with wiki projects.

Outlook

IMD 2024 Museums Important Research Institutions

The future of museums is more an inclusive one. All knowledge shall be included and it should be made accessible for everyone. Museums are in a process of transformation. As Wiki-movement we can support this process and be part of it. The video shows opportunities of research and on how many topics we can relate to. Parallel to the focus of museums other projects have been carried out. The regular Atelier took place and this time we were writing about the Gosteli Archive, a foundation for saving records on Swiss women.

Our first Igbo language article

By MartinPoulter

Khalili Foundation

Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands appeared in the Did You Know section of the English Wikipedia home page on 19 May; the 26th DYK from this project. There were 4.6 million visits to the Wikipedia home page, where there was a link and thumbnail image. 10,701 people followed the link to the Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands article. About 900 followed the link from there to the article about the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. There seem to be hundreds of extra visits for other linked articles including Blue Quran and Islamic art.

After nearly three months of being reviewed, the Empire of the Sultans article became a Featured Article: the second FA on English Wikipedia from this partnership. As a result, it is now showcased at various places around English Wikipedia, including the Islam portal and the Arts portal. It has not yet been scheduled for Featured Article of the Day, but this will probably take place on 23 July.

A volunteer has translated the article I wrote about Muhammad Sadiq into Igbo, a Nigerian language spoken by 31 million people. Of the 56 new articles created by this partnership, this is the first in Igbo and might be the first mention of the Khalili Collections anywhere in Igbo! This brings the number of languages in which this project has created new Wikipedia articles to twelve.

The Islam WikiProject keeps records of all DYKs, Good Articles, and Featured Articles that have anything to do with Islam. So I thought it would be interesting to express this partnership's successes as a proportion of those figures, keeping in mind that improving articles about Islam is just part of what this project is about. In the past I have observed that out of three Featured Pictures of Islamic religious art on Wikimedia Commons, we provided two; we're responsible for 67% of that category of featured content.

12 DYKs out of 523 that are Islam-related: 2%
2 out of 33 Islam-related Featured Articles: 6%
3 out of 148 Islam-related Good Articles: 2% (with another article awaiting review)

Considering that this is comparing my work on this partnership to all the work ever done to create quality content related to Islam on English Wikipedia, I think these are significant numbers.

This month, I worked on a history of the Samurai Shokai company. The Khalili Collections have two enamel cabinets credited to the company, appearing in this month's two image uploads. I have also created Wikidata representations of the cabinets (here and here). I have carried out an analysis of the images on the Khalili Collections website, to find any that have not yet been uploaded to Wikimedia. This has brought up ten images of Meiji Japanese art which I will soon upload.

While remotely taking part in a University of Cambridge event on faith and peacebuilding, I noticed that, while Wikipedia makes it easy to navigate between articles related to pacifism and the anti-war movement, it's harder to navigate between articles relating to peacebuilding. To help with this, I created a Peace navigation template that links concepts such as Religion and peacebuilding, Environmental peacebuilding, and Peacemaking, as well as regional topics such as Arab–Israeli normalization or the Northern Ireland peace process. The effect on the traffic for those articles is hard to detect so far (coming at a time when a lot of universities are ending their terms) but hopefully this makes Wikipedia a little bit better for researching peacebuilding.

The GLAMorgan tool reports 5,071,362 image views for Khalili Collections images in May. This is additional to the above-mentioned 4.6 million image views from the DYK.

Article campaigns for Ukrainian librarians, partnership with a national library

By AntonProtsiuk

Throughout the spring of 2024, Wikimedia Ukraine has supported three campaigns on Wikipedia & Wikimedia projects aimed at librarians:

#1Lib1Ref, the international campaign that invites people to add missing references to Wikipedia articles. We held the latest round on Ukrainian Wikipedia from February 19th to March 10th (later than the traditional international round because we feel this schedule is more convenient for Ukrainian librarians). Within this round, 76 people improved 576 articles with 748 references. We organized two webinars and a series of offline events across Ukraine.

#EveryBookItsReader, the international campaign devoted to coverage of books. In Ukraine, we asked participants to focus on improving existing articles about books to boost quality on Ukrainian Wikipedia. Throughout April, 21 people created and improved around 300 articles.

“Cultural heritage and prominent figures”, our national article contest on Ukrainian Wikipedia devoted to cultural heritage and notable people across Ukrainian regions. Like for all other campaigns, everyone can join, but we focus on promoting the contest among librarians as the treasurers of local knowledge. The contest runs from May 20th to June 20th.

In the spring, we’ve also developed a partnership with one of Ukraine’s biggest libraries – Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine. We’ve organized a #1Lib1Ref training session in the library and signed a memorandum of cooperation. In the future, we hope to leverage our partner’s status as the central library of Ukraine's public library system to help with promotion of our campaigns and GLAM projects.

WikiPortraits & Edit-a-thons

By Slowking4

Shakers in America

Capitol Hill Chorale and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, History of Shakers edit-a-thon.

Asian American Pacific Islander Edit-a-thon

Mastercard and Wikimedia DC held an edit-a-thons, Mastercard AAPI edit-a-thon 2024

Gaithersburg Book Festival

Wikimedia DC covered the 2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival, c:Category:2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival

A J Jacobs
Jayne Anne Phillips
Kennedy Ryan

2024 Cannes Film Festival WikiPortraits

WikiPortraits covered the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, c:Category:2024 Cannes Film Festival WikiPortraits

Fábio Assunção
Chhaya Kadam
Nataly Rocha
Payal Kapadia
Viviane Letayf

BHL-Wiki Working Group May monthly highlights

By Ambrosia10

The BHL-Wiki working group met on the 20th of May for their monthly get-together to discuss collaborations, progress on projects, data issues and solutions, and work being undertaken in the Wikiverse by members using BHL related content. Each meetings agenda, notes taken during the meetings and a link to a recordings of each meeting can be found here. Anyone contributing to the Wikiverse is very welcome to attend these meetings so please feel free to join us in June. Some of the highlights from the May meeting include the following:

BHL Conflict of Interest disclosure statement

The working group advisor, Jake Orlowitz and the working group chair, Ambrosia10, drafted a Conflict of Interest disclosure statement. This statement was discussed and then agreed to by the BHL-Wiki working group. The Conflict of Interest disclosure statement can be found here. Participants of the BHL-Wiki working group are encouraged to add this statement to their appropriate user page.

Adding BHL Flickr Images to Wikimedia Commons Using Flickypedia

JJ Dearborn, the BHL data manager, is in the process of drafting up a tutorial on how to add BHL Flickr images to Wikimedia Commons using the Flickypedia tool. The BHL-Wiki working group intend to work through this tutorial during the next meeting on the 17th of June 2pm EST and will to use this opportunity to give feedback to the Flickypedia tool developers.

BHL Annual Meeting

The working group chair, Ambrosia10, delivered the annual report for the BHL-Wiki working group at the BHL Annual Meeting held in Chicago from the 13th - 17th of May 2024. See this link for her presentation slides.

BHL Day 2024 symposium

A public symposium was held during the BHL Annual Meeting. A recording of the full symposium can be found at this link. During this symposium Ambrosia10 gave a presentation on BHL and the Wikiverse, explaining just a few of the ways BHL content is used to enrich various Wiki projects. Nicole Kearney, manager of BHL Australia, gave a presentation on Unlocking Australia's Biodiversity. This presentation included information on how a grant from Wikimedia Australia is helping to improve the coverage of Australian field naturalist clubs in Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

GLAM Wiki Meta pages kicking off the Working Group

By Scann

Kick-off of the GLAM Wiki Meta Pages Revamp Working Group!

As an outcome of the GLAM Wiki Conference, Wikimedistas de Uruguay is facilitating a community process to redesign the public presence of GLAM Wiki on Meta, in collaboration with the broader GLAM Wiki movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. The initiative was announced on Diff in March and a working group was convened in May.

The members of the group are:

Alan Ang (Wikimedia Deutschland)
Alice Kibombo (Wikimedia User Group Uganda)
Evelin Heidel (Wikimedistas de Uruguay, coordinator)
Fiona Romeo (Wikimedia Foundation)
Juliana Cunha Oliveira (Wiki Movimento Brasil)
Marta Erica Arosio (Wikimedia Italy)
Mauricio V. Genta (Wikimedia Argentina)
Md Zillur Rahman (Wikimedia Bangladesh)
… and more people representing our global movement from Southeast Asia, Europe and francophone Africa!

We kicked off our first meeting by sharing our favorite examples of what others are doing with Meta, such as Wiki Movimento Brasil's documentation of partnerships and Avoin GLAM's multifaceted Wiki Loves Living Heritage initiative.

Now, we would love to hear from you! Please fill in this short survey to share your own perspective and examples. This would help us guide our decision making when it comes to what information to present on these Meta pages.

We also committed to working in the open, so here are our working documents. These documents will be open for anyone to comment, but only members of the working group will be able to edit them.

Introducing Alice Kibombo, a new dataset, and more

By Fiona Romeo (WMF) & Giovanna Fontenelle (WMF)

Alice Kibombo is our point-of-contact for libraries

Alice Kibombo is taking up a part-time contract as Senior Program Officer for Libraries (within the Culture and Heritage Team) while Silvia Eunice Gutiérrez is on parental leave. As you probably already know, Alice is an extraordinary librarian and Wikimedian based in Uganda. She is a librarian at Goethe-Zentrum Kampala and was the Wikimedian in Residence at the African Library and Information Associations. Alice has personally trained close to 200 librarians but there's so much more you can learn about her in this #WikiCelebrate post on Diff. We’re excited to learn from Alice as she supports the Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025, the global 1Lib1Ref organizing team, and our ongoing relationship with AfLIA. Alice will be working in this position until the end of the calendar year, when Silvia will return from leave.

A new dataset about Wikimedia and libraries

Before taking her parental leave, Silvia shared a new resource for Wikibrarians—the dataset Libraries in Diff posts (2009–August 2023). This dataset is an attempt to gather for the first time, in one place, all Diff entries that tell the vibrant stories of libraries, librarians and library enthusiasts who contribute to open knowledge through Wikimedia projects. It complements the This Month in GLAM dataset that Silvia shared in our December update.

Opportunities to contribute to the global GLAM-Wiki network

The GLAM CSI (Contributor Study Initiative) project, accomplished by Andrew Lih and the Smithsonian, is ongoing and your experience is welcome at its survey! We want to understand the pain points and the overall experience of contributing to the GLAM-Wiki ecosystem. This survey should take around 15-20 minutes to complete and all contributors, whether with low, medium, or advanced knowledge of GLAM-Wiki are encouraged to take part. We want to document and understand the experiences of joining and contributing at all levels, from all regions of the world, and from small to large institutions. A description of the survey can be found here.
As an outcome of the GLAM Wiki Conference, Wikimedistas de Uruguay is facilitating a community process to redesign the public presence of GLAM Wiki on Meta, in collaboration with the broader GLAM Wiki movement and the Wikimedia Foundation. The initiative was announced on Diff in March and the working group was convened in May. See their special report, where they invite you to share your perspective.
Before Wikimania 2024, on Wikimania day zero (August 6), those who are interested in GLAM-Wiki can join a side event. The European GLAM Coordinators are organizing a GLAM Global meetup. The gathering is for people working with both GLAM and Wiki in their professional capacity (i.e. GLAM coordinators, WIRs). Sign up on this page to inform the organizers of potential interested participants.

International Museum Day

On May 18th, it was celebrated the International Museum Day 2024. The Wikimedia projects celebrated it by organizing events and contributing to media, data, and translation challenges.

To access what was accomplished, you can find the Outreach Dashboard event with the overall results, as well as check all the translations of the Museum Definition on this page and the videos and pictures uploaded on this Commons category.

There were events or activities by Wikimedia CH, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia Colombia, Wikimedia Spain, Wikimedia Ireland, Wikimedia Argentina, Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda, and Wikimedia Bangladesh.

June's GLAM events

Explore Wikimedia-GLAM history by browsing through the archives.

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