GLAM/Newsletter/November 2011/Single
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Museum conferences and Library editathons
Wikipedian in Residence panel at AAM conference
The American Association of Museums announced the panel Wikipedia in the Museum: Lessons from Wikipedians in Residence, as part of its upcoming conference in Minneapolis, April 29 – May 3. The panel will include former and current Wikipedians in Residence Liam Wyatt, Àlex Hinojo, Lori Phillips, and Sarah Stierch. Angie McNew, who as the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Director of Websites and Emerging Media has overseen the longest-running residency to date (see McNew's success story and recommendation for GLAMs), will also participate. The American Association of Museums Annual Conference and Museum Expo is the most significant museum conference in the United States, serving thousands of museum professionals every year.
GLAM-Wiki featured at Museum Computer Network conference
GLAM-Wiki volunteers took part in the Museum Computer Network (MCN) conference in Atlanta, Georgia. MCN is an international gathering of museum technologists, including many who have already participated in GLAM-Wiki partnerships. Attendees this year took advantage of the positive momentum gained from the conference's previous GLAM-Wiki presence (see Signpost coverage), connecting with museum professionals from across the U.S. and from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Lori Phillips, Sarah Stierch, and Katie Filbert presented about GLAM-Wikimedia partnerships in four sessions and a simultaneous en:THATCamp event. Phillips and Angie McNew presented on Practical Methods for Collaborating with Wikipedia. The session provided detailed steps for getting started with a GLAM-Wiki partnership, sharing the lessons learned from projects at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (Prezi). Stierch presented in two panels: WikiProject:Public Art (view slides here) and Wikimedia and Indigenous Peoples (view slides here). Filbert took part in the "Open-Source Solutions" panel, presenting "Collaborative Mapping and Documenting Cultural Places" (slides) and taking part in the MCN THATCamp Unconference. Other sessions discussed ways to crowdsource transcriptions, including Wikisource as a possible platform.
Wikipedia Loves Libraries across North America
The first annual coordinated Wikipedia Loves Libraries event brought Wikipedians and librarians together for knowledge-sharing and editathon events across the U.S. The campaign as a whole was covered in American Libraries magazine, while 'Wikipedia: The Musical' drew New York Times coverage. There was a great diversity of events focused on the particular holdings and community of each participating library. See highlights at the pages linked below:
Library Lab DC
Wikimedia DC is partnering with the District of Columbia Public Library to run a temporary hackspace, "Library Lab DC," at the library's central Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The hackspace will be open from September through December, when that portion of the library will undergo renovations. Collaborations are expected to continue in 2012.
The Library Lab project was originally envisioned as a general concept by Wikimedia Foundation Trustee Samuel Klein and Nate Hill, with modular components to allow activities like digitization and audio production, along with a space for events and workshops. Several events have taken place at the Library Lab, including OpenStreetMap mapping parties, Wikipedia meetups and edit-a-thons, and hackathons.
A key area of collaboration has been with the library's adaptive services program, which provides technology training and services for the blind, deaf, and those with other disabilities. Wikimedia DC members attended Accessibility Camp DC at the space. A problem identification workshop took place, involving end-users brainstorming hackathon project ideas. An Accessibility Hackathon took place at the Library Lab. Projects include creating a mobile book-scanning mobile app and working on accessibility-related bugs in MediaWiki. The adaptive services program is experimenting with holding regular Maker Mondays and a spring Accessibility hackathon is being planned, allowing continued work on the projects.
Wikipedia Loves Libraries DC was an edit-a-thon held at the Library Lab (also part of Digital Capital Week). Another edit-a-thon is planned for December 17, focused on fine art and articles pertaining to the Federal Art Project.
On December 3, Wikimedia DC is co-organizing an Open Data Hack Day, part of International Open Data Hackfest 2011. Wiki-data related projects are proposed for the Open Data Hack Day, including working with National Register of Historic Places and Smithsonian Art Inventory data in support of future Wikis Take DC / Baltimore and Wiki Loves Monuments events. Other ideas include developing a way to update 2000 US census data in Wikipedia to use 2010 data, and working with World Bank and other data sources to create maps, tables, charts.
Briefly
- Wikipedian in Residence featured in Indianapolis Woman magazine: The November edition of Indianapolis Woman magazine featured Lori Phillips, Wikipedian in Residence at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, in a five question interview. The two page story details projects carried out through the Children's Museum's Wikimedia partnership, the implementation of QRpedia, and the broad goals of the GLAM initiative.
- Museum of Modern Art 'Talk to Me' University Editathon: A tour and editing workshop of Talk to Me (exhibition) was held in October. The event brought together MoMA educators and staff, Wikipedians, and students from a History of Design and Digital Media course at CUNY and a Museum Studies course at NYU.
Catchup from London
British Museum
The focus since the summer has been the Ice age art project, leading up to an exhibition planned for early 2013. In September and October there were two training sessions in WP editing for British Museum volunteers and researchers and curators, which unearthed several existing Wikipedians at the British Museum. In October there was a behind the Scenes event at Franks House, where the museum stores its prehistoric material. Jill Cook and Nick Ashton introduced Ice Age carvings mostly on bone and antler, and earlier stone tools respectively, and we're very grateful to them for giving so generously of their time. After lunch attendees returned to the main British Museum building at Bloomsbury, where Jill Cook talked on the material displayed in Room 2 and the Enlightenment Gallery. Pat Hadley (PatHadley), a Wikipedian archaeology postgrad from York, also talked on the material from Star Carr in Yorkshire; he is part of the team working on this very important site.
Over 100 photos have been uploaded to Commons, and progess on articles is detailed at the project page.
There is also a quieter long-term project to improve coverage of Bronze Age archaeology. I have been sent several PDFs of papers which I can forward by email etc on request; mostly they cover important British sites. They are listed at the project page. There hasn't been a lot of action here so far, so please contact me if you are interested.
British Library
In October two Wikimedia UK trustees, Roger Bamkin (Victuallers) and Fæ, addressed an enthusiatic audience of fifty British library staff on Wikipedia and the opportunities for collaboration. There are having internal discussions on their image policy.
We are planning a guided tour of the British Library exhibition on their Royal collection of manuscripts, with a session afterwards to discuss what we can add to the projects on this topic. Date will probably be in mid-January - watch out for an announcement.
John Byrne (Johnbod) is now working, with help from the library, on the article for the St Cuthbert or Stonyhurst Gospel, which the British Library has agreed to buy for £9 million. They are collecting funds from large donors now, and planning a more public phase of the appeal in the New Year.
GLAM started in Italy: knowledge sharing, wine, and great scientists
Since July 2011 the GLAM project is also on the Italian Wikipedia.
Share Your Knowledge
From the GLAM menu you can access the Share Your Knowledge step by step procedure for cultural institutions developed within WikiAfrica project by Wikimedia Italy and lettera27 Foundation. Share Your Knowledge contributes to the GLAM project and it involved in 2011 in its pilot phase 10 Italian cultural institutions and the South African Africa Centre (it)
- Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus (it)
- Careof DOCVA (it)
- Connecting Cultures (it)
- COSV (it)
- Festival Cinema Africano Asia e America Latina (it)
- Fondazione Cariplo (it)
- Fondazione ISMU (it)
- Kunstverein (Milan) (it)
- Nigrizia (it)
- Officina GRIOT (it)
All institutions involved in Share Your Knowledge had their director or board sign an agreement in which they committed to share their knowledge; they adopted a Creative Commons attribution share-alike CC BY-SA license on their website or on selected pages of their website and they invited their staff, collaborators and network to contribute to Wikipedia.
We are currently working in enriching each institution case study; it was made a template for every institution to be shown in the talk pages of new or enlarged articles; their contributions to Wikipedia are observed and evaluated through visual representations by academic researchers.
Results
Some significant results are the upload on Wikipedia in Italian and in English and on Wikimedia Commons of Artgate Fondazione Cariplo: the digital catalogue of the Cariplo Foundation art collection spanning the period from the 1st century BC to the second half of the 20th century; the foundation – which is the major Italian bank foundation – adopted the CC BY-SA license on all the documentation and in November 23rd, 2011 hosts a training on Creative Commons and Wikipedia dedicated to the staff of all its departments.
The Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus upload in high resolution on Wikimedia Commons 1.896 photos of documents on northern Italy history, among which parchments on Villa Serbelloni Sfondrati currently Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
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Share Your Knowledge Workshop May 2011 -
Graphic evaluation of Share Your Knowledge (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano) -
Graphic evaluation of Share Your Knowledge (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano) -
Graphic evaluation of Share Your Knowledge / Fondazione Cariplo (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano)
Share Your Knowledge is specifically involving 2 tutors, 2 lawyers and Remulazz – the Wikipedian in Residence at lettera27 Foundation since March 2011.
Examples
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Francesco Hayez, The Death of Abradates, 1813
(Fondazione Cariplo) -
Sale of feud, 1538
(Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus / Archivio Pietro Pensa)
Numbers
(as of mid-Novembr 2011)
- 10 Italian institutions
- 1 South African institution
- 459 articles
- 860.302 bytes
- 2993 images
Agreement with La Vigna International Library
Wikimedia Italia in October 5, 2011 signed an agreement with La Vigna International Library (Biblioteca Internazionale La Vigna), a specialized library with 50,000+ volumes in various languages about viticulture, enology, and gastronomy - the most important library in his field.
Wikimedia Italia will help La Vigna Library in its digitalization project of historical texts. The scanned books will be available on Wikisource, where the two are already online, transcribed and proofread:
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The agreement was signed in a public conference in Vicenza, during the Digital Freedoms Festival in Italy, 3d edition, created and promoted by Wikimedia Italia. The program will develop in the next 2 years.
Scientia
Along with the collaboration with Biblioteca "La Vigna", the Italian Wikisource started a wikiproject called Scientia, which aims is to upload, transcribe and proofread few dozens of issues of the International scientific journal Scientia (1910-1988, formerly Rivista di scienza, 1907-1909).
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The journal has been published in 4 different languages, and includes (original) articles from scientists from all around the world, as Giuseppe Peano, Enrico Fermi, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Rutherford, Hendrik Lorentz, Sigmund Freud, Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and many, many more.
The biggest challenge of the project is the coordination of all the Wikisource involved, namely it.source, fr.source, de.source, en.source. Users from those project are already at work.
The whole journal has been published on AMS Historica, ancient texts digital collection of AlmaDL, the digital library of the University of Bologna. They agreed in releasing the original djvu files to Commons, for the Wikimedia community to use.
The journal can be viewed here:
One pilot issue is complete and ready to be proofread.
Other issue are in the process of being transcribed:
Da luglio 2011 il progetto GLAM è presente anche su Wikipedia in Italiano.
Share Your Knowledge
Dal menu GLAM è possibile accedere alla procedura guidata di Share Your Knowledge per istituzioni culturali sviluppata dal progetto WikiAfrica di Wikimedia Italia e la Fondazione lettera27. Share Your Knowledge contribuisce al progetto GLAM e nel 2011 coinvolge nella propria fase pilota 10 istituzioni culturali italiane e il sudafricano Africa Centre (progetto)
- Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus (progetto)
- Careof DOCVA (progetto)
- Connecting Cultures (progetto)
- COSV (progetto)
- Festival Cinema Africano Asia e America Latina (progetto)
- Fondazione Cariplo (progetto)
- Fondazione ISMU (progetto)
- Kunstverein (Milano) (progetto)
- Nigrizia (progetto)
- Officina GRIOT (progetto)
Tutte le istituzioni coinvolte in Share Your Knowledge hanno firmato un accordo con il quale si sono impegnati a condividere il proprio sapere; hanno adottato una licenza Creative Commons attribution share-alike CC BY-SA sui propri siti internet o su particolari pagine dei propri siti e hanno invitato staff, collaboratori e reti a contribuire a Wikipedia.
Stiamo lavorando per arricchire il caso di studio di ogni istituzione; è stato creato un template per ogni istituzione da inserire nelle pagine di discussione di articoli nuovi o ampliati; i loro contributi a Wikipedia sono monitorati e valutati tramite una rappresentazione grafica da ricercatori universitari.
Risultati
Alcuni risultati significativi sono il caricamento su Wikipedia in italiano e in inglese e su Wikimedia Commons di Artgate, il catalogo digitale della collezione d'arte della Fondazione Cariplo che copre il periodo dal I secolo a.C. alla seconda metà del XX secolo; la fondazione – che è la più grande fondazione bancaria italiana – ha adottato la licenza CC BY-SA su tutta la documentazione e il 23 novembre ospita un corso di formazione su Creative Commons e Wikipedia per lo staff di tutti i propri reparti.
L'Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus ha caricato in alta risoluzione su Wikimedia Commons 1.896 foto di documenti sulla storia del nord Italia, tra i quali pergamene su Villa Serbelloni Sfondrati attualmente Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
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Incontro Share Your Knowledge (maggio 2011)
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Valutazione grafica di Share Your Knowledge (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano)
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Valutazione grafica di Share Your Knowledge (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano)
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Valutazione grafica di Share Your Knowledge - Fondazione Cariplo (DensityDesign Research Lab - Dipartimento INDACO - Politecnico di Milano)
Share Your Knowledge coinvolge specificatamente 2 tutor, 2 avvocati e Remulazz – il wikipediano in residenza presso la Fondazione lettera27 da marzo 2011.
Esempi
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Francesco Hayez, La morte di Abradate, 1813
(Fondazione Cariplo) -
Vendita di feudo, 1538
(Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus / Archivio Pietro Pensa)
Numeri
(aggiornato Nov. 15, 2011)
- 10 istituzioni italiane
- 1 istituzione sudafricana
- 459 articoli
- 860.302 bytes
- 2993 immagini
Accordo con la Biblioteca Internazionale La Vigna
Wikimedia Italia il 5 ottobre 2011 ha firmato un accordo con la Biblioteca Internazionale La Vigna, una biblioteca specializzata con 50,000+ volumi in varie lingue su viticultura, enologia e gastronomia - la più importante biblioteca nel proprio campo.
Wikimedia Italia aiuterà la Biblioteca Internazionale La Vigna nel suo progetto di digitalizzazione di testi storici. Le scansioni dei libri saranno disponibili su Wikisource, dove sono già stati trascritti e riletti
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L'accordo è stato firmato in una conferenza pubblica a Vicenza, durante il Festival delle Libertà Digitali in Italia, terza edizione, manifestazione creata e promossa da Wikimedia Italia. Il programma si svilupperà durante i prossimi due anni.
Scientia
Oltre alla collaborazione con la Biblioteca La Vigna, Wikisource in italiano ha iniziato un progetto chiamato Scientia, che si propone di caricare, trascrivere e revisionare poche dozzine di uscite della rivista scientifica internazionale Scientia (1910-1988, in precedenza Rivista di scienza, 1907-1909).
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La rivista fu pubblicata in 4 lingue e include articoli (originali) di scienziati di tutto il mondo, come Giuseppe Peano, Enrico Fermi, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Rutherford, Hendrik Lorentz, Sigmund Freud, Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath e molti altri.
La sfida principale del progetto è il coordinamento di tutti i Wikisource coinvolti, cioè it.source, fr.source, de.source, en.source. Gli utenti di quei progetti sono già all'opera.
L'intera rivista è stata pubblicata su AMS Historica, collezione digitale di antichi testi di AlmaDL, la biblioteca digitale dell'Università di Bologna. Hanno acconsentito a rilasciare a Commons i file originali DJVU, per essere utilizzati dalla comunità di Wikimedia.
La rivista può essere visionata qui:
Un numero pilota è completo e pronto per essere revisionato.
È in corso la trascrizione di altri numeri:
Wiki Loves Monuments and workshops in Barcelona
From Wiki Loves Monuments to the Official Heritage inventory
A selection of 4,000 photographs of Wiki Loves Monuments will be gradually included to the Official Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Catalonia, after a review by its technicians. It will also be the first time that material provided by Wikipedians becomes part of a public inventory managed by the Official Cultural Heritage Institution of the Government of Catalonia.
Workshop on Digital Cultural Heritage and Living Labs
Àlex Hinojo (Kippelboy), from Amical Viquipèdia, presented on the GLAM project during the Workshop on Digital Cultural Heritage and Living Labs that last 23rd of November took place at Citilab, a Living Lab of Barcelona.
The main goals of this project are to contribute large quantities of new content to Europeana, from both the public and private sectors; to demonstrate enhancement of quality of content, in terms of metadata richness, re-use potential and uniqueness; to demonstrate enable improved search, retrieval and use of Europeana content.
Australian Paralympic Committee and other Australian GLAM efforts
Australian Paralympic Committee
The work done by Paralympians and others involved with disabled sport in Queensland at the 31 October Brisbane workshop continued after the event. Participants continued to improve their articles and were supported by other, more established contributors from Australia.
Project space was created for the project on Outreach Wiki as History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia. The purpose of the space was to provide an easy way to access HOPAU related efforts across multiple Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia, Commons and Wikiversity.
The Australian Paralympic Committee hired Nick Gregory Roberts to help with scanning of images, and uploading of sound and videos related to the Paralympic movement in Australia. There were 94 images donated in the original batch. In early November, the APC, with Nick's help, was in the process of compiling media related to the 1998 Winter Games and the 1992 Summer Games for sharing on Commons.
After the 31 October 2011 workshop and in relation to our GLAM newsletter blurb, there were several conversations about writing about Paralympians and best writing practices. Are people who competed at the Paralympics Paralympians or former Paralympians? How should the Paralympic Games be described in article text? How does the Australian Paralympic Committee capitalise these nouns? Does this differ from how English Wikipedia treats Paralympic related nouns? To answer these questions, a lot of work was put into working on a style guide to help contributors to the project understand the difference between Wikipedia suggested wording practices and Australian Paralympic suggested wording practices when it came to names related to the Paralympic Games and describing disability sport and sportspeople. The plan is to create a one to two page worksheet with this information that can be distributed at future Wiki Workshops, or to include it in existing training materials like Editing sport biographies on Wikipedia.
There was a bit of a push to create a number of Did You Knows, including one nomination which featured 8 expanded articles: Bradley Ness, Justin Eveson, Shaun Norris, Michael Hartnett, Brett Stibners, Brendan Dowler and Benjamin James Ettridge. Other articles nominated for or that appeared as Did You Knows during November include Troy Sachs, Ashley Adams, Steve Graham, Casey Redford, Evan O'Hanlon, Brendan Burkett, Jessica Gallagher , Cobi Crispin, Julianne Adams, Kevin McIntosh, Karni Liddell, Hamish MacDonald, Branka Pupovac, Angie Ballard, Cameron de Burgh, Karen Farrell, Matthew Cowdrey, Sam Bramham, and Elizabeth Wright. The DYK about Gerry Hewson that appeared on 8 November had 12,800 views on the day. The DYK about Troy Sachs that appeared on 10 November 2011 had 2,900 views.
Article improvement efforts for taking an article to DYK often mean expanding an article five fold, or adding around 250 words about a competitor. This naturally leads to the article being more comprehensive. For Australian Paralympic articles, this improvement has led to an increase in visits to the articles. Two examples include the articles for tennis player Branka Pupovac, shot putter Hamish MacDonald, wheelchair racer Angie Ballard. Before expansion, their articles averaged 1 view, 3 views and 3 views per day. This has increased to 6 views per day, 12 views per day and 10 views per day.
On 8 November, John Vandenberg did a meta data analysis of female Australian Paralympians on Wikipedia. 46 of the articles were identified as lacking date of birth information or were not classified in a living person category. There are roughly 250 total articles about Australian Paralympians on English Wikipedia. This represents a large percentage of missing metadata. To give a frame of reference, amongst non-Paralympic female Australian sportspeople, only six out of a thousand women lacked date of birth information or were not classified in a living person category. A request was put on the project's mailing list for help providing this missing data. Within a few hours, many of the articles had birthday data included on the articles, with the information properly cited. It drew from publications created by the Australian Paralympic Committee that is slowly being migrated online to be of use to Wikipedians who desire to help with the effort to help write the Paralympic movement in Australia.
One of the goals of the HOPAU project is to improve Australian Paralympic content, with the belief that as Australian content improves, other Paralympic content will be improved. As of November 10, 10% of all Australian Paralympic content was assessed better than Stub. As of 13 November 2011, 13% of all articles were better than stubs as there was a push to fix articles. This compares to 13% of all articles that are part of the Paralympic Taskforce. We're hoping that we can get the Australian number closer to 50% by the time of the Summer Paralympics in 2012.
One of the exciting things that the HOPAU project has been working on is trying to contribute to Spoken Wikipedia. The first article was done when Chris Nunn recorded a spoken word version of the article about himself. Spoken word versions of articles by their subjects is important to the project for two reasons: First, the Australian Paralympic Committee is contributing to Wikipedia by making articles related to Paralympians more accessible to people with disabilities. Second, it is pretty cool and adds another dimension to the article by giving listeners another idea about the article's subject.
Nunn's spoken word version of his article was a first for English Wikipedia, and was mentioned in the 21 November Signpost. There are plans to get more Australian Paralympians to do spoken word versions of their articles.
On a sad news note, 1992 Paralympic gold medalists and 1988 Paralympic silver medalist Catherine Huggett passed away on 13 November 2011. Several Wikipedians including Hawkeye7, John Vandenberg, Steven Zhang and LauraHale worked on improving the article about her after they learned the news.
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One of the ongoing conversations between Wikipedians involved with the History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia project has been disability classification. It is an issue that can be highly controversial: Competitors may complain they have been classified above their classification or opponents may argue the competitor's is too low. Classification issues may result in a competitor being disqualified from participating at the Paralympic Games, which happened to Australian Paralympian Jessica Gallagher. Understanding classification as it relates to what happens at the Games is important. Beyond that, from a spectator perspective, understanding classification is important in order to know what is happening. Swimmer Sam Bramham is an S9 swimmer. Andrew Newell is T20 athletics competitor. Troy Sachs is a 4.5 point player. What does this mean? It can often come off to those not familiar with disability sport as complete gibberish. How can we as a project work to address this issue on English Wikipedia? After some discussion, at our Perth workshop, our Canberra training,on IRC and on our mailing list, articles were created for disability sport classification for swimming, basketball and athletics. These articles can be found in Category:Disability sport classifications. The articles aren't specific to our project and can be useful to other national Paralympic Committees. One of the plans in the future is to create articles about all disability sport classifications that are used at the Paralympic Games. The Australian Paralympic Committee is thinking about media they could donate that could help to provide additional clarity regarding these classifications.
The image donation related to early November efforts was started on 25 November 2011, with pictures from the 1988 Winter Paralympics. The skiing picture is an example of one of the images donated in this initial batch. The project is looking for help with the identification of people in those pictures. The lack of identifying people before uploading was identified as a risk but the GLAM contributors including LauraHale and John Vandenberg felt it was worth it. It would help bring in community involvement and demonstrate the power of the community on WMF related projects.
Encouraging Paralympians and others to donate images has been one of of the major efforts of this GLAM outreach effort. Images can help increase understanding of who a person is and how a sport is played. The process can be a bit confusing. We've started developing a guide at Uploading Sport pictures to Commons to explain basic issues like copyright and how to upload, with an intention of having the guide more formalised before our next workshop.
One of the goals of the APC efforts is to improve the overall quality of the articles by trying to get several articles listed as Good Articles, a status no Australian Paralympic related article yet holds. Hawkeye7 took a first major step in this effort by nominating the Priya Cooper article for good. Even if it does not pass, it will be a good experience for project participants to watch as it will help to increase understanding of what exactly goes into writing a Good Article.
The project's Wikimedian in Residence, LauraHale will be attending GLAMcamp Amsterdam in the Netherlands from 2–4 December.
Wikipedia Takes…
Australia has yet to embrace the Wiki Love Monuments movement in its current form, but in September the first Australian photo scavenger hunt was held in Fremantle, Western Australia. This resulted in hundreds of photos being uploaded to Commons, and good feedback from the fifteen or so participants. Wikipedia Takes Fremantle was organised in collaboration with the Fremantle Society, members of which enjoyed it so much that they organised a second run, this time in conjunction with the Fremantle Festival on 19 November.
A separate scavenger hunt was run in Perth's northern centre of Joondalup on 26 November, in partnership with the City of Joondalup Library, who provided a venue and helped to organise publicity. It attracted some local press attention (newspaper and radio), and on the day had eight participants and produced over 500 photos.
There are plans to continue with similar events around the country, in the form of Wikipedia loves… my town events which will take the form of more focused photographic competitions in which participants submit images that express important aspects of their local area, anywhere in Australia or New Zealand.
State Library of Queensland
The State Library of Queensland is starting to use QR Codes. While they may not be linking to Wikipedia and other WMF Projects using their Codes, they have provided some insight that might be of interest to other GLAMs. Elli Torres wrote a paper titled "What's black and white and read all over? QR Code initiatives at SLQ" that looks at their efforts. Michelle Swales, State Library of Queensland and Chris Bermingham, Western Downs Regional Council published a paper in September 2011 titled Getting Queensland Out There, Building local content on Wikipedia in partnership with public libraries that also examines library practices in regards to Wikipedia. The State Library of Queensland has previously donated a large collection of images to Commons.
Craig Franklin, Leigh Blackall and John Vandenberg ran a training session with SLQ on 31 October 2011, with staff from libraries around South East Queensland and members of the Paralympic community.
- Articles created during the training session
- User:Stownsend5/Bathing Costume Protests - Sydney 1907 - renamed to w:Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/1907 Sydney bathing costume protests • commons:Special:Contributions/Stownsend5
- User:BrianRandall/East Street Ipswich Queensland • commons:Special:Contributions/BrianRandall
- w:User:Bmulatiningsih/Matthew Pepper • commons:Special:Contributions/Bmulatiningsih
- w:User:Cap Lib/Capalaba Library • commons:Special:Contributions/Cap Lib
- w:User:Mistsoot/History of the Pine Rivers Timber Industry - renamed to w:Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/History of the Pine Rivers Timber Industry • Mistsoot
- w:User:Gcculture vulture/Southport Pier, Gold Coast, Australia • commons:Special:Contributions/Gcculture vulture
- w:User:Nasusb/Yungaba Immigration Centre • commons:Special:Contributions/Nasusb
- User:Qldcowboy/Mayes Cottage • Qldcowboy
- w:User:Harbison/Wynnum Wading Pool • commons:Special:Contributions/Harbison
- w:User:Mrsinna/Queensland's first railway • commons:Special:Contributions/Mrsinna
- w:User:Carmel Williams/Queensland Paralympians • commons:Special:Contributions/Carmel Williams
- w:User:Ruth gardiner/Rainfall at Gumahah • Ruth gardiner
- w:User:Eihpost/Christie Palmerston • Eihpost
- w:User:L15AML15AM/Q1 Construction • L15AML15AM
- w:User:Theepsteins/Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association • Theepsteins
- w:User:Kazlb/Justins Park - renamed to w:Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Justins Park • Kazlb
- w:User:Bccarch/Brisbane Street Naming • Bccarch
- w:User:Kimenglish/Jack Venman - published to Jack Venman • Kimenglish
- User:Youngseone/Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism • Youngseone
- w:User:Uqmphill/george bedbrook • Uqmphill
- w:User:AdrienneK/John Martin Paralympian • AdrienneK
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia's work with Wikipedia was mentioned in The Culture Quarter on ABC24. Wikimedian Liam Wyatt, who pushed and helped create WMF's GLAM project, was interviewed for and appeared in the segment that aired on 20 October 2011.
Trove is a project by the National Library of Australia. They have made it easy for Wikipedians to cite their digital newspaper collection by having a copy and pastable Wikipedia reference code that can easily be copied into articles. Recently, they reached a milestone of 6 million pages of digitised newspapers. Newspapers they have recently digitised include the Oakleigh Leader, the Healesville Guardian and the Yarra Glen Advocate.
National Library of New Zealand
New Zealand is not in Australia, but as there isn't a New Zealand chapter and Wikimedia Australia is trying to do greater outreach in the region we're happy to include them in Australia. Stuartyeates is a New Zealander active in the GLAM sector. He will be doing a demonstration at the National Digital Forum sponsored by the National Library of New Zealand at Te Papa Tongarewa (the national Museum of New Zealand), Wellington around 29 November 2011 where he will mention Wikimedia's contributions to the GLAM sector.
Wikimedia Indonesia
The Chair of Wikimedia Indonesia was in Australia in November, and discussed GLAM efforts in Indonesia at the Sydney and Canberra meetups. She discussed the collaboration between Wikimedia Indonesia and the Lontar Foundation. The closest thing to a GLAM project in the country involved a partnership with a library, and local chapter did not describe this work using GLAM to talk about it but referred to these efforts as partnerships and as part of strategic efforts to improve content.
Wikimedia conference Netherlands
On the Saturday 5th of November there was a Wikimedia conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The conference was attended by around 120 persons, of which only around 40-50 were 'Wikipedians' Besides the Wikipedians there were a lot of persons from cultural organisations like museums, and there where some general Internet interested persons.
The conference was devided into three tracks: The Wiki-world track, the Incore Wikimedia track, and offcourse the Cultural heritage (GLAM) track. There was an general opening word from Jill Cousins, and at the end of the conference the Dutch winners from Wiki loves Monuments were anounced.
The Cultural heritage tracks
The Cultural heritage track was most of the time visited by a lot of proffesionals from the cultural heritage sector, and beside that some enthousiastic Wikimedians. There were 9 sessions/speakers during the day at the cultural heritage track:
- GLAMwiki overview
Maarten Dammers gave an overview of past successes from around the world.
- Wiki Loves Monuments
Some statistics and goals from Wiki Loves Monuments were presented by Maarten Dammers and Lodewijk Gelauff.
- The benefits of donating collections;
Maarten Zeinstra, who was involved in the donation of the Spaarnestad photo collection from the donating side talked about the benefits and problems with donating a collection. With statistics from the use of the 1000 donated images, the Spaarnestad Photo collection was a specifically selected group of pictures.
- Creative Commons in use
Sebastiaan ter Burg (a proffesional photographer) releases all his pictures under a free Creative Commons license, he talked about the benefits and about things to watch out for. The business model works with a fee per hour, not per picture.
- Open Beelden, open media platform
Johan Oomen talked about Open Beelden. Open beelden is a collection of videos where workes can be remixed. A lot of videos have been donated to Wikimedia Commons
- Wikiwijs, use of open content in education
Wikiwijs is a project in which teachers can work together to create and mainly share lessons, most teachers have their own material and if it is good enough to be used in class? Why wouldn't it be good enough for other teachers to use in class? Speaker: Jan-Bart de Vreede
- Discussion session
There was a discussion session between people working at GLAM's and Wikimedians.Some topics were: Donating a non-selected versus a pre-selected small collection. And the problem with exposure on wiki-articles where the image are being used.
- WikiDelft
Marjolein Beumer or Marie-France van Oorsouw talked about a wiki created by the heritage organisation from the city of Delft. A small wiki with 300 users about the city. The concept is that everybody sais the true, and articles are written in this way. An interesting thing is how their search tool is connected to the museums collection. On their Mediawiki site you can search the normal way, but it also shows results from the collection which can be dragged as pictures into articles.
- Expedition project
Frank Meijer talked about the coöperation between the Tropenmuseum and Wikimedia. He also discussed his feature plans.
Wiki Loves Monuments
After all the sessions the final results from Wiki Loves Monuments where anounced. Lodewijk gave a short introduction, and results were presented by jury member Basvb. Most of the winners could make it to Utrecht this year. The winner was a wonderful picture of a small village mood in the classical dutch village, Marken. More winners can be found here.
Metrics, Freedom of panorama and Museomix
Working about partnerships for 2012
During the month of November work continued on projects with various museums. Adrienne Alix is currently finalizing partnership agreements with several major museums in Toulouse and Paris.
Several Wikimedians had appointments or contacts with cultural institutions that are likely to result in partnerships or joint actions. We hope to announce these new projects in early 2012!
Some metrics about the Museum of Toulouse
Among the partnerships that work well, we can do an update of the work at the Museum of Toulouse with some numbers: Today we have 842 pictures from the Museum of Toulouse, all made by Wikimedians.
The aim of this project is to take photos of high quality. Of these 842 photographs, 140 (16%) are IQ on Wikimedia Commons, and 112 (13%) are VI on Wikimedia Commons.
The pictures are disseminated on a large number of Wikimedia projects, whether Wikipedia, Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikinews etc.. : 533 (63%) are used on a project, there are 7691 uses in total. The images are present on 193 different projects. 95 projects contain at least five images from Phoebus Project.
There is still a lot of work, but the group is highly motivated and the result is enjoyed by all, especially by the Museum of Toulouse.
All the photos are available on Commons.
Museomix
The 11-12-13 November, Jean-Fred and Benoit Evellin (Trizek) participated in a museographical experimentation: Museomix. The principle of Museomix was to bring together all actors in the digital cultural world and museums to experiment concretely "the museum of the future". The event was organized in the «Musée des Arts décoratifs» (Museum about decorative arts and design in Paris).
Wikimedia France decided to participate in the experiment. This was an opportunity to meet many interesting people for our actions in museums, but it was difficult to link the projects developed during Museomix with the content of Wikimedia projects(and vice versa). People were there to set up to mount « funny » exhibition concepts and there was not enough space for the contents (and thus deep connections with the Wikimedia projects). This brings us to think more about what should be our place with cultural institutions: working about the content and not necessarily about new and « funny » digital experiences.
The conclusion is mixed but Benoit and Jean-Fred do not regret having spent three days in this very intense experience.
The website of Museomix is available here : http://www.museomix.com/
An exhibition on Wikimedia Commons!
Léna and PierreSelim have photographed an entire exhibition of paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse and grouped the pictures on Commons by installing them room by room in french, to keep the meaning of the exhibition [intime 1]. This is a very interesting way to present the content, perhaps an innovation on Wikimedia Commons?
To view the exhibition on Wikimedia Commons: Petits théâtres de l'intime
Notes
- ↑ names have also been translated in english by now
Freedom of Panorama
In France there is currently no freedom of panorama. On November 23 a law was debated in the French National Assembly, in which two deputies have submitted an amendment to introduce freedom of panorama in France.
This amendment is a direct result of the actions of Wikimedia France. Remi Mathis, president of the chapter, was very active to defend freedom of panorama and explain to these deputies the importance of introducing freedom of panorama in the French law to value the cultural richness of France.
The amendment was unfortunately not accepted. It was dubbed during the session "Wikipedia Amendment." We are disappointed that it was not adopted, but this passage in the National Assembly has given high visibility to the problem among politicians and we are now able to explain to each political party the importance of this issue . The year 2012 is an important election year in France (presidential election and the election of deputies), we have a way to influence legislation.
You can see the video of the debate in the National Assembly and the transcript here.
Students write articles in Mexico city
- the authors are members of the Wikipedia club at ITESM-CCM in Mexico City as well as Advanced English students who worked with Wikipedia as part of their last English requirement. In this article they talk about the results of the Festival Cervantino article-writing project.
Festival Cervantino article-writing project
During the month of October into November, a number of students from ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México worked on an informal project related to Mexico’s Festival (Internacional) Cervantino. The project consisted of writing articles about the festival itself and about the artists involved in it. In total, we wrote or improved thirty-five articles in English and wrote or translated twenty-one articles in Spanish.
Our first step was to contact the press people from Festival Cervantino in order to get more information about the festival and the artists invited. At the same time we began to contact the embassies of the specially invited countries of this year’s event: Finland, Norway and Sweden, who kindly sent us information about the artists from these countries. In addition, we contacted artists from other countries such as Emplume from Canada, Sandra Pani from Mexico, Beta Collide from Germany, Hugo Ticciati from England and the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra from Sweden, who helped us with information and also donated some images to upload into Wikipedia Commons.
From 21 to 24 October, Sheila Piña and Fernando Rosas had the opportunity to go to the Festival with press passes. These were obtained by student Itzel Polin, who in addition to working with Club Wikipedia, also hosts a radio show called “Zona Verde,” so she received the passes in exchange for an interview with Dr. Lidia Camacho, the director of the Festival. These passes allowed these students to assist to several press conferences with some of the artists and to take pictures, which are being uploaded to Wikipedia Commons.
During this same month we were also able to collaborate with Matt Senate, who is the Campus Ambassador for California and Hawaii. He came to our university and talked about why the use of Wikipedia is important in the student community and also what the Campus Ambassadors program is. Our collaboration consisted in communicating with Matt before the presentation to help him prepare the subjects of matter in ITESM. Two students (Sheila and Fernando), also had the opportunity to go on stage and talk about their experience with the Club Wikipedia and the Festival Cervantino.
A GLAM project like the Festival Cervantino is very helpful academically as it helped us not only with writing in a foreign language, but also giving us chances to use English in real settings doing real intercultural communication. In addition, doing projects like these can help our later professional careers, as they can be included in our résumés.
In addition to Fernando Rosas (Tlilmiztli), Sheila Piña (Sheila Piña) and Itzel Polin (ItzelP), other participants in the project include Diego Adame (Diego Adame), Tarssis Dessavre Oliva (Tarssis Dessavre Oliva), Andrea V (AndiieVga), Itzel Ruiz (Itzel.Ruiz), Marisa, Rodrigo Gonzalez (Gangales22), Ricardo Reyes (Reyes richie), Paola Hong (PaolaHong), Mike131991, Sofia Martínez (SofiaMC04), Aly Escamilla (Alyescamilla), Copetevic and Luugoo. Special thanks to Professor Rafael Borghese and Alex Hinojo (Kippelboy) to helping us make the Festival Internacional Cervantino page in Spanish perfect.
Wiki Loves Monuments in Russia
Wiki Loves Monuments in Russia / Wiki Loves Monuments в России
more photos from the exhibition >>
Владимир Медейко, директор НП Викимедиа РУ, использует QR-код, чтобы прочесть о памятнике с фотографии
больше фотографий с выставки >>
cc-by-sa 3.0, Александр Скибицкий
TV100 in Russia ran a story «Вики любит памятники» about Wikimedia Russia's Wiki Love Monuments. Full details about the project's exhibition "Википедия любит Петербург" can be found at Фотопроект «Википедия любит Петербург» | Википедия любит Петербург. Images uploaded to Commons in support of the project are located at Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 in Russia/Exhibition. The exhibition is using QRpedia, and organizers are encouraging people to help provide translations of material in other languages for use in their displays.
Another story about the exhibition was made by the videonewspaper artway.tv: Открытие выставки «Википедия любит Петербург» в арт-отеле «Рахманинов».
Российский телеканал 100 выпустил сюжет «Вики любит памятники» о конкурсе НП Викимедиа РУ Википедия любит Петербург. Подробную информацию об одноименной выставке проекта можно найти на странице Фотопроект «Википедия любит Петербург» | Википедия любит Петербург. Изображения, загруженные на Викисклад в рамках проекта, доступны на странице Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 in Russia/Exhibition. Выставка использует QRpedia, и организаторы призывают всех помочь переводить материалы на другие языки.
Другой сюжет о выставке был сделан видеогазетой artway.tv: Открытие выставки «Википедия любит Петербург» в арт-отеле «Рахманинов».
Astronomical Observatory of La Plata
Astronomical Observatory of La Plata
In November 2011, Wikimedia Argentina held a meetup at La Plata Astronomical Observatory. Photographs of the meetup can be found on Flickr. The event was attended mostly by local Wikimedians, and included workshops for new editors. Several students and professors from La Plata University attended, along with Matthew Roth who took videos for Wikimedia Foundation's fundraiser. The meetup included a session for librarians where they learned how to scan books, using a "Do It Yourself" Book Scanner. The group worked on scanning an astronomy text from 1764, which is already uploaded to Commons.
First steps towards cultural partnerships
This month "GLAM fellow" Liam Wyatt (Wittylama) and WMF Head of Global South relationships Asaf Bartov (Ijon) visited several countries in Asia to spread the message of GLAM!
Japan
Wikimedians in Japan have been active for some time, most notably with the "Wikimedians in Kansai" group. However, there has not previously been any direct contact with the cultural sector. We ran several outreach events including a public lecture in Yokohama during the annual librarians' conference (2011年11月11日（金）、パシフィコ横浜にて開催。通訳あり). At this event we also met with the "Save MLAK(en/zh/Wiki of the Month at Semantic-MediaWiki.org)" community (K = Kominkans, Japanese community centres) who are coordinating to restore to their former state many cultural heritage organisations damaged or destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year. There is great potential for collaboration between the Wikimedia and Save MLAK groups. We also ran a Wikipedia academy in Kyoto summary page (2011年11月13日（日）、花園大学にて開催。通訳あり。詳細は を参照。)
Korea
In Seoul Liam and Asaf met with the local community at a wikimeetup hosted at Daum Communications (one of the biggest web-portals and search engines in Korea). Among other things we learned that because of the strong popularity of local search engines (including Daum) that do not rank the Korean Wikipedia as highly as Google does for English, and also because of a rival wiki that has much lower notability standards, the visibility of the Korean Wikipedia is relatively low considering the digital-connectedness of Korean society.
The main event of the visit was the first "Korea Wikipedia Academy" which was held at the National Library in the separate "digital library" building. There were 3 sessions, speeches about GLAM and Wikipedia, workshop for Librarians and Wikipedians and Edit-a-thon on some collections for the 66th anniversary of the library. Korean Wikipedians are now going to have a regular edit-a-thons at the conference rooms which are open to public.
At the conference, Liam introduced GLAM movement and librarians showed interests on how to create QRcode for an Wikipedia article and Asaf explained what Wikimedians are making efforts on to attract academic contributors. Presiding Judge of Incheon High Court Jay Jongsu Yoon, the founder of Creative Commons Korea, presented how Wikipedia is an important partner of Creative Commons and those two are sharing visions. Manjai Lee who is a research fellow of Seoul National University talked the history of Wikipedia and important decisions it made.
At the workshop for Librarians and Wikipedians, Jino Park - who is a research librarian working on meta data and digital platform for the library, what the National Library is planing for digital library. Ryu Cheol proposed possible collaboration projects such as OCR scanning and Wikipedia in Residence. At the edit-a-thon, volunteer Wikipedians showed how to edit Wikipedia article and discuss. They edited a few articles early modern Hangul books published in Korea around 1910~1920.
After the Korean activities, Liam continued to Qatar [see This Month in GLAM coverage] and Asaf went to the Philippines (see below).
Philippines
In Manila, some members of Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH) and Asaf met with the Deputy Executive Director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and some department heads, and presented GLAM ideas and sample projects. They were well-received, and a second meeting with the chairman of the NCCA and the commissioners for each of the four letters of GLAM will follow. NCCA approval would be key to creating cultural partnerships in the Philippines.
Later that week, WMPH and Asaf gave a GLAM talk at the National Library of the Philippines, before the Director and several department heads. The Library is interested in exploring possible partnerships further.
Still later, WMPH and Asaf met with the director of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, where they raised several concerns, including the legal question of Freedom of Panorama, the false copyright statements on many government Web sites including their own (e.g. "all rights reserved" when Philippines law states all government work is in the public domain), and the fact government statistics are not made freely available to the public. The director agreed to look into all these matters, and welcomes further cooperation with WMPH on matters related to intellectual property, including joint outreach possibilities.
GLAM comes to the Arabian gulf
As described in the November 28 edition of The Signpost and the ICTQatar blogpost, Liam Wyatt (Wittylama) visited Doha at the invitation of ictQATAR and Creative Common Qatar to introduce GLAM-Wiki concepts to the local cultural sector. Highlights include:
- Meeting with the Taghreedat team, a local group who are trying to localise twitter for Arabic (can you believe it's not already!). Liam introduced them to Translatewiki and it is very likely they might form a nexus of activity on Arabic mediawiki localisation. At the same meeting there was also interest (from an institute associated with ICTQatat for software disability services) in making sure MediaWiki works well for the visually impaired in Arabic.
- Presentation to the the Qatar Museums Authority community (slides). The QMA, and specifically the Museum of Islamic Art, are very interested in getting their content out and signing up to the GLAM movement. The country is building several world-class museums all at once they want to get their digital policies right from the start, so they are interested in having Wikimedia integrated to their systems/practices. One of the main problem is that there is not a very vibrant editing community in Qatar and there's even less of a general museum-going culture - bridging these gaps will be the primary challenge for GLAM-wiki collaboration in the Arabian Gulf region generally. In the near future Wikimedia may receive a few "low hanging fruit" images from different institutions so we can gather some usage statistics. In the longer term there was much interest in the idea of coordinating a global-edit-a-thon simultaneously across multiple museums around the world focusing on improving content related to Islamic art and Arab culture.
- Meeting with Al Jazeera English new media team. They informed us how Wikimedians are the only people that really care about the older content on their Creative Commons portal. It made a big splash a couple of years ago but it has not been able to make it realise its full potential since. Al Jazeera are always very heartened to see us using their content. As a result of the meetings, they have changed the license to their flickr stream to the free-culture compliant CC-By-SA so we now have access to rare historically significant content from across the Arab Spring, Hajj, Indian elections etc. (these are steadily being importing it to Commons at Category:Files from Al Jazeera).
- A few "children's museums" and libraries are being set up in the region and (especially the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia) are already looking at integrating Wikimedia to their programming. They are keen on the idea commissioning content for WikiJunour in Arabic in order to be able to to put those books on their shelves/in school libraries across the country. By good fortune Lori Phillips (HstryQT) is Wikipedian in Residence at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis which is the leader of this field and the Saudi museum is already sending its staff for training there. This provides an excellent basis for future GLAM collaborations for childhood education the Arabian Gulf region.
December's GLAM events
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1 International WLM 2011 evaluation, Amsterdam
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17 Smithsonian Institution fine art edit-a-thon Washington, D.C., USA
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