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Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments Australian finalists

Inside the Heavy Machine Shop at Cockatoo Island by Matthew Machado

Congratulations to the Australian finalists for Wiki Loves Monuments 2019.

The photo taking out Australian overall winner is a photograph by Matthew Machado, taken from inside the heavy machine shop on Cockatoo Island, or Wareamah. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is found in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales.

The Wiki Loves Monuments challenge attracts contributions from some great photographers, as well as from a team of editors who work on ensuring data from local heritage registers is added to Wikidata, ready for participation in Wiki Loves Monuments.

Thanks to everyone involved in contributing photographs, data, judging and to Bidgee for coordinating Wiki Loves Monuments this year.


Combining the old and the new

Continuing where we left off at WikidataCon

Working together at Wiki Techstorm

At WikidataCon at the end of October, Robin van der Vliet and Kimberli Mäkäräinen got to talking about running a bot to automatically create simple descriptions in Northern Saami in Wikidata, as Robin’s bot has already been doing this there in Dutch, West Frisian, and Esperanto. To do so, we would need a table of nationalities and occupations, of which Kimberli already had a table of nationalities.

At Wiki Techstorm, Kimberli asked Mewasul from Wikimedia Norway if she would be interested in combining the two lists. Happily, she agreed to do so and now we have a list of 294 nationalities and other geography-related adjectives that will be imported into Wikidata. We also discovered 26 adjectives that we do not know the equivalent of in Northern Saami, so this list will be sent to the language authorities at Sámi Giellagáldu. Future plans include finding out the equivalent in the other Saami languages. Now to get cracking on the occupations!

HelMet libraries and the Finnish Museum Card

During the workshop about scraping websites on Friday evening, Hay used the Dutch Museum Card (Museumkaart) as a typical example of what he would do with Wikidata. He also told us about how it had been included as a payment type for more than 400 museums in Wikidata. Intrigued, Kimberli decided to compare the results of that query with those of the corresponding Finnish Museum Card (Museokortti). To her surprise, only 1 museum of the 294 museums in Finland that accept Museokortti, the Finnish Museum of Games, was listed as accepting it. It was decided to turn this into a small project to include this in each museum’s Wikidata item. This project is still ongoing.

The next day, while participating in the mapmaking workshop, Kimberli decided to change the sparQL query of all public libraries in the Netherlands to draw a neat map of the HelMet libraries in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area of Finland for use in a Wikipedia article. This was not possible though. Upon remarking about this to Michelle Boon of Wikimedia Nederland, they decided to scrape the HelMet website and a few others to improve the data for these libraries in Wikidata based on the way this data has been modelled for Dutch public libraries. Although this data has been uploaded to Wikidata, we have found new pieces of information that are missing out of Wikidata, preventing us from adding in some of the properties that we would like the items to have. Nonetheless, the massive amount of new data that has already been uploaded will already greatly enrich the ways in which these items can be reused.

Wiki Loves Monuments award ceremony

The theme of this year's Wiki Loves Monuments in Finland was Sacred Place. The winner of the competition was Eerik Lehto with his photograph of the Haltioletto burial island in Jerisjärvi. The jury concluded: ”A photograph of an ancient burial island, a Saami grave field, and an offering site brings together beautifully the modes of life and the bond with nature of an ancient people. The image respects the Saami sacred place from a distance with dignity. The small island stands out from its surroundings elegantly and is unassumingly present.”

In addition to the standard WLM competition, Finland also organizes a unique rephotography track. This year, this track had two separate series: Signe Brander’s Helsinki and Lost Places and Buildings. The first series was won by Marit Henriksson and the top prize in the second series was shared by Raine Virtanen and Jorma Lindqvist. In addition, Merja Wesander received an award for taking the most pictures.

One week before the award ceremony, we gave a presentation about the results of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition and rephotography track at the Photo Archive Days held at the National Museum of Finland.

The award ceremony was also held at the National Museum, co-hosted by Wikimedia Finland and the Finnish Heritage Agency. "The third edition of Wiki Loves Monuments has established its position in exposing cultural heritage. It produced once again gorgeous interpretations of cultural heritage that are meaningful to people. We are glad to be partnering [with Wikimedia Finland] in the competition," states Chief Intendant Ulla Salmela from the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Two people were invited to be mentors for the competition: Senior Forest Culture Specialist Reetta Karhunkorva from Lusto – The Finnish Forest Museum] and the Secretary General of the Skolt Sámi Cultural Foundation Mari Korpimäki. The rest of the jury consisted of Chief Curator of Collections Anni Wallenius from the Finnish Museum of Photography as chairperson of the jury, researcher Yki Hytönen from Helsinki City Museum's Picture Collections, Board member Hanna Mäki from Wikimedia Finland, and photographer Soile Tirilä from the Photo Collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency.

See all the Finnish winners at the Wiki Loves Monuments website.

  • Haltioletto by Eerik Lehto.
    Haltioletto by Eerik Lehto.
  • The winners of the WLM 2019 Finland Alexander Popkov, Merja Wesander, Marit Henriksson, Maarit Siitonen, Eerik Lehto, Katja Kapanen, Raine Virtanen, and Heini Dahlroos. Photo: Soile Tirilä.
    The winners of the WLM 2019 Finland Alexander Popkov, Merja Wesander, Marit Henriksson, Maarit Siitonen, Eerik Lehto, Katja Kapanen, Raine Virtanen, and Heini Dahlroos. Photo: Soile Tirilä.
  • One of the rephotogaraphed images in Marit Henriksson's winning series. Harbour track in the Southern Harbour by the Market Square, by Signe Brander.
    One of the rephotogaraphed images in Marit Henriksson's winning series. Harbour track in the Southern Harbour by the Market Square, by Signe Brander.
  • Former Harbour track, by Marit Henriksson.
    Former Harbour track, by Marit Henriksson.

Helsinki: then and now

The end of the first year of our Helsinki rephotography project saw us curate a photography exhibition on the history of Helsinki in the Helsinki Central Library Oodi. The idea for the exhibition was to use openly licensed content to show how the Helsinki cityscape has changed over time. We used content from the Wiki Loves Monuments competition and Helsinki rephotography together with photos from the Helsinki City Museum and maps from the City Archive. In addition to static photos, we implemented tablet interfaces for annotating and browsing the photos.

With one tablet, we can collect information from users on whether groups of people are young or old or if they’re male, non-binari, or female. On the second tablet, we collect information about the scene in the photo. For example, is the scene indoors or outdoors, taken on the street level or from above, is it artificial or natural. With the third tablet, we have a browsing interface where the viewer can see pairs of photos showing the old and new Helsinki on a map. This was crashtested with a swarm of curious children during Oodi’s 1-year birthday on December 5, 2019, as Brygga and we organized a cut-draw-invent-future Helsinki handicraft workshop as part of the program.

In the spirit of the UN's International Year of the Indigenous Language and to continue Wikimedia Finland's commitment to multilingualism and linguistic diversity, we crowdsourced the phrases Helsinki then and now and Helsinkimme muuttuu ja säilyy into different languages. The first phrase was translated the most, into a total of 39 languages. The second one was translated into 12 languages other than Finnish. The languages ranged from Armenian to Riffian and back again.

The Helsinki Rephotography exhibition opened the third week of November 2019 in Brygga, an event and exhibition space run by the Helsinki Urban Environment Division. The exhibition, which is a collaboration between Wikimedia Finland and Ajapaik, will be on display until the end of February 2020.

  • Building the Helsinki Then and Now exhibition
    Building the Helsinki Then and Now exhibition
  • Overview of exhibition
    Overview of exhibition
  • Outside of the event balcony Brygga.
    Outside of the event balcony Brygga.
  • People browsing the photos with a map Oodi's birthday on December 5, 2019.
    People browsing the photos with a map Oodi's birthday on December 5, 2019.
  • People investigating the map of Helsinki in 1909 on the floor.
    People investigating the map of Helsinki in 1909 on the floor.

Edit:History in Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova in Turku and Vapriikki in Tampere

The rhizome of the Cloister Quarters

The museums Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova in Turku and the The Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere are exploring the possibilities of engaging their communities with Wikidata in the project Edit:History. Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova hosted a workshop for the public, while the Finnish Museum of Games hosted a workshop for the personnel of the museum complex Vapriikki.

Both workshops started to weave a web of historical personalities, places, and actors. In The residents of the Cloister Quarter project in Turku, the focus was on people who had lived in the medieval quarters that the museum currently occupies. In the Industry of Tampere project, we started mapping the corporations of the early industrial era in Tampere and the people related to them. The spark of linked data is lit in both places!


Wikimedia training workshops; Conference in the city of Arles

Wikimedia training workshops in Strasbourg

Thursday 14 november staff members from Wikimedia France gave a training course on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons to the multimedia libraries network of Strasbourg. This training workshop lasted all day long and aims to disseminate skills among glam staff members. This time preceded an editathon at the André Malraux library Saturday 16th focused on renowned women from the metropolis.

Wikimedia training workshops at BNF (National library of France)

An other training day took place on 21st at the BNF around Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons to teach staff members from the library and Gallica project how to contribute to the projects.

Conference in the city of Arles

Wikimedia France participate in a round table around the way institutions can work with communities. This debate, organised by local associations took place at the Musée départemental Arles Antique.


IHLIA starts monthly Wikipedia writing sessions, Wiki Techstorm 2019

By DDJJ

2020: heritage organisation IHLIA starts monthly Wikipedia writing sessions

IHLIA is an international archive and documentation center on homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. As of February 2020, IHLIA will organize monthly Wikipedia writing sessions to make more information about LGBT-related matters available on Wikipedia. IHLIA is supported by Wikimedia volunteers and Wikimedia Nederland.

Wiki Techstorm 2019

Image uploaded during Wiki Techstorm 2019

On November 22 and 23 the Wiki Techstorm 2019 took place in Amsterdam. More than 60 Wikimedians, developers and GLAM employees attended workshops, learned about and worked together on the software behind Wikimedia projects.

Prior to the Techstorm, the organisation team had prepared a workload of tasks, which was in line with what had been learned in the workshops. Mentors were available to support the participants. We can look back on a successful Wiki Techstorm 2019. A small selection of the results: 365 images were uploaded in bulk by participants from GLAM institutions and a Wikidata driven infobox about plantations was created and added to 117 articles on the Dutch Wikipedia. Want to see more results? Take a look at the showcase presentation on our Youtube channel.



Wellington talks and edit-a-thons

National Digital Forum

New editors at the Threatened Plants edit-a-thon at Te Papa

The NDF is New Zealand's annual meeting of people working on digital projects in the GLAM sector, and happens at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa each year. Presentations of interest to Wikipedians at NDF2019 included:

  • A "Wikidata for Beginners" workshop run by Giantflightlessbirds
  • "Giz It: a Journey in Reuse" by Ambrosia10 (but delivered by Giantflightlessbirds because of a family emergency; on GLAM institutions adding reuse restrictions to public-domain work .(YouTube, slides)
  • "What can I do with this thing?" by Michael Lascarides of DigitalNZ, on formulating more-understandable rights and reuse statements. (YouTube)
  • A keynote 'Whose Knowledge?" by Adele Vrana and Anasuya Sengupta of Whose Knowledge?; this was especially well-received, and the first time a keynote address at NDF was delivered by Wikipedians, discussing Wikipedia issues. (YouTube)

Meetups

Xeronema photographed at Otari and used in Wikipedia

There are now regular Wikimedia meetups being run in New Zealand. The most regular is the Wellington Meetup series, being run every two weeks in the National Library of New Zealand building on a Saturday morning, and attracting at least half a dozen regulars who talk about the problems they're having, share news, and get help.

Edit-a-thons

The Dowse Art Museum hosted an editing event to concentrate on the representation of women and Māori NZ artists. Eleven editors edited 34 articles and added lots of Wikidata info and citations. The Dowse had raided their library to supply us with numerous print resources – much information on Māori art is not online.

Another edit-a-thon was run in Te Papa, as part of the Taxonomy for Plant Conservation – Ruia mai i Rangiātea conference. Although the turnout was small, they were professional botanists keen to learn how to add up-to-date research to Wikipedia. We were lucky to have experienced Wikipedian MargaretRDonald over from Australia to help. The day before she visited Otari-Wilton's_Bush with Giantflightlessbirds; they took photos for Commons and made plans for a future edit-a-thon at Otari.


Transgressing the boundaries of internal academic discourse

Wikiplatonism

The work of the philosophers' team in Lanckorona
Burt Hopkins after a guest lecture with participants of the Academy

The WikiPlato project reconstructed Plato's position and developed a high-quality article about the Greek philosopher for Polish Wikipedia. The outcome of WikiPlato initiative is the longest articles about Plato and Platonizm among all language versions of Wikipedia. The article is a co-creation of Polish experts in ancient philosophy – doctors and professors, as well as students of philosophy, who participated in the “Platonic Academy” in Lanckorona during the last September. Photos from the “Platonic Academy” can be seen on Wikimedia Commons.

The Academy is co-organized by the “Kronos. Philosophical Journal”, the Józef Tischner Institute and the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Sociology at the Pedagogical University of Cracow. The organizers of the “Platonic Academy” decided to take a step forward and facilitate collaboration among professors, doctors and philosophy students to develop this encyclopedic article for Wikipedia. Dr. Andrzej Serafin writes:

This year we have decided to reach out towards the world and transgress the boundaries of internal academic discourse. Wikipedia is an ideal tool to achieve such a purpose as the place of first contact with ideas, allowing an operation on collective consciousness, an intervention into public discourse that defines our way of understanding the world. Introducing radical change into a single article seems little, but it actually means a lot. Much can be achieved on such a fundamental level. One can, therefore, say that Wikipedia is a realization of the Platonic project by giving access to the domain of ideas through modern technology as the medium, with cooperation of those who are closely acquainted with certain ideas and with their description and systematization make them accessible to a wider audience. Such a materialization of the domain of ideas is a technological reenactment of the project of enlightenment.

The article is the gate to volume of knowledge accessible to those that are interested in the figure of a Greek philosopher. After entering the keyword: “Plato” into Polish search engine they are likely to find this article . It is the realization of the principle to disseminate knowledge, by using modern means of communicating in additional to traditional ways such s books and magazines. It is the pursuit of the idea that Wikipedia can become an essential tool for academics to share knowledge and their work. As a continuation of the project Andrzej Serafin from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Pedagogical University in Crakow leads a course a, in which his students create articles on Platonic ideas for Polish Wikipedia.



Minor grants and Library training

FindingGLAMs

FindingGLAMs, Wikimedia Sverige's project aiming at increasing the quantity and quality of material related to cultural heritage institutions on the Wikimedia projects, has opened its Minor grants program. WMSE is offering one-time financial support for Wikimedia communities around the world to enable them to organize GLAM-focused events and similar activities. You can help us by spreading the message in your local Wikimedia community!

Wikipedia in the Libraries

In the project Wikipedia i biblioteken (Wikipedia in the libraries) we are working with articles and learning modules at the web platform Digiteket. Digiteket is a learning platform for librarians in Sweden, aiming to give library staff training in digital skills needed to meet new challenges. Being able to write articles and understand Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects is part of this training. At the same time, we plan five workshops in January–March 2020 for a total of 125 people. Participants in the workshops must have taken the Wikipedia courses at Digiteket and be interested in working to develop their work in free knowledge, both for themselves and for the public by arranging meetings in different areas of interest. Some examples of inspirational articles on Digiteket (in Swedish).


A busy conference season, a new Caribbean community and introducing a tool for adding artwork metadata

WikiConference North America 2019

The annual WikiConference North America 2019 conference was held in Boston/Cambridge, Mass. and was run in collaboration with the Credibility Coalition and with the generous support of the Craig Newmark Philanthropies, MIT and local cultural institutions. Because of the recent Wikimedia Foundation moratorium on funding conferences outside of a narrow band of pre-approved events, no Wikimedia Foundation or movement funds were used in the execution of this event.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted the main conference from November 8 to 11. The majority of the programs were recorded and video streams can be found here.

Culture crawl

The conference kicked off with the annual culture crawl as a pre-conference event as a whole day of GLAM related engagements with institutions in the Boston/Cambridge area. The Museum of Fine Arts hosted the day with curatorial tours of the museum and hosted training for staff and community in their trustees room. There were meetups at Boston University, MassArt, State Library of Massachusetts, and a hackathon at the MIT MakerWorkshop.

A full writeup can be found at meta:WikiConference_North_America/2019#Culture_Crawl

Programming

There were a number of notable sessions, including a plenary panel discussion about the forthcoming book, Wikipedia @20 by MIT Press, with a number of Wikimedian contributors at the conference and serving on the panel. The reception for the evening was hosted at the MIT Museum.

  • Culture Crawl training
    Culture Crawl training
  • With the Museum of Fine Arts staff
    With the Museum of Fine Arts staff
  • Organizing team
    Organizing team
Reliability and Credibility Summit

November 11 was the Reliability and Credibility Summit, run in conjunction with the conference partner the Credibility Coalition, which focused on the reliability of information, and included breakout roundtable sessions related to downstream platforms users of Wikimedia content, reliability of news content, and reliability of Wikimedia content. The platforms roundtable was an historic event, with representatives from Google, Facebook and Microsoft present to discuss how Wikimedia content could benefit users in assessing information reliability.


GLAM programming

A number of sessions related to GLAM were held at the conference. On the Culture Crawl day, there was training on Wikidata, Structured Data on Commons and tools/strategy for GLAM institutions to contributed content.

  • Culture Crawl: Wikidata Tutorial: The basics - Rob Fernandez - slides
  • Culture Crawl: Introduction to Structured Data on Commons - Alex Stinson (WMF) - slides
  • Culture Crawl: GLAM Contribution strategies for Wikimedia content - Andrew Lih - slides
  • Open Access at the Cleveland Museum of Art - Kevin Payravi, Andrew Lih - slides
  • GLAMs embracing open access and Wikidata: Experiences from the Met Museum - Andrew Lih and Richard Knipel slides
  • Mbabel - One click article creation for events - Rob Fernandez and Richard Knipel - slides
  • Putting Institutional Partners at Ease: Becoming a Reliable Guide in an Unfamiliar Landscape - Ariel Cetrone - description
  • Engaging with Scientists: Sharing Knowledge and Encouraging Editing Through a Science Library - Jamie Flood - description
  • What’s good for GLAM is good for STEM? Editor recruitment and retention at NIOSH - John P. Sadowski - description
  • Introduction to WikiCite - Phoebe Ayers and Daniel Mietchen - description
  • 4 Million in 4 Weeks: A case study on bulk import of cultural heritage metadata on Wikidata - Dominic Byrd-McDevitt - description
  • Taking Wiki Loves Monuments in the US to the Next Level - Kevin Payravi and Laura Soito - description


Wiki Art Depiction Explorer: a new tool for adding artwork depiction information

WADE interface example
WADE interface example

The Wiki Art Depiction Explorer (WADE) is a user-friendly interface to add depiction information to the Wikidata items of artworks. It was soft launched in the summer of 2019, and is now open for community testing.

The project is a collaboration between Wikimedia District of Columbia and the Smithsonian Institution, with community members Andrew Lih, Robert Fernandez, and Effie Kapsalis working with developer Edward Betts to develop the system. Its development was made possible through support from the Knight Prototype Fund, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Basic operation

WADE's most basic mode of operation presents the user with a web interface that includes the Wikidata item of an artwork and a large image of the artifact. WADE prompts the user to type in what is depicted in the given painting. We are focusing on paintings for simplicity, though any Wikidata item can be edited using WADE.

Entering terms. As the user types, matches are interactively displayed, and previously used depiction terms listed first. How often that term has been in previous depiction statements is also displayed. Wikidata terms that have never been used before in a depiction statement are listed in a secondary set.

Selecting the name of a matching term adds that to a working queue of terms and any number of depiction statements can be added in this way.

Clicking the "Add these to Wikidata" button commits these changes immediately to Wikidata under the user's account. Therefore, the user needs to have a Wikimedia account. (WADE uses OAuth to authorize the tool to edit on their behalf.)

Pre-existing terms. If there are pre-existing depiction statements for the Wikidata item, they are displayed above the text entry field. There are also additional fields of information related to the artist, collection, and GLAM institution that holds the item.

Navigation. After depiction information has been added to the Wikidata item, a number of options are provided to navigate to similar works by artist, by collection, or by main subject. This provides incentives to keep working on more depictions.

Code and reporting

First-ever Wiki meetup in Puerto Rico with WikiCaribbean

Wikimeetup in Puerto Rico at Microsoft in San Juan, with Herbert Lewy, General Manager, Microsoft Caribbean providing welcoming remarks

On November 27, Andrew Lih worked with the new WikiCaribbean user group to give a talk in San Juan, Puerto Rico for the local community at the offices of Microsoft.

The talk was titled "The five most exciting things in Wikipedia, Wikimedia and Wikidata: How they can help boost content about Puerto Rico" and covered a brief introduction to Wikidata, visualizing knowledge graphs, Structured Data on Commons and how artificial intelligence and machine learning have been used in the movement. Afterwards, there was discussion with academics from the University of Puerto Rico and from the local destination marketing organization, Discover Puerto Rico, on how to enrich Wikimedia content about Puerto Rico.

Among the resources created:

Link to the Slides

Museum Computer Network, Wikimedia content and The Met

Effie Kapsalis at MCN 2019 in San Diego, California, Ignite talk about Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative

Effie Kapsalis (Smithsonian) and Andrew Lih gave two of the opening Ignite talks at the Museum Computer Network conference in San Diego called "Imagine the Future of Global Structured Data." He showed how Wikidata knowledge graphs work and how The Met is using them to visualize collections in a different way. Ignite talks are strictly five minute talks where the 20 slides automatically advance every 15 seconds.

Later in the conference, he presented with The Met on the use of artificial intelligence on their collections, and how it has been used to enrich content in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. The talk "Tags, Art, and AI. Oh My" was done with Jennie Choi, general manager of collections information at The Met, and Elena Villaespesa, professor at the Pratt Institute and consultant at The Met.

Link to slides

Advanced Wikidata and Wikibase training with Smithsonian Libraries

Jackie Shieh, Smithsonian, Descriptive Data Management Librarian during November 20, 2019 training on Wikidata and Wikibase

On November 20, Andrew Lih held a special training with Smithsonian Libraries on the advanced use of Wikidata and establishing content in Wikibase, the software extension to MediaWiki that allows for databases like Wikidata. Some of the topics covered included tools and gadgets for advanced users of Wikidata (Recoin, copy references, etc) and the new shape expressions (ShEx) EntitySchema features of Wikidata. Some other APIs and methods for accessing Wikidata from Python were discussed.

Link to slides

Celebrating Influential Polish and Polish-American Women

Embassy of the Republic of Poland and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Celebrating Influential Polish and Polish-American Women Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

National Gallery of Art Works on Paper

The National Gallery of Art and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Drawing from the Collection: A National Gallery of Art Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Celebrating Works on Paper

MetAsianMonth 2019

Metropolitan Museum of Art and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup. MetAsianMonth 2019

The Chicago Art Book Fair

The Chicago Art Book Fair and Black Lunch Table held a meetup, Black Lunch Table/CABF

Native American Artists

Minneapolis Institute of Art held a meetup, Native American Artists Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon/Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)

Housing and Homesteading

Interference Archive and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, Housing and Homesteading Wikipedia Editathon

Editing as Activism

Wikimedia Cascadia and University of Washington Library, held a meetup at UW Libraries Research Commons, Editing as Activism: Edit-A-Thon to Correct Systemic Bias in Wikipedia They reported a dashboard of outcomes here

Local 649: New Orleans Jazz History in Wikidata

The Semantic Lab at Pratt held a Wikidata workshop at Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library using the Local 496 Membership Directory, American Federation of Musicians as the source document for editing Wikidata. This workshop was made possible thanks to a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation and resulted in the creation of data that will be integrated into the Linked Jazz project.

Cite NLM

Kansas City Public Library held a meetup, Kansas City/CiteNLM Mental Health November 2019

OpenUCLA #citeNLM

Open UCLA held a meetup, Wikipedia edit-a-thon focused on Mental Health

1000 Women in Religion 2019

American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature Women's Caucus held a meetup, 1000 Women in Religion 2019, and San Diego/SBL S25-402

Unsung Heroes of the Bureau of American Ethnology

The Smithsonian Institution and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Unsung Heroes of the Bureau of American Ethnology Wikipedia Edit-a-thon



Continued development, documentation, and blog posts

End of Sloan grant, but continued development

On December 31, 2019, the Structured Data on Commons project concludes the development work that was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In the upcoming months, the Structured Data team at the Wikimedia Foundation will continue work on open tasks: computer-aided tagging, support for more datatypes (including dates and geographical coordinates), search, constraints, and a SPARQL query engine for Wikimedia Commons.

New documentation online

The general information page about Structured Data on Commons has been updated with a general how-to, frequently asked questions, and links to various helpful tools. Feel free to edit and improve this page, and ask questions on the talk page!

More documentation about Structured Data on Commons and GLAM will be published in the upcoming weeks.

Blog posts about GLAM pilot projects

By the time of publishing this edition of This Month in GLAM, three blog posts have been published about GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons. Hopefully they are helpful and inspiring!


Books & Bytes-Issue 36, September–October 2019

In this issue we highlight #1Lib1Ref, global developments and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

#1Lib1Ref

Join us again in 2020 for #1Lib1Ref from January 15th to February 5th and don't forget to bring your friends! #1Lib1Ref is a time that we work together around the world to make Wikipedia more reliable. You can participate in #1Lib1Ref by simply adding a citation to Wikipedia's content! All we ask and imagine: a world in which every librarian (or archivist, reference professional, and scholar) adds 1 more reference to Wikipedia. This is the fifth year of the #1Lib1Ref campaign and we couldn’t be more excited to support another year of activities.

If you are planning to host a coffee hour or a edit-a-thon focused on #1Lib1Ref, and you need funding for the event, you will be able to apply for a Rapid Grant. For the best chance of approval, requests should be made in the month of November, since requests related to #1Lib1Ref will be given priority by the Grants team during November.

Global

The 2019 1Lib1Ref campaigns in January and May were founded on a series of learning interviews and community engagement efforts. This strategy was not only to include experienced organizers and supporters in some decision-making structures but to genuinely listen to their concerns, as well as ensure inclusive input towards running the campaign. These approaches to listening and improving the campaign around community input yielded some great stories.

  • During the pre-conference days of Wikimania 2018, Felix Nartey organised a training session for librarians in South Africa dubbed “Wikipedia 101”. This commenced a relationship with a librarian from the University of Cape Town by the name of Ingrid Thompson, who would later lead 1Lib1Ref activities in several libraries and institutions during both the January and May campaigns. Her activities directly churned 10-plus events and at least two webinars. She also led conversations with African librarian networks.
  • User:Darafsh had just returned from inactivity as a coordinator of the Farsi Wikipedia Library Branch and was really passionate about increasing the activity level of the branch. He saw 1Lib1Ref as a key opportunity to engage the community and some librarians. The campaign saw very high participation from the Farsi community and placed their campaign second amongst the languages represented.
  • Krishna has been a long-time Wikipedia Library coordinator and 1Lib1Ref organiser. He led activities in both the January and May campaigns for the Asian continent. He engaged at least three new countries, with more than seven events. His zeal to support the 1Lib1Ref initiative has been enormous and employing a new way to solve some of the generally accepted gaps was an insightful way of addressing movement needs.
  • During the May campaign AfroCrowd provided support towards reaching out to the Carribean, a region that had seen very little or no Wikimedia interventions. With help from the 1Lib1Ref team from Argentina and the alliance with AfroCrowd we started a campaign with the sole goal to just create awareness of the campaign in the region. Our efforts yielded some connections in Belize, an opportunity still in the works to train librarians from the country. We are looking at enhancing the efforts in the region for subsequent campaigns and possibly using 1Lib1Ref to onboard new communities and participants.
  • The Argentina 1Lib1Ref team led by Giselle has been doing an awesome job since the launch of the May campaign in 2018. This year she led more than 10 Latin American countries to participate in the campaign. The most intriguing part of what she does is the high-level support she provides to the Latin American communities, especially around the creation of documentation and communication strategies for the region.
  • The 2019 campaign will not be complete without speaking about the enthusiasm and competition from the librarians in Canada led by Leah. There was a significant expansion of the 2018 Canadian competition: the 2019 edition was a pan-Canadian event. This resulted in significant edits to both English and French Wikipedia. This activity put the Canadians and the French Wikipedia ahead of all other Wikipedias during the January campaign.
  • The campaign for the first time saw the French-language Wikipedia leading the contest and new entrants such as the Farsi Wikipedia taking a second spot during the May campaign. There was also a significant increase in participation from Africa and Asia. The Latin American community maintained a steady growth from last year.

These results underline the need to engage our communities with opportunities that allow them to ride on social activities or campaigns to engage or even serve as a reminder of their interest or commitment to volunteer. This is evident in similar campaigns such as Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Art & Feminism, etc. and other campaigns or points of engagement will only increase our activity levels both online and offline. We also need to begin to think of a bridge to ensure new editors are sustained within our movement or even a means to engage them yearly on the projects of their interest as not everyone may necessarily be an everyday Wikimedian.

Read the full report on Medium.

Bytes in brief


Research published

By Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) & SandraF

Research report about Wikidata use in cultural institutions

Research report: Use of Wikidata in GLAM institutions (2019-11)

To learn from institutions and be able to direct other people to information about their work, Wikimedia Deutschland did qualitative research on how and why cultural institutions use Wikidata. Sixteen people who use Wikidata in their work in cultural institutions discussed their motivations, activities and problems and explained how they work. You can find more information about the research on Meta, or read the research report directly.

News

Press, articles, blog posts

Technical matters

Other news

For all other Wikidata news, new properties, etc, see:


Results of Community Wishlist Survey 2020

By SGill

Community Wishlist Survey 2020

Community Wishlist Survey 2020, which was focused on projects other than Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons for this year, ended on 2nd December 2019. Wikisource community did exceptionally well and 4 out of the top 5 proposals voted by the community are from Wikisource. 5th proposal is also related to Wikisource submitted by the Wiktionary community. Read more about each of these proposals below:

Check-out the results page at Meta-Wiki for more details.


December's GLAM events

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