GLAM/Newsletter/October 2016/Contents/UK report
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Beautiful birds, and back to the Bodleian
Small is beautiful!
A small wiki can move quickly, and does not become bogged down in a quagmire of fossilized tripe. Some dinosaurs morphed into birds, and lived.
We have just over 81,000 articles on the Welsh Wikipedia. It is a small wiki, but therein lies it's greatness: the smaller it is the faster it morphs. Take Wikidata as an example. We received, from the Llen Natur Welsh language society their latest database - all living birds, each with a Welsh name, Latin and English. It took over 10 years to create by a team of ornithologists, some professionals working on this alone.
Wikimedia UK requested the use of this database on an open licence, which was freely given, and I then made a request to User:Succo to bot them up on Wikidata, and around 8,000 matched the WD Latin name. The rest were done by hand. To date, this is what we've done in partnership with Llen Natur:
- 1. We added 9,500 bird images in a 3rd party website
The community with the help of Bangor University then created a code for the preferred image on each species to appear in Llen Natur's Species Dictionary, thus turning a text only online dictionary into a beautiful Illustrated Dictionary.
- 2. We created 9,000 new articles on cywiki
With the database, we were now able to create 9,000 new articles on cywiki, with most of the taxobox automatically calling information from Wikidata.
- 3. Creating 15,000 links from Llen Natur's Illustrated Dictionary to cywiki
This was easily done by Bangor University for Llen Natur, directing readers to the Welsh Wikipedia. All bird articles, and a further 6,000 other species.
- 4. Wikidata Lists! Morph or fossilize!
Having added a few WD Lists on other languages, including Indonesian, Vietnamese, Basque, Irish Gaelic and Spanish, I then added a list of notable Welsh people on English Wikipedia - which was taken down within two flutters of a wing. "Wikidata is NOT referenced!" they shouted, and argued and stomped about like Giraffatitan. "Good bye!" I said, and off I went in search of more inspiring wikis. To this day, en-wiki is one of the only Wikipedias which still hasn't hugged and caressed Wikidata within articles. Not one.
Every single bird species on the Welsh WP, however, has a Wikidata table, automatically called up and updated daily. When species change taxon, it's automatically added on cywiki. The total number of WD Lists on every language Wikipedias at October 2016 is just under 3,000; we have 9355 on cywiki (as of 7 November 2016).
What loud calls I make, what blowing of trumpets! No, just a fact. We liked Wikidata, and discussed as a community how could we utilise it within cywiki to save finger clicking, to update info daily, to be up to date.
- 5. Tweeting and other bird sounds
We had a great day at the British Library a few weeks ago, chirping away at clips of birdsounds on Commons, connecting soundclips to more than 55 language wikis. As soon as we have enough, then they too will be automatically feed these into all bird articles on the Welsh Wikipedia, as well as into 3rd party websites, such as Llen Natur. And the Illustrated Dictionary quickly becomes a noisy, vivid, live space. And all different sounds and all different colours will entice the reader into that rich, diverse planet called multipedia. And let's sing in harmony: Viva la difference!
- 6. Birds also morph...
And with "the sum of all human data" appearing on that matrics, that all-connecting interweaving thread called Wikidata, we can now start creating apps and games based on birds (or any other subject) as a front for information on the Wikimedia projects. Can't Wikipedia, then, not be an AR game? Why not! Even dinosaurs had dreams!
- PS For your information (which I really would like to share) the multilingual word 'dinosaur' was coined by a Welshman, Sir Richard Owen. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Oxford
Martin Poulter, who served for one year as the WIR at the Bodleian Libraries, funded by Wikimedia UK, is back at the Bodleian with another year's funding and an expanded job title: Wikimedian In Residence at the University of Oxford. This is a one-year project funded by the university, which the continued involvement of Wikimedia UK. Whereas the previous WIR placement was mainly about sharing the Bodleian's digital content, and that will continue, the new project is about using the Wikimedia activities to support research and educational projects across the university, promoting a permanent change in how the university works with Wikimedia.
The project is driven by interest in Wikidata and its possibilities for data visualisations, even more so than by interest in Wikipedia. Already the WIR has made contact with ten different major research projects who are interested in sharing data, images, and/or text. The project page is at w:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Oxford.
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Awesome project @Llywelyn2000: With the bird noises. Would you be interested in writing a blog post for the Wikimedia blog? We would love to include your story for the Wikidata collaboration :) Its a perfect example of GLAMs and Wikimedia work together (FYI: the images after the definition, but before the source for the name of the owl, makes the book look like the source for the images, and might make people not get the attribution correctly. Also, the url for clicking on the images going to commons, isn't working 100% correctly yet). Send me an email to astinson
wikimedia.org, if you are interested in a blog. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
- That's really nice of you. I'll take a look at both coding and blog; many thanks again! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:38, 8 November 2016 (UTC)