GLAM/Newsletter/October 2017/Contents/Germany report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VII, Issue X, October 2017

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Germany report

GLAMorous activities in October

By Gereon K. & Barbara Fischer (WMDE)

LibraryLab

The central public library of Düsseldorf was hosting a digital week with presentations about online media, 3D printing, Twitter and Wikipedia. Wikipedians were invited to introduce visitors to the Wikimedia projects and editing.

On Monday, the 16th of October 2017 only two interested visitors showed up. So instead of a presentation Wikipedians were holding a direct schooling of editing skills and the principles of Wikipedia. An engineering professor specialised in infrasound could benefit from that. The next presentation took place on the following Friday, the 20th of October with a much higher attendance. The visitors on Friday could be convinced of the reliability of Wikipedia.

The Düsseldorf community agreed with the library to have a regular Wikipedia consultation hour at least once a month at this major venue.

Tag der Bibliotheken

The "Tag der Bibliotheken" (Day of the Libraries) was honoured at the Central Public Library of Duisburg by allowing Wikipedians to present Wikipedia and its sister projects. Duisburg is a major city north of Düsseldorf.

On Saturday, the 28th of October 2017 six Wikipedians had an info booth at the entrance near the information desk of the library and a room on the 3d floor for consultations. While only two visitors had questions about Wikipedia in the consultation room many visitors took the opportunity on the ground floor to ask about Wikipedia, the visual editor, the language versions and other aspects of your projects.

The info booth, the large Wikipedia ball standup displays and the brochures were provided by Wikimedia Deutschland and very easy to assemble.

Whether the offer of a Wikimedia consultation hour in Duisburg once a month makes sense will have to be discussed.

GLAM on Tour in a Porcelain museum

No tempest keeps volunteers away from taking part at the GLAM on Tour station in Fürstenberg. In a little town high above the river Weser lays a manufacture in a former castle. As the region was poor in the XVII cen the duke of Braunschweig decided to start the production of the white gold. In our days the site is still working and 20 volunteers were invited to visit the production line and the museum. Many new articles were written and lots of fotos added. Like this one on a "Bomse".

for more Info please read the German blogpost.

Kick-OFF for the hackathon on arts & cultural heritage Coding da Vinci

Coding da Vinci has started. We did not have enough food for the 176 coders, cultural heritage fans, staff from GLAM institutions and students from the hosting university, but we had a lot of fun! An entire weekend we had time to learn about the datasets that 19 GLAMs had provided under a free license and to work on ideas, building teams and creating the entry on the hackdash. Right now everybody is busy working in the coding sprint. On Dec 2nd a jury will choose among the ready projects 5 winners and we will celebrate the award ceremony at the Jewish museum in Berlin. Coding da Vinci even has a new sister. After Hamburg in 2016, Coding da Vinci is going to Leipzig in 2018. We keep you posted.

Video on "Prepare Your data" for Commons released

In October the video documentation on our 4 day workshops for GLAMs how to upload data to Wikimedia commons was released on Wikimedia Commons. Please read more on the workshop here and enjoy the video.