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< GLAM | Newsletter | October 2018


Erbstuecke edit-a-thon; Women in Tech edit-a-thon; Wiki Club Brussels; Wikidata workshop + party

Erbstuecke edit-a-thon

location of edit-a-thon

On 22 September 2018, the Goethe Institut in Brussels and Wikimedia Belgium organised a Wikipedia writing session (edit-a-thon) in Brussels in the offices of the Goethe Institut. The edit-a-thon includes an introduction in how to edit and was open to anyone willing to learn and edit Wikipedia. The writing session was part of the Erbstuecke project and organised in multiple countries in Europe. (website)

“Erbstuecke” is a digital project designed by the Goethe-Institut and organised and realised in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. and in consultation with the German Cultural Heritage Committee (Deutsches Nationalkomitee für Denkmalschutz, DNK) in different European cities and towns. The DNK itself is responsible for all activities of the European Year of Cultural Heritage within Germany.

The aim of “Erbstuecke” is to tell the story of our common roots, of how much of Europe can be found in the cultural heritage of Estonia, Portugal and Serbia for instance. We want to encourage to participate as many people and as many European countries as possible with a variety of their “heirlooms”. Cultural cooperations and influences have constituted the European cultural agenda long before the European Union was founded. Our common European heritage keeps on influencing our lives. “Sharing heritage: where the past meets the future” is this year’s slogan.

Women in Tech edit-a-thon

Editing during the Women in Tech edit-a-thon

Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website in the world, but only 17% of Wikipedia’s biographies are about women. This includes the women in the tech industry. The computer programmers category lists 180 profiles, of whom fewer than 10 are women. But history hasn’t been documented well: a lot of women have contributed to shaping the internet as we know it today. On 13 October 2018, BeCentral and Wikimedia Belgium organised a full day edit-a-thon to document Wikipedia with Women in Technology.

To know which top 50 women should have an article, we used the list with the top 50 women of Forbes at: https://www.forbes.com/top-tech-women-europe/list/

Wiki Club Brussels

First Wiki Club Brussels meeting

After the Women in Tech edit-a-thon we were thinking, only organising an edit-a-thon once does not have much effect. Therefore we decided to start with the Wiki Club Brussels. Also over the years we have learned that people who (newly) edit Wikipedia often like to meet other editors so that they can help each other. Editing Wikipedia together often leads to better results and more fun. Also this gives the opportunity to ask questions to more experienced editors. For that reason we started to organise biweekly Wikipedia writing sessions in BeCentral. At these meetups participants can work on articles in Wikipedia, ask questions and learn how others are editing Wikipedia. The subject participants often focus on are women in the tech industry, but participants are not required to write about this topic.

Since 23 October we plan every two weeks a Wiki Club meeting.

Wikidata workshop + party

On 29 October 2018, the 6th birthday of Wikidata, Wikimedia Belgium organised together with Packed (expert centre for digital heritage) and the Royal Library of Belgium a Wikidata workshop in Brussels at the site of this national library. The target audience of the Wikidata workshop was the cultural sector, more specifically organisations with a collection they would like to open up through Wikidata and the other Wikimedia platforms. The Wikidata workshop was very successful, fully booked and not everyone could participate. We likely organise another Wikidata workshop in Spring 2019.

After the Wikidata workshop for cultural institutions, we organised an open celebration of the 6th birthday of Wikidata with some food, drinks, balloons and a Wikidata cake!

  • Wikidata workshop
    Wikidata workshop
  • Wikidata birthday party cake
    Wikidata birthday party cake
  • Wikidata in balloons
    Wikidata in balloons


"There is no reason not to participate in a GLAM-Wiki initiative": an interview with the director of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy

By Joalpe
Maurício Cândido da Silva, from the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy.

A GLAM-Wiki initiative is an opportunity to fulfill the mission of university museums, the director of the University of São Paulo Museum of Veterinary Anatomy, Maurício Cândido da Silva, says. In a exclusive interview to the GLAM Newsletter, Silva said there was a "convergence of interests" between the museum and Wikimedians, that is, to provide reliable information to wide audiences.

The GLAM-Wiki initiative with the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy was officially launched in August 2016, and has already brought to Wikimedia Commons 478 images --over 100 of uploaded images were chosen on Commons as featured or valued contributions. These images are viewed, according to GLAMorgan reports, over 5 million times a month.

On this interview, the museum director emphasizes a characteristic of this initiative: it was embedded within a broader institutional partnership. This partnership has included the former Wikimedia Community User Group Brasil and the Center for Neuromathematics, along with the university department where the museum is located. This characteristic has informed a Wikimedia case study.

Answers were sent by email in Portuguese on September 21.

___

This ostrich skeleton was the first featured image of this GLAM-Wiki initiative.
What was your motivation to participate in a Wikimedia initiative?

There were two main reasons. First, to broaden the dissemination of the collection and, consequently, of the museum itself with the use of our set of high resolution photographs. Second, to carry out the inventory and creation of a database of the museum collections. The initiative has been pushing the implementation of the documentation of all the collection of the museum. It has been a strategy based on mutualism.

What were your concerns and expectations about this initiative?

The greatest fear was the possibility of misuse of the images of the museum collection —for instance, that someone would take advantage of the free image for his own commercial benefits. This fear has ceased to exist as we got to know more on the educational value of the initiative. The most important expectation is to expand the supply of reliable information to the general public, as this is the main role of a university museums like ours. In addition, we also expect that this will lead to the internationalization of actions of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy, given the wide reach of Wikimedia projects. In general, with this partnership, we seek to expand dissemination actions of the museum.

Could you please describe the early phases of discussing the initiative?

Due to the convergence of interests (scientific dissemination), the discussions between the museum and Wikimedians were more operational than conceptual. The fact that the editors that led the partnership were members of the same university that we are part of made the theoretical and technical discussions much easier. The availability of the photographic collection of the museum, of very high quality, produced by Prof. Wagner Souza e Silva, also contributed to the good progress of the discussions. The initiative was not part of the planning of the museum, but the fit was perfect, as there were compatible goals between the different parties involved.

This GLAM-Wiki initiative was associated to education programs to improve content on animal science on Wikipedia in Portuguese.
Was the relicensing of the collection an issue? How was it solved?

Relicensing was not a problem. The museum and the author of the images shared the same view about the importance of free and unrestricted access to information produced by the public university. As there was a consensus on how credits would be presented and we were able to provide inputs on how the description would be shown, there was no problem.

How was the process of uploading the collection?

The upload was carried out in the context of the collaboration between the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy and NeuroMat in 2016. Through this formal collaboration, there was a student worker with funding to upload the museum images onto Wikimedia Commons. The collection, of around one thousand items, was divided into sets of 30 items, in order to dilute the identification of the pieces across time, because it was not possible to stop the other activities of the museum to do just that. To fill the information on a worksheet that informs the upload is the responsibility of the museum team, as well as the selection, description and translation into English of the images. In turn, the NeuroMat team uploads the images to Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimedians have been working on using these images on Wikipedia.

To what extent has this wiki initiative involved people from the museum, university, general community?

This initiative has had the direct involvement of a professor, a specialist and several researchers in detailing the information of each copy of the museum collection for uploading. Two events in our process are worth mentioning. First, at the beginning of the work a workshop was held at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science and Prof Francisco Blazquez set up an activity with his students, which demonstrated the great educational potential of this initiative. Second, results obtained, as shown with the first reports, were quite remarkable, both in terms of the prizes obtained as a function of the quality of the images and the number of views of the images around the world.

In September alone, this image of an avian heart was viewed 154,125 times [1].
What is your general assessment of this initiative?

Very positive! The quantitative data are surprising (5 million views per month so far !!!!). This initiative brought a lot of repercussion to the Museum, being praised in meetings at the university. The museum was put into evidence and also reaffirmed its strategy in scientific dissemination, using technological and digital tools. We have not yet finalized the work of uploading our collection, but effects are already remarkable. It should be noted that this initiative is also understood as an innovation strategy of the Museum.

What are good reasons to undertake this kind of initiatives from the perspective of a cultural institution? Are there reasons not to do it?

The importance of sharing information with a reliable source of information is one good reason. In fact, I understand this initiative as part of the mission of a university Museum. Wikipedia is widely read and its policy of being an open source was also a stimulus. I consider it very important for a museum to have its collections accessible on the internet. It should be noted that this initiative is not incompatible with the physical existence of the objects and the Museum itself. The experience of going to the museum is irreplaceable. In this sense, I see this initiative as a potential for increasing the public of the museum, a stimulus for people to visit our museums. There is no reason not to participate in this kind of initiatives.


Estonian art and geoscience collections finding their way to Commons

Estonian artists finding their way to Wikimedia Commons

"Composition" (1967). Painting by Lola Liivat. One of the images from Tartu Art Museum exhibition "Lola Liivat. Spiritual resistance".

A collaboration project between Wikimedia Eesti and the Tartu Art Museum is now over a year and a half old. Initially we largely worked on bringing various exhibitions into the wiki world, for example "Changing Tartu in Four Views" and "Peeter Allik. Cultivated Schizophrenia". More recently the focus has shifted towards working on the entire work of individual artists, so that we will cover a larger section of the museum collections.

Some of the most recent artist involved have been Julie Wilhelmine Hagen-Schwarz (1824–1902), Konrad Mägi (1878–1925), Nikolai Triik (1884–1940) and Lola Liivat (1928–). As you can see, we've been both working on those artists who died long enough ago for their work to be in the public domain, and those who are still among us and are able to give us their permission to document their artworks.

Additionally, almost all the works from both the painting and the watercolor collections of the Tartu Art Museum have been documented in as much depth as possible in Wikidata. This part of the project has already been extended to the collections of other Estonian museums, with whom we plan to also reach a deeper collaboration including image sharing and uploading in the future.

Geoscience Collections of Estonia moving closer to Wikipedia

Fossilised gastropod Lophospira sp., collected from the limestone of the Middle-Ordovician Uhaku Stage from Lasnamäe, Estonia.

October marked the beginning of our cooperation with the Estonian Museum of Natural History to bring the images of their geological collection into Wikimedia Commons. The first (manual) upload can be seen on this report, and the plan is to follow the same format while adding images automatically in the future, until the entire collection of several thousand images has been made available to everyone.


(RE)Photographic autumn

This year's Wiki Loves Monuments has been very interesting in Finland. The competition itself was of a very high quality and we were pleasantly surprised by the results. The total number of photos was 3464 from 98 photographers.

Finalists
Rephotographs

Wikimedia Finland collaborated with Estonian Photographic Heritage Society in setting up the rephotography track in Wiki Loves Monuments and used the Ajapaik mobile application for rephotographing historical photos. The idea was not to get just good new photos but to also test new ways to use old photos and to find new methods to geolocate them.


Rauma in card from 1907 ja 2018
(then-and-now)


Rauman Kanali 1900-1920 ja 2018; Katja Tuomala
(then-and-now)



Suomenlinna 1918 ja 2018
(then-and-now)


Kasarmitori 1918 ja 2018; Teemu Ikonen
(then-and-now)


After the Wiki Loves Monuments competition we further explored the possibilities by setting up a rephotography track in the Hack4fi cultural hackathon organized by Open Knowledge Finland and Helsinki City Museum. As a result, we got a nice analysis of how we could use gamification and improve social media sharing. In the CEE meeting in Lviw Heikki Kastemaa gave presentation and Tarmo Annus rephotographed Wikimedia Commons photos.

WMFI also participated in the Wide Open Science hackathon organized by the National Library of Finland, Helsinki University, the IT Center for Science and Helsinki Think Company. In the hackathon we explored ideas on how crowdsourced data related to historical photos could be reused by GLAMs and in Finna. This was followed by GLAM Wiki global conference in Tel Aviv where Vahur Puik and Susanna Ånas gave a presentation about geotagging and rephotography of historic pictures.

On October 30 the City of Helsinki approved our Helsinki rephotography grant application for a 3-year project for making rephotography an outdoors hobby that encourages physical exercise.


GLAMWiki 2018 Tel Aviv; City of Grenoble

GLAMWiki 2018 Tel Aviv

Wikimedia France participated to the GlAMWiki conference 2018 at Tel Aviv. That was the opportunity to present the French Glam project with strategy and few exemples of partnerships and the state of the Wikisources with the participation of Vigneron. Wikimedia Israel has organised a real stimulating event that permitted all kind of affiliates to share their experiences.

City of Grenoble

The Wikiconvention francophone was also the opportunity to sign a partnership with the city of Grenoble which made a decision in may 2018 to open data and content of its cultural institutions. Wikimedia France and the city decided to sign a partnership to facilitate the collaboration with for exemple the museum, the Natural history museum, the Public library or the cinematheque. There are current discussions about the organisation of training courses, editathons, participation on WikiAlpenForum or the Wikipedian in Residence.


GLAMorous Conferences


GLAM on WikiCon 2018 in St. Gallen (CH)

Claudia Garád (WMAT) at a GLAM-Session in St. Gallen

As part of WikiCon in St. Gallen, several conference sessions on GLAM took place. The following are exemplified here:

Conference "Zugang gestalten" in Berlin, 25th and 26th October 2018

"The conference series „Zugang gestalten! Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe“ discusses changes, problems and opportunities in terms of the digitalization of libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions.

The discussion continues:

On the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the eighth edition of the annual conference „Zugang gestalten!“ is dedicated to the shared cultural heritage of Europe as well as to the challenge to preserve it and to make it accessible across national borders. Following last year´s dialog, where experts met to discuss opportunities for international and inter-institutional cooperation in preserving and mediating cultural heritage, this year’s edition will focus on European cooperation. How can Europe´s tangible and intangible cultural heritage be protected and transmitted? Which national and European legal frameworks exist or are needed for that? What kind of cooperation already exist on European, national and regional level and how can they be developed and extended? What kind of national perspectives exist and how can they be transferred into a shared, European perspective? And finally: What opportunity does digitalization offer in term of the preservation and mediation of the European cultural heritage?"

(The text was taken from the website of the conference: https://zugang-gestalten.org/)



‘More Gelders Heritage available via Wikimedia’ by Erfgoed Gelderland; Writing week Friesland; Wiki Techstorm

Projectnews ‘More Gelders Heritage available via Wikimedia’ by Erfgoed Gelderland

Latest version GLAM-Wiki manual available

Erfgoed Gelderland has published a new version of the manual Wikimedia for heritage institutions (in Dutch). Via Wikimedia Commons you can download, use and distribute the manual (PDF-version) for free.

The manual contains a practical step-by-step plan for adding images, adding or improving articles on Wikipedia and publishing data as Linked Open Data via Wikidata. The document also explaind and emphasizes copyrights, the use of Creative Commons licences and the codes of conduct for the different Wikimedia-websites.

New in this version are the following topics:

  • standardcontracts for Creative Commons releases and licensing
  • a step-by-step plan for using the GLAM Wiki toolset, a programme for mass uploading files to Wikimedia Commons
  • an explanation concerning the new functionality for searching Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia course for Historian societies

This autumn we will start a course for Historian Societies. During this free multiple day course ‘Writing for Wikipedia’ members of Historian Societies will learn to acquire practical skills which are neccesary for producing an adequate article for encyclopedia. The course will also provide backgroundinformation and the appliciations of the rules at Wikipedia. The knowledge coming from historical societies is a crucial part of this heritage. Already six Histrorian Societies from Gelderland are attending the course.

For more information about our project please see the projectpage or contact Michelle van Lanschot.

Writing week Friesland

From 1 to 14 October, editors were invited to write about nl:Friesland to celebrate that Leeuwarden-Friesland is European Capital of Culture in 2018 (together with Valetta, Malta). In total 44 articles were created or improved by 5 different editors. Project page here.

Wiki Techstorm

Techstorm participants in front of the Erasmus statue

The Wiki Techstorm was the second Techstorm in the Netherlands this year, funded by an anonymous donation and aimed at increasing the participation of new developers and woman/non-binary within the Wikimedia Community.

The (all inclusive!) Wiki Techstorm took place October 26th and 27th 2018 at the National Library in The Hague, the same partner as during the previous event in May. Participation was about 80%/20% women/men with a total of 35 participants (and fifteen mentors/trainers). After two days, one evening session and six workshops, 23 projects were presented during the showcase on Saturday after eating a Wikidata cake celebrating the Wikidata birthday.


Wiki Loves Monuments and wikinobel

Wiki Loves Monuments

The winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2018 Norway were announced on 31 October. We had more than 1,200 submitted images this year, which is more than in previous years. A big thank you goes out to all participants, and to the jury for their hard work in getting to the final ten photos.


wikinobel

This year's edition of wikinobel was an editathon about women in peace, to highlight the gender gap also among individuals working with peace. Of the 106 individuals awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 17 are women. The event was at The Nobel Peace Center and the Swedish embassy took part as co-organizator. The Women in Red project Norway was presented by Wikimedia Norge and women nominated or awarded for the Nobel Peace Prize were presented during a talk from staff at The Nobel Peace Center. Afterwards about 20 people took part in an editathon.


Heirlooms locally and internationally

Help Goethe Institut's effort to describe European Heirlooms on Wikipedia!

Heirlooms - workshop

Goethe Institut Warsaw is taking part in an international project 'Erbstucke'. Wikimedia Polska is helping to organise an editathon on November 17th, 2018. Participants have been writing their articles - in Polish and in English and are working within a dedicated wikiproject. The theme is cultural heritage and cultural phenomena that originate from that heritage. The articles will be written in Polish and English. Among subjects picked by editors are: Meissen porcelain, Zalewajka soup, the French cruiser D'Encrasteaux, and many other themes related to culture, industry and social life.

All Wikipedia editors are welcome to see our article list, read the project description and translate or write an article within the project!

Let us know if you have any questions at kultura@wikimedia.pl.

EthnoWiki Tuesdays and Ethnology Without Borders

Ethnology Without Borders, Wrocław

The Wrocław University Faculty of Ethnology and Anthropology has begun running a regular program of workshops titled "#EtnoWiki – between cyberanthropology and digitising anthropological knowledge", or EthnoWiki Tuesdays. Students learn about the basic principles of Wikipedia and editing, and pick themes related to anthropology and ethnology to write new Wikipedia articles from the field.

Also in Wrocław, the upcoming international conference "Ethnology Without Borders" (16-17 November 2018) will feature a day-long session of presentations of Wiki ethnographic projects (Ritual Year with Wikipedia, Ethnography of the Carpathians) and other GLAM projects, as well as an editing workshop during which the participants will edit articles from the field of ethnography and anthropology. See the conference website for details. The event is coordinated by Celina Strzelecka.

Silesian heritage: Silesian museums join forces with Wikipedia

Silesia COA

A new wikiproject: Silesian Museums will coordinate the learning process and efforts of 15 regional museums and cultural centres from Silesia, whose staff attended a recent seminar about GLAM opportunities for regional museums, open licensing and GLAM WIKI projects in Poland.

Participating museums will select one item from their collection and contribute articles, and/or images, video or audio media to Wikimedia Commons, to document this one selected object in Polish Wikipedia. The project organisers hope that towards the end of the project, a collection of Silesian museum objects will be available in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons - whilst the museum staff learn new skills and Wiki know-how. The project is coordinated by the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice and Wikimedia Polska.


The growing GLAM

Ministry of culture awarded Wikimedia Serbia

Wikimedia Serbia has received the Certificate of appreciation for the contribution in improving the digitization process of cultural heritage, by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Republic of Serbia. The Certificate was given by the Minister of culture and information Mr. Vladan Vukosavljević at the ceremony held at the National Museum in Belgrade. This is a result of the strong partnership with the Ministry within the GLAM program, supported through GLAM seminars and Wikimedian in residence program.

We believe in achieving even greater success in upcoming years when it comes to presenting Serbian cultural heritage at Wikipedia and other wiki projects, spreading our mission of free knowledge.


Wikimedian in residence in Historical archive of Pirot

One more residence is established in October. This time, Historical Archive of Pirot will host Wikimedian Milena Milenković for two months. This residence is third in a row financed by the Ministry of culture and information of Republic of Serbia, and 4th realized in this year. Expected outcomes are 500 uploaded files, 100 Wikipedia articles, 5 digitized books and one workshop for the employees.

By the end of the year it will be established two more residences - in the Historical Archive of Pančevo and the Republic Institute for the protection of cultural heritage of Serbia, witch will be the first government institution hosting Wikimedian and joining the GLAM program.




Roundtripping Project, Books Import and Wikidata Imported to SOCH

Wikimedia Commons Data Roundtripping Project Accepted

The Swedish National Heritage Board's proposed research project about the ability for GLAMs to review, copy, and reuse user created data from Wikimedia Commons has been accepted. The Nordic museum, the Swedish Performing Arts Agency and the Swedish National Heritage Board will run this project from November to June 2019 in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Sverige. The accepted project brief is available on Wikimedia Commons.

Preparing Swedish books for Wikidata

Wikimedia Sverige's collaboration with the National Library of Sweden is progressing on nicely: we are focusing on building a codebase to process the bibliographical information in the Libris library catalog and convert it to Wikidata items. You can see an example here.

Swedish Open Cultural Heritage connects to Wikidata

The national cultural/museum aggregator and linked open data platform in Sweden, Swedish Open Cultural Heritage(SOCH) now includes over 150 000 same as statements to Wikidata items. SOCH began linking to Wikimedia platforms back in 2012 and includes over 120 000 links to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia since earlier.


Built heritage conservation on Commons; les sans pagEs at a Modern art museum

Built Heritage on Commons at the Archives cantonales vaudoises

Hill of Saint-Triphone, Vaud, Switzerland

Following their upload of archeological photographs by Albert Naef this past summer, the Archives cantonales vaudoises held a workshop to encourage the use of this collection of images on Wikipedia, so that they could circulate further on the wikiverse. The workshop attracted several museum and archives personnel, and led to the improvement of the articles on the French language Wikipedia, mainly concerning their municipalities of employment. The result can be consulted here. The advantage of such an image-matching workshop is that writing on Wikipedia and finding sources is not needed, so it can be carried out in a two-hour time slot.

The workshop was followed by a roundtable on how to conserve and make known built heritage, with a historian of monuments, an archivist, the director of , the director of an archeological museum, and an art history teacher.


First WikiWednesday at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCO, Geneva) by Art+Feminism collective les sans pagEs on October 17th

A studious group of Wikipedians at the en:MAMCO

This first workshop attracted four new Wikipedians, who started to improve their editing skills with the advice of Natacha and Flor. The MAMCO provided us with a bibliography on five of their women artists. The articles in French on Elizabeth Murray, Cosima von Bonin, and Christiane Lovay were created, and a total of 35 articles were improved. The books lent by the museum will rotate as we advance in the project.



Wikidata in Oxford

Oxford

No new data have been shared this month, but there have been ongoing software improvements to Astrolabe Explorer, Collection Explorer and The Sibthorp-Bauer expedition. The Astrolabe Explorer has been discussed extensively on Rete, a community for scholars of scientific instruments, with eleven participants offering comments. The feedback included a lot of general positivity but also many specific suggestions for improvement. In response, we have already made some changes and are looking to encourage more astrolabe data, both manually and in bulk to build toward a more complete collection. A second version of the application will be created at the end of the calendar year. There is interest for the community in contributing to Wikidata about scientific instruments and their makers, but some trepidation because Wikidata is a new platform for them, so some of Martin's time in the rest of the calendar year will be spent on making training materials.

Martin Poulter has been working on a script and PowerPoint animations for a short video on how Wikidata can help with the discovery of museum collections. In November he will be presenting at the University of Oxford's GLAM Digital Showcase. "Wikidata and GLAM catalogues: another round-up" is a new blog post to maintain awareness in Oxford of the enthusiasm for Wikidata across the cultural sector.



Wikiconference North America Culture Crawl

Wikiconference North America Culture Crawl

One of the major GLAM events for North America is the m:Wikiconference North America's Culture Crawl, which had its origins in 2016 as a pre-conference event with more than a dozen museums at Balboa Park in San Diego, California. The day-long collaboration with cultural institutions consisting of tours and Wikimedia content improvement has become a notable tradition before Wikiconference North America.

This year's event in Columbus, Ohio, ahead of the main conference at Ohio State University, was spearheaded by a team led by Maria Rimmel to establish a day of tours and events with the purpose of connecting participants from around the world with cultural institutions in Columbus. Hosted at the Columbus Metropolitan Library main branch, organizers planned an all day edit-a-thon, an Intro to Wikipedia for Librarians, Wikidata training, and an upload-a-thon to upload public domain images from the library.

From that location in the heart of downtown Columbus, more than 80 participants fanned out to the Ohio Statehouse, State Library of Ohio, James Thurber House, Orton Geological Museum and Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum for tours, photography and editing activities. The main meetup coordination page can be found at en:Wikipedia:Meetup/Columbus/WCNA_Columbus_Edit-a-thon_2018

Among the notable outcomes include:

  • Creation of a new Wikidata item, article and photo collection about the Topiary Park, a replica of the famous George Seurat painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte using shrubbery. The park claims it is the only horticultural work of its kind that replicates a painting in real life.
  • The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum treated visitors to a backstage tour of their collections, showing them rare items like original Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes strips. The museum staff worked closely with editors to provide resources and images for the editathon, where editors improved articles on cartoonists in their collections, including creating a new article on early 20th century Austrian cartoonist Karl Pommerhanz. This was also the start of an ongoing collaboration to use Wikidata to ingest and display biographical data on thousands of artists in their collections.
  • Columbus Metropolitan Library tour
    Columbus Metropolitan Library tour
  • Ohio State Library tour
    Ohio State Library tour
  • Ohio State Library tour
    Ohio State Library tour
  • Topiary Park in Columbus, a replica of a famous Seurat painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
    Topiary Park in Columbus, a replica of a famous Seurat painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
  • One of the images donated to Commons by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum
    One of the images donated to Commons by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

Wikidata tools for GLAM Culture Crawl

During the edit-a-thon, a number of Wikidata-oriented tools were shown for editing and uploading images to Commons, including:

  • TABernacle (link) - This revamped tool from Magnus Manske supports live interactive editing of multiple Wikidata items in a table format. It can load a SPARQL query or a manual list of Q numbers to provide a more coherent way to examine many items at once. For an example of a set to edit all local Columbus, Ohio museums, see this link. Another example, to work with all women cartoonists, can be seen on the coordination page.
  • WikiShootMe (link) - This is a map-based tool that works on mobile to show all the Wikidata items around you, identifying the ones that need a photo with a red circle.
  • PictureThis (link) - Like WikiShootMe, this is a mobile friendly tool/web page that shows what Wikidata items near you have photos or not. (You can also interactively search Wikidata items by label name to upload to specific Wikidata items.) But even more powerful, you can do "one click" uploading of images to add your photo to Commons while also adding it as the photo to a Wikidata item. It is very fast, as no licensing page or description for the image is needed. This is easily one of the most convenient ways for mobile users to contribute to Wikidata/Wikimedia projects.

A full set of photos from the day can be found on Wikimedia Commons - WikiConference_North_America_2018_Culture_Crawl

Digging into USDA Research

The National Archives and Records Administration and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, WMDC-USDA, about the United States Department of Agriculture. In attendance were David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, Chavonda Jacobs-Young, director of the Agricultural Research Service, and Paul Wester, director of the National Agricultural Library. Jacobs-Young told attendees that her nephew found her Wikipedia article, which was created at a previous Wikimedia DC event, and promptly declared her "famous".

  • Chavonda Jacobs-Young, Paul Wester, David Ferriero
    Chavonda Jacobs-Young, Paul Wester, David Ferriero
  • happy editors
    happy editors
  • USDA history panel
    USDA history panel


Documentation survey, Structured Data on Commons consultations, blog posts and conferences

Structured Data on Commons

Documentation survey

In 2019, the documentation for batch uploads of files to Wikimedia Commons will be improved, on the occasion of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

Before we start working on this, the GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to understand better which types of documentation you already use, and how you like to learn new GLAM-Wiki skills and knowledge. To learn more about this, we have created a short survey, which you can access here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWcLNO6dyM11usIet29bGhEPtbA-01q04dYTruu1V1DtDsVw/viewform

The survey runs until November 30, 2018. It is most relevant for beginning and active GLAM-Wiki volunteers, and for GLAM staff members who have (some) hands-on experience with Wikimedia projects.

A privacy statement applies to this survey. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Sandra at sfauconnier﹫wikimedia.org.

Design mockup of a file page with structured data on Wikimedia Commons. Leave feedback!

New designs are up for structured copyright and licensing statements on Wikimedia Commons, based on feedback from the first round of designs of a few months ago. Please take some time to look over the new mockups and tell us what you think. How copyright and licensing is displayed in structured data is extremely important, and the development team needs to hear from you!

Prototype for new search functionality in October

Prototype for search on Wikimedia Commons

In October, a new prototype for searching Wikimedia Commons via structured data was published. It is still possible to provide feedback here as well.

New blog posts about Wikibase

Wikibase, the software behind Wikidata, is available as free and open software, and can be used for external databases and linked open data projects. It is quickly becoming quite popular in the cultural sector. Together with Jens Ohlig (Wikimedia Deutschland), Sandra and Alex have written a few blog posts on the Wikimedia blog that highlight how institutions use Wikibase:

Conferences

It is conference season! The GLAM team is travelling quite a bit and spreading the word about GLAM-Wiki, Wikidata in GLAM, and Structured Data on Commons. A few highlights:

And of course GLAM-Wiki Tel Aviv, 3-5 November, where the entire team was also present. See the program, which will increasingly include video registrations by User:Fuzheado and links to the presentations!


November's GLAM events

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