GLAM/Newsletter/October 2023/Contents/Poland report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue X, October 2023

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Poland report

WikiMatejko, Internships, Open Heritage, folk costumes

By Kamila Neuman

Call for internships in partnership with the National Museum in Krakow

In October we completed the recruitment process for interns within the framework of the Internship in Culture program of the National Cultural Center. This time we offered internships in partnership with the National Museum in Krakow. With our offer, we want to convince people that Wikipedia is a great place for humanists who want to develop their digital competencies.

In response to our offer, we received a record number of applications so far, as many as 25. Our Open Culture manager conducted about 20 interviews. As a result, we selected 5 people. The choice was not easy, as each of the candidates was motivated to do an internship and had the potential to develop as an intern within the program. Therefore, all candidates were invited to participate in the WikiMatejko editing campaign and can take part in it while doing an internship at the National Museum in Krakow.

Our Open Culture Manager says: Such conversations with candidates, while challenging because they take a lot of time, are also of great value. I have the opportunity to find out if what we offer them is interesting to them and if so, why. During my conversations with candidates, I learned that the internship offer stands out from other offers, that the combination of humanities knowledge and digital competencies is interesting, and that the value of the offer is the opportunity to do it online and at the same time get internship credit at a major national museum. This reinforces my conviction that such a joint experiment with a museum can be very valuable, both for the interns themselves and for free knowledge, as these people will bring expert knowledge about art and our cultural heritage to Wikimedia projects. I believe there is value in jointly offering apprenticeships that combine our know-how, and I would like to continue this model in future collaborations with other GLAM institutions.

The National Cultural Center is a state cultural institution whose statutory task is to undertake activities for the development of culture in Poland. As part of its activities, the NCK conducts its own long-term programs and one-time projects, as well as partnership projects with other entities in the cultural sector. One of the programs is Internship in Culture, where cultural sector entities through NCK recruit interns. The Internship in Culture program allows students and graduates to gain their first work experience, and organizations to recruit members to their teams.

Official opening of the WikiMatejko editing campaign at the National Museum in Krakow

October 28 marked the official opening of the WikiMatejko editing campaign at the National Museum in Krakow.

As part of GLAM-Wiki's partnership with the museum, preparations had been underway for several months for an action related to the Year of Matejko (2023 marks the 185th anniversary of the artist's birth and 130th anniversary of his death) and the exhibition currently on display at the museum entitled "Matejko. Painter and History." One of the museum's branches is the Jan Matejko House, a biographical museum dedicated to the life and work of the artist. The museum also has the artist's paintings in its collection, which are on permanent display in the Cloth Hall, among other places.

The goal of the campaign is to enrich Wikipedia and other sister projects with high-quality content, illustrations and data related to the artist, his life and work. As part of the collaboration, digital reproductions of paintings, sketches and other museum artefacts related to the artist have been already uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

As a result of the action, we will increase the quantity and carry the quality of Wikipedia articles on Jan Matejko's work, his life, the circle of people close to him, and objects that were an important part of his creative activities.

The campaign will last until January 2024, and will include online training for newcomers and one-on-one support by experienced Wikipedians. The newcomers will create new and develop existing articles on the work of Jan Matejko. We want to use these articles to create open educational resources that will enrich the school curriculum, which often refers to Matejko, who depicted important events and historical figures for Poland as part of his work. As part of the proposed narrative, we also want to touch on less obvious themes, including the fact that Matejko collected and recreated historical objects and costumes, which later served as "models" in his artwork. As part of the action, we also want to translate new and developed content about Matejko, his life, loved ones and works into other languages.

The main target of the action are newcomers who will learn how to edit Wikipedia with the support of experienced Wikipedians. Our goal is to encourage editing Wikipedia among humanities students, especially art history majors, who have an easy time writing about culture and art, and at the same time are interested in improving their digital competence.

The action's opening event was a great success, with as many as 16 newcomers and 5 experienced Wikipedians participating. And there is even more interest in participating in the action, as not all participants had the opportunity to attend the opening event.

Kamila Neuman sums up the event as follows: We really wanted to start the editing action with a live event at the museum, which was an opportunity to talk about the action as such, but also to introduce newcomers to experienced Wikipedians, to visit the museum's library and learn about the sources, and to see the Matejko exhibition, which was guided by an expert from the museum. I think it's extremely important to start an editing campaign that will be running online with just a live meeting, accompanied by good energy, and it's such a good start that motivates further activities. We were very positively surprised by such a large response from new people, mainly humanities students, who learned about the action from the Association's and MNK's internship offers and at their universities. Conversations with them have shown us that they are very eager to share their knowledge and do it in an accessible way, so that knowledge about the artist and his work is available to everyone at their fingertips. I am also very pleased that the museum is open to developing our cooperation and implementing new activities that also involve its audience in actively processing knowledge about its collections.

WikiMatejko editing action page in Polish can be found here.

More photos from the opening of the WikiMatejko editing campaign by Robert Drózd can be found HERE.

Open Heritage Conference at the Wojciech Korfanty Institute

Representatives of Wikimedia Poland spoke about sharing and using free heritage resources during the conference OPEN HERITAGE at the Wojciech Korfanty Institute.

The aim of the "OPEN HERITAGE" conference was to show how tangible and intangible heritage can be creatively disseminated, using the example of projects run by Wikimedia Polska and by the Mobile Digitization Center department at the Wojciech Korfanty Institute. The conference was attended by employees of cultural institutions and people interested in the dissemination of tangible and intangible heritage.

Kamila Neuman, Open Culture Manager from Wikimedia Poland talked about the recipe for successful GLAM-Wiki cooperation, i.e. the first steps of cultural institutions to Wikimedia projects. Klara Sielicka-Baryłka, Open Education Manager from Wikimedia Poland talked about Regional Education and open educational resources. The conference also included a panel on Wikiresidency as a model of GLAM-Wiki cooperation with the participation of: Grzegorz Gogacz - wikiresident at the Public Library of the City of Warsaw - Main Library of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, Filip Jankowski - wikiresident at the National Museum in Krakow, and Kamila Neuman from Wikimedia Poland. It was an interesting discussion, which showed how different the activities carried out as part of a wikiresidency can be and, using vivid examples, showed what a wikiresidency can consist of.

The Wojciech Korfanty Regional Institute of Culture is a provincial self-government cultural institution of dissemination and scientific and research character. The Institute's tasks include conducting research work, preparing conservation documentation, creating innovative programs of socio-cultural animation, cultural education, organizing improvement in organizing and conducting cultural activities, promoting culture and protecting the cultural heritage of the region, conducting publishing activities, conducting research analysing the state of culture and creating cooperation networks integrating entities active in the cultural sector.

Wikimedia Poland has been cooperating with the institute for years by spreading openness through GLAM-Wiki activities.

Interesting resources made available on Wikimedia Commons as part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration with the National Library in Warsaw

From the land of Sieradz. Girl in velvet 1908-1913
From the land of Sieradz. Bride
Bride from Sieradz area
Portrait of Florian Piekarski with his wife Bronislawa 1900
Portrait of Florian Piekarski with his wife Bronislawa in the garden
Wanda Siemaszkowa as Donna Alnica 1907
Portrait of Wanda Siemaszkova in stage creation
Wanda Siemaszkowa in the role of Julka in the play "In the Net" by Jan August Kisielewski

As part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration, more than 20,000 files were uploaded at the National Library in Warsaw in October, including folk costumes in paintings by Florian Piekarski and photos of people from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as actress Wanda Siemaszkowa.

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