User:Jean-Frédéric/TMIG
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Catchup from Versailles
By Trizek
Since the beginning of Benoît Evellin's residency in March, the partnership with the Château de Versailles has gone from strength to strength. There are currently over 1800 pictures from the partnership on Commons (including 76 pictures labelled), all taken by Wikimedians during "Wikimedia takes..." events. Due to an exclusive licensing contract with the Réunion des musées nationaux, the Château is not able to share photos or pictures digitized by its services, although the partnership with Wikimedia is trying to change that. On the French Wikisource, 50 books are now available for a review. One book is available in English.
Events
Concerning the life of this partnership, Evellin regularly meets Wikimedians. He has organized a meeting between a Wikipedian living in the Dominican Republic who is fascinated by Versailles (especially the Hameau de la Reine) and Annick Heitzmann, the archaeologist in charge of the domain, who studied the village. On June 18, the general assembly of Wikimedia France was held in the palace, with free or guided visits available afterwards. Twelve "Wikimedia takes the Château de Versailles" events have also been held.
Challenges
During June there was also an opportunity to test a new form of participation in Wikipedia, with a "24 hours for an article" challenge. The first article chosen was about the Grand Trianon (see English and French versions) on the French Wikipedia. Around twenty contributors have worked on the article, tripling the content with the addition of sources and images. The curator responsible for Trianon provided the best resources available both online and in books. One week after he first announced the concept, Evellin put the sources and announced the subject of the challenge, online. After only a few hours (well, they had to have time to read the sources), the article was like a battlefield: moving, changing, with some pieces deleted and reshaped. Evellin has expressed his wish to host another "24 hours challenge" before he leaves the Château. It will probably be on an international subject, in order to include more people and more articles.
In a similar vein to last year's Hoxne challenge, July 6 saw seven Wikipedians and five staff members of the Château (including some from the research center) combine their efforts to push an article about the Château de Versailles as far as possible. Convener of the event and Wikipedian in Residence Evellin remarked:
| “ | This was not easy: the article was damaged by successive vandalism, small additions and weakness of relevant sources. We managed to make a plan and give a section of the article to every participant to improve. Maybe it would have been easier if we had started from scratch or with a stub... | ” |
He will leave the Château in mid-August, after Wikimania, so July's work mainly focussed on the autonomy of the project, with the formation of contacts, the development of stuff in order to encourage the public, staff from the Château or Wikimedians to participate. Various other events, including visits, conferences, working days and backstage pass tours, are planned for September - and beyond - to continue the partnership. The partnership will continue, although other Wikimedians - and Château staff may take the lead.
Monuments, seminars and workshops
September, this year, in France was very busy with Wiki Loves Monuments. Over 25,000 photos were uploaded to Commons as part of the nation's activities.
Catch-up
The chapter took part in a number of GLAM activities this month:
- Earlier this month, Rémi Mathis and Adrienne Alix attended a seminar "Heritage and Web data" in Paris.
- The GLAM working group followed an effort to make links on Wikimedia Commons from the category of people to authority files on library catalogs - referring to the project with the French National Library. The project page for this partnership can be found on Commons.
- In the margins of the Creative Commons Summit in Warsaw (Benji was at the summit, representing Wikimedia France) there was held a study day "open GLAM" to raise Public Domain and open data to the cultural institutions. This inititative includes Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative Commons and Communia. Thinking began to coordinate with the projects who goes align with the association.
- Adrienne Alix, director of programmes, identified the chapter's GLAM projects past, present and future, in order to assess actions and start new projects.
- September 29, Lena and Pierre-Selim, two Wikimedians from Toulouse, conducted a workshop for the staff of the Museum of Toulouse. The workshop was part of a partnership begun last year (Project Phoebus) which has already provided over 700 high quality pictures to Wikimedia Commons. The museum posted a very enthusiastic report on their blog (in French).
Photos, projects and seminars
This month, the group in charge of relations with cultural institutions organized itself to participate in the GLAMCamp in December in Amsterdam. 4 French Wikimedians will then travel to Amsterdam: Remi Mathis, Jean-Frédéric, Sylvain (Ash Crow) and Adrienne.
Projects with several GLAM institutions
Adrienne Alix, Program Director, went to meet with several cultural institutions to prepare future partnerships: Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the Mémorial de Caen (Second World War Memorial), Municipal Library of Toulouse, the French Society of Photography (one of the biggest and oldiest society about photography in France), the Musée de Cluny (national museum of Middle Ages) etc.
Phoebus project
- The Wikimedians of Toulouse involved in the Phoebus project resumed photo sessions at the Museum of Toulouse. Archaeodontosaurus, Pierre-Selim and Lena convinced two other photographers (not wikimedians) to accompany them. They just have 2 million objects to photograph! The museum is ambitious about this project... :-)
- We were informed that thanks to the Phoebus project and beautiful photographs taken in 2010 and widely disseminated on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, several foreign museums were informed of wealth of the Museum.
The exhibition that was the reason for the start of this project is going to travel in Europe, thanks to Wikimedians. The museum will get royalties by exporting its exposure. This is an excellent argument for free culture that can generate wealth, even indirectly!
- On an other hand, the city of Toulouse in the Novela Festival organized an art competition in which participants were asked to remix photos Phoebus Project to create artistic works.
- Adrienne gave an update of the Phoebus project after one year during a conference about open data / open content hosted by the City of Toulouse for the opening of its open-data portal.
Centre Georges Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art)
- The project with the Centre Georges Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) continues : after the first workshops in June, Xaviateur, a french wikimedian, participated in the test of Blinkster, a mobile application of "augmented visit" for visitors of the museum: with this application, visitors can "flash" Artworks of the museum and will have access to information from Wikipedia articles.
- Adrienne is working to develop a series of workshops throughout the year 2012 with the Centre Pompidou. These workshops focus on contemporary art in Wikipedia.
A seminar about Museology co-organized by Wikimédia France
Wikimedia France is co-organizer of the 2011-2012 seminar of the Institute for Research and Innovation (IRI), entitled "Museums: privileged places of articulation of the semantic web and social web. Museology, museum and new forms of address to the public. " On 18 october, Adrienne participated in the first session, relating to "The Challenge of structured data and metadata for the convergence of the Semantic Web and Social Web," and gave a presentation entitled "Wikimedia: Semantic Web or social web? " (video here)
Metrics, Freedom of panorama and Museomix
Working about partnerships for 2012
During the month of November work continued on projects with various museums. Adrienne Alix is currently finalizing partnership agreements with several major museums in Toulouse and Paris.
Several Wikimedians had appointments or contacts with cultural institutions that are likely to result in partnerships or joint actions. We hope to announce these new projects in early 2012!
Some metrics about the Museum of Toulouse
Among the partnerships that work well, we can do an update of the work at the Museum of Toulouse with some numbers: Today we have 842 pictures from the Museum of Toulouse, all made by Wikimedians.
The aim of this project is to take photos of high quality. Of these 842 photographs, 140 (16%) are IQ on Wikimedia Commons, and 112 (13%) are VI on Wikimedia Commons.
The pictures are disseminated on a large number of Wikimedia projects, whether Wikipedia, Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikinews etc.. : 533 (63%) are used on a project, there are 7691 uses in total. The images are present on 193 different projects. 95 projects contain at least five images from Phoebus Project.
There is still a lot of work, but the group is highly motivated and the result is enjoyed by all, especially by the Museum of Toulouse.
All the photos are available on Commons.
Museomix
The 11-12-13 November, Jean-Fred and Benoit Evellin (Trizek) participated in a museographical experimentation: Museomix. The principle of Museomix was to bring together all actors in the digital cultural world and museums to experiment concretely "the museum of the future". The event was organized in the «Musée des Arts décoratifs» (Museum about decorative arts and design in Paris).
Wikimedia France decided to participate in the experiment. This was an opportunity to meet many interesting people for our actions in museums, but it was difficult to link the projects developed during Museomix with the content of Wikimedia projects(and vice versa). People were there to set up to mount « funny » exhibition concepts and there was not enough space for the contents (and thus deep connections with the Wikimedia projects). This brings us to think more about what should be our place with cultural institutions: working about the content and not necessarily about new and « funny » digital experiences.
The conclusion is mixed but Benoit and Jean-Fred do not regret having spent three days in this very intense experience.
The website of Museomix is available here : http://www.museomix.com/
An exhibition on Wikimedia Commons!
Léna and PierreSelim have photographed an entire exhibition of paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse and grouped the pictures on Commons by installing them room by room in french, to keep the meaning of the exhibition [intime 1]. This is a very interesting way to present the content, perhaps an innovation on Wikimedia Commons?
To view the exhibition on Wikimedia Commons: Petits théâtres de l'intime
Notes
- ↑ names have also been translated in english by now
Freedom of Panorama
In France there is currently no freedom of panorama. On November 23 a law was debated in the French National Assembly, in which two deputies have submitted an amendment to introduce freedom of panorama in France.
This amendment is a direct result of the actions of Wikimedia France. Remi Mathis, president of the chapter, was very active to defend freedom of panorama and explain to these deputies the importance of introducing freedom of panorama in the French law to value the cultural richness of France.
The amendment was unfortunately not accepted. It was dubbed during the session "Wikipedia Amendment." We are disappointed that it was not adopted, but this passage in the National Assembly has given high visibility to the problem among politicians and we are now able to explain to each political party the importance of this issue . The year 2012 is an important election year in France (presidential election and the election of deputies), we have a way to influence legislation.
You can see the video of the debate in the National Assembly and the transcript here.
GLAMcamp in Amsterdam, Wiki Loves Monuments in the National Museum of Middle Ages
GLAMcamp in Amsterdam
A small group of five from Wikimédia France was in Amsterdam for GLAMcamp. Jean-Fred (Jean-Frédéric) and Sylvain (Ash Crow) also attended the debriefing of Wiki Loves Monuments, later joined by Benoît Evellin (Trizek), Adrienne Alix (Serein) and Rémi Mathis (Remi Mathis).
They discussed GLAM projects in France and beyond and met many Wikimedians of many different nationalities.
Awards ceremony for Wiki Loves Monuments in the National Museum of Middle Ages
On December 9, Wikimedia France organized the Wiki Loves Monuments award ceremony in the National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris.
The ceremony began with a private tour of the museum, led by two curators, after the opening hours. The visit was enjoyed by all participants.
After that, Rémi Mathis opened the awards ceremony in a speech recalling the importance of the contest and the interest for Wiki Loves Monuments and heritage in the Wikimedia movement. He also recalled the very important work done by the contributors in all Europe. The winners then received their prizes. Each winner explained their part in the contest. Jean-Fred announced the results of the European competition by sharing the comments of the jury.
The evening finished with cocktails.
The evening brought together around forty people: Wikimedians and others, including several people from the Ministry of Culture (including the manager of the Mérimée database - a database of historical monuments in France) and officials from heritage preservation associations.
The day before and the morning of the ceremony, the competition has been mentioned on France Info, the public French radio station of continuous information, with two short stories; one about free licenses and the other about the organization of the contest and about one of the castles represented in one of the winning photos.
See also
- The story of the event on Wikimedia France's blog (in French)
- The first news item on France Info (starts at 8.20) (in French)
- The second news on item France Info (in French)
Public Domain Day, Workshop and GLAM Toolbox
GLAM Toolbox
The "GLAM team" began to prepare a draft of a "GLAM toolbox" which will provide a dedicated interface for cultural institutions with specific tools, documentation in French and a collaborative workspace. The project is currently in development and will be voted upon by the Board of Wikimedia France in February. We will define the project with the goal of internationalization.
Workshop in the Library of Toulouse
On January 21, nine Wikimedians conducted a workshop at the Library of Toulouse. They taught the public how to contribute to Wikipedia and the librarians how to conduct a workshop.
Other workshops are planned for the rest of the year. The theme of the contributions will be "the districts of Toulouse", in line with the theme of the Library in 2012. It is expected that these workshops will be done only by the librarians of Toulouse, without the involvement of any Wikipedians.
URAA in French
On January 23, Jean-Fred wrote a post on the Wikimedia France blog to explain URAA, with the assistance of other Wikimedians. The blog was the first in French explaining the problem of URAA and its possible impact on Wikimedia Commons. It was viewed by about 3,500 readers and has been cited in numerous online journals since publication. The blog post can be read here (in French)
Celebrating Public Domain Day in France!
On January 26 Wikimedia France organized "Public Domain Day" with Creative Commons France, Communia and people from the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF). The event brought together representatives from those organizations to meet with attendees, lawyers and advocates for free culture and digital freedom.
Sylvain Boissel created a website which provides:
- a legal explanation about the Public Domain (made by Creative Commons and Communia)
- a list of works passed in the public domain in 2012,
- a page to encourage users tu reuse the public domain
- the announcement of a conference about the public domain
The objective was to teach the public about the Public Domain, to show the richness of the Public Domain, but also threats to it and the complicated legislation (a demonstration of the OKF calculator was very effective).
The event, which brought together around 50 participants, was the first time that an event related to the Public Domain Day was held in France. It is hoped that this will be replicated next year. The website dedicated to the Public Domain remains online and can be found here (in French).
Continuation of the GLAM projects, GLAM Conference in Belgrade
GLAM-Wiki conference in Belgrade
Adrienne Alix (Serein) attended the GLAM-Wiki conference organized by Wikimedia Serbia in Belgrade on the 24 and 25 February. Her report is as follows.
On Friday, February 24 was held in Belgrade, Serbia, the first GLAM conference organized by Wikimedia Serbia. Wikimedians interested in GLAM projects from all over the world came to support Wikimedia Serbia and share their experiences in the event. Jan from Czech Republic, Orsolya from Wikimedia Hungary, Cristina from Lettera27 (the Italian foundation that supports WikiAfrica), Noopur from Wikimedia India, Kiril from Wikimedia Macedonia and me from Wikimédia France.
The conference was aimed at Serbian cultural institutions, to encourage them to work with Wikimedia Serbia to open their content and participate in the Wikimedia projects. There was obviously some heads of Serbian institutions in the hall, but also students. The conference was mainly in Serbian, but the presentations of the Wikimedian guests were predominantly in English.
The whole GLAM theme was covered: Mile Kiš, Serbian Wikimedian and organizer of the conference, began by explaining the organization of the Wikimedia movement, the actions of GLAM projects and why it is important for the diffusion of culture.
Nevenka Antić, representative of Creative Commons in Serbia, then explained the functioning of the Creative Commons licenses and their importance in the dissemination of knowledge.
The conference continued with the presentation of the Gutenberg project and the Ratsko Project by its director, Zoran Stefanovic. Both projects, pioneers of book digitization (Project Gutenberg was founded in 1971, the project Ratsko in 1997), show the importance of digitization for preservation and promotion of our historic and cultural heritage. Nikola Smolenski, long time Wikimedian, then presented the functioning of Wikisource and Mile Kiš demonstrated the QRPpedia project and how it was used, for example at Derby Museum (UK) to improve the visits.
The last part of the conference focused on feedback from abroad. Noopur form India explained how works the coordination between wikimedians of a country so vast as India, and that events and local projects were the key to the success of the first projects of the indian chapter. Cristina from Lettera27 presented the WikiAfrica project, wich aims to release cultural content by cultural institutions focusing on Africa, and to encourage the creation of encyclopedic content about Africa. Jan Loužek from Czech Republic explained the situation of the GLAM projects in his country, and Adrienne recalled the history of GLAM projects in France and made a focus on three partnerships: the French National Library, the Palace of Versailles and the city of Toulouse, and explain how we operate.
The conference was well organized with a very friendly atmosphere. The small number of Wikimedians was welcomed with great hospitality by the Serbs and relationships were forged that will be surely successful between us.
On Saturday, we spent time together for a debriefing conference about the day before, to make a point on things that had worked and worked less. Then we talked about the ways to initiate and monitor GLAM projects, sharing our experiences. (And after that go to the stop-ACTA protest in the main place of Belgrade!)
These two days, punctuated by parties and good understanding between all of us, will be obviously successful and Mile has quickly announced that he was contacted by institutions to discuss common projects!
A special thank to Mile for the perfect organization, for Milos (the best guide for a visit in Belgrade), and to all the wonderful Serbian Wikimedians!
News in brief
- The Hoxne Hoard: A French version of the article initially developed as part of the British Museum collaboration has been labeled "featured article" and is now linked to from the French language page of the British Museum: [1]
- Partnership with the Library and Archives of Toulouse: The projects to put the full Trutat and Ancely collections to Wikimedia Commons is on its rails and new uploads could be made soon. Jean-Frédéric made a lecture about it on February 14 during a symposium of the "Institut de recherche et d’innovation".
- GLAM toolbox: The GLAM toolbox is on its way, and we have a better view of what tools exist and what needs to be created. We want to thank Daniel Mietchen for the deep tools analysis, in the tool-testing reports.[See This Month in GLAM coverage]
- Museum of the Quai Branly: Thanks to Symac, we are in contact with the Quai Branly Museum to take part in their "Digital week" in April, 2012. Adrienne is currently discussing with them of a possible conference and workshops on "how to contribute to Wikimedia projects".
- Submission to a call for papers: Caroline submitted an answer to a call for papers for a collective book about “Photographer visitors: a tool to think the Museum” but our contribution was not kept.
- Joint letter to the French Ministry of Culture: Wikimedia France sent a letter to the French Ministry of Culture, co-written with the FFSAM (french federation of the friends of museum societies), "OrsayCommons" and "Louvre pour tous" (two groups of defense of museum visitors), in order to promote freedom of photography in museums
- Open GLAM event with the OKF: Following a proposal of the OKF (after we co-organized the Public Domain Day in France), we will organize with them, at the end of April, an "OpenGLAM day", with an highlight on legal questions.
New partnerships and progress of many projects
Partnership with the National Museum of the Middle Ages
On March 21, Rémi Mathis has signed an official partnership with the National Museum of the Middle Ages, better known as Musée de Cluny. This museum, located in Paris, has a very important collection related to the Middle Ages, especially the famous series of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn.
We have been working on this partnership for several months. We have worked to suggest to the museum, not only giving cultural material or open their doors for the wikimedians, but to have a project for all the staff of museum to contribute on Wikimedia projects.
The project is to encourage all the staff of the Museum, from the curators and librarians up to the guides and other employees, to contribute about the Middle Ages and the museum. Wikimédia France will organize some workshops during which employees will learn how to contribute.
In the future, we want to organize the same type of workshops with the Society of Friends of the Museum.
The second part of the partnership is to help the Museum to insert Wikimedia content into their upcoming new website. Related to our future GLAM Toolbox, we want to discuss and make some tools for Museums and especially to involve the circulation of content between the Wikimedia projects and the museum website.
Wikimedia France help regional Archives on Wikisource!
Since January, we have helped the Departmental Archives of the Alpes-Maritimes (South East of France) to contribute on Wikisource. The vice-director of the archives has asked us for a project to edit a corpus of old religious documents of the 18th century, about 8,000 manuscripts pages talking about life and descriptions of the villages. This is a very interesting corpus. The Archives work with some students in paleography directly on Wikisource. They upload the manuscripts and correct them with the help of the volunteers of Wikisource and Wikimédia France.
It is the first time that we have some Archives working on Wikisource and it is very rare to have a big corpus of manuscripts. The communication about this project was very well received by the Archives community.
The description of the project and press release are available on Wikisource.
Conferences, panels and workshops this month
- March 2: conference by PierreSelim et Léna in the "Archives and Libraries" department in the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail
- March 7: Panel about scientific editions in the university of Angers. Adrienne talked about the collaborative creation of knowledge on Wikipedia
- March 19: Sylvain helped a group of librarians to discover MediaWiki and the collaborative work
- March 21: Adrienne talked about "Museums and digitization of cultural content" in the "Rencontres de l'Orme" in Marseille (the "Rencontres de l'Orme" are a big annual conference about education and culture)
Progress of the projects
- PierreSelim is working on the description templates for the photographs of the Muséum de Toulouse. Some of the photographs are the only illustration of a species! The Museum asked us to retrieve back the descriptions of the files, because of the good job made by Commonists. Crowdsourcing works!
- Adrienne was in Lyon on March 26, to meet the Cultural Department of the City, and about ten cultural institutions of the City (Museums, Archives, Libraries). She presented the principle of the GLAM projects to involve the institutions of the city to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and open their contents.
- We have had our first contacts with the Quai Branly Museum, a museum specialized in indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, to imagine some ways of collaboration.
- The project to merge all the parts of the Trutat's photographs is in good way, the institutions are very positive to share on Wikimedia Commons all the photographs.
- We are preparing a workshop about the public domain for lawyers and GLAM, together with the Open Knowledge Foundation. It will be held in Paris on April 27.
Release of content and outreach
PhotosNormandie
"PhotosNormandie" is an unofficial group of World War II enthusiasts and especially the D-Day and the Battle of Normandy (1944). They work to describe a lot of historical photographs about these moments, with a lot of details and a real expertise. They can find the military unit of a man, and sometimes the name, for example.
This group work since 5 years and is active on Flickr. They describe mostly photographs from NARA and have now more than 3,000 pictures with very interesting captions. We met the leader of the group, Patrick Peccatte, and after a very interesting discussion, the group decided to change their license and offer their descriptions under a CC-BY-SA license. We can now upload all the photographs on Wikimedia Commons (or matching with the photographs from NARA already present) and invite people to translate the captions in several languages (few are in English but the most part is in French). The group is interested in continuing his work maybe directly on Wikimedia Commons, and if possible with the help of NARA, because of the good relationships between NARA and the wikimedians.
See the work of the group on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/sets
Musée des Augustins (Toulouse)
After a workshop in February by Carol Ann, some students in tourism have work in April about the article of the Musée des Augustins, a fine arts museum in Toulouse. About ten students worked with the librarians of the museum to improve the quality of the article. The article grew 40,000 octets and presents now the collections and a short presentation of the main objects of the museum. We experiment this kind of collaboration (museum + students at work) with this institution and it is very instructive.
Meeting with an association of curators
On April 19 and 20, Adrienne was invited in Aix-en-Provence to work with an association of museum curators from the South of France about the opening of content and cultural data. During two days, the challenge was to work on four scenarios with four institutions, to help them to work with opening vision and to share their content. 70 people were present and worked during these two days. We made a lot of very nice contacts and many opportunities to do partnerships, especially with mobile projects.
OpenGlam : legal workshop about Public Domain and Cultural data and content
On April 27, Wikimedia France and the Open Knowledge Foundation organized a workshop in the Centre Pompidou to work about Public Domain and cultural content. The objective is to work with all the people interested in openning more and more the institutions and the Ministry, with the same mind than for open-data.
We invited some lawyers, people from institutions we worked with, and people from the ministry of Culture. Other people interested were welcome too. We were more than 30 people during four hours to work about specific french problems: a special status for the cultural data and content, which excludes them for opendata initiatives, and other specific laws and cultural problems.
This workshop was a real success. We have to work to clarify the result, and the group will meet again at the end of May to write a set of recommendations for the future Ministry of Culture, to sustain and improve free sharing of cultural content.
See the presentation of the workshop on the OpenGlam website : http://openglam.org/2012/04/05/open-glam-legal-workshop-in-paris/
Cultural lobbying; current and future projects
Meeting at the French Ministry of Culture
On May 4th, Rémi Mathis and Adrienne Alix attended a meeting at the French Ministry of Culture, organized by the Chief of Public Policies in the General Direction of Heritage. The meeting was the result of our common letter with other associations involved in the defense of photographs in museums. We campaign for free photography in museums when the collections are in the public domain. The meeting gathered 25 people from different departments of the ministry. We will work together to write a “charter” for visitors and museums to clarify the rights of each and promote free photographs and sharing.
- See the blogpost : Photographs in museums : to get a solution ? (fr)
Future project with the Mundaneum, ancestry of Internet?
On May 21th, Adrienne met several people from the Mundaneum, a museum in Mons (Belgium). This institution collects archives and collections of Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, two lawyers who have invented the Universal Decimal Classification at the end of the 19th century. They wanted to create a new way of classification and knowledge sharing, with a lot of similarities with Wikipedia and Google. They are often called “grand fathers of internet”.
As part of a collaboration between Wikimédia France and the Mundaneum, we discuss to enrich their exhibitions with QR Pedia, to liberate content from the Mundaneum and to do other projects to value the links between Mundaneum and the Wikimedia projects.
Open Glam (part 2)
We had the second workshop “OpenGlam” organized with the Open Knowledge Foundation on May 29th. We continue to work about Public Domain and cultural content. We were about 12 people to work with the notes of the first workshop (April 27th), to give some recommandations to the new cabinet of the ministry, and to the policy and administrative makers. The final document will sum up, in 4 or 5 pages, the main problems and solutions about release of cultural content. It will be published in mid-June.
Manuscripts of the Archives of Alpes-Maritimes
The small group working on Wikisource about manuscripts from the 18th century are soon in holidays. They made a good job with the wikisourcians, and in a few month almost 150 manuscripts pages are corrected. They will resume the workshop in November. In the French archivists community, this project was well-received. Several blogs and website discussedthe project .
- See on Wikisource (fr)
Wikipedia takes the Cadre Noir
On May 19th, a group of wikipedians went to Saumur, to visit the Cadre Noir, the national school of Equistrianism. This is a very old military institution (sixteenth century) which aims to train high-profile riders. The rules of dressage of the Cadre Noir are listed on the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Wikipedians have first visited the Cadre Noir with squires and took hundreds of photographs. They also worked on the articles about Cadre Noir with staff of the institution.
The Cadre Noir also uploaded some very high quality photographs on Wikimedia Commons. This meeting will continue with other actions.
- See the category on Wikimedia Commons
Helping GLAMs' staff; Conferences; Lobbying at Ministry of Culture
Helping museum staff to contribute
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During the summer Wikimedia France with its staff and volunteers have conducted two workshops in museums to help the staff to contribute to Wikimedia projects. The tutorials were specific to help the staff with their future projects on Wikimedia projects.
- In August M0tty and Adrienne went to the the Mundaneum (Museum at Mons in Belgium) to teach the museum staff how they can contribute to Wikipedia. Since this tutorial session, the museum staff has been improving the contents related to their area of expertise in order to use this contents with QRcodes during its exhibition about the History of Internet (starting on October 9th, 2012).
- On September 11th, two members of the chapter, also sysops on Wikimedia Commons, spent the morning in the Musée des Augustins de Toulouse to tutor and help the staff of the museum to contribute to Wikimedia Commons. It was also an occasion to evaluate the user interface with the eye of someone from a GLAM and talk about copyright and IP. Previously this year, the musée des Augustins and Wikimedia France organized together with a local prep school (Lycée Saint-Sernin) a Wikipedia contribution workshop on the topics related to History of art. The musée des Augustins now uploads good quality pictures in low resolution to provide good illustration for the students (and the wikimedians) of their collections.
Conferences
On September 13th, Adrienne Charmet-Alix presented GLAM projects to curators and researchers during a one-day conference of the National institute of History of Art. The afternoon was dedicated to a practical workshop on simulations of content dissemination over the internet.
Actions with the French Ministry of Culture
We have continued our actions with the Ministry of Culture, among which:
- Following up our lobbying on photography in museums with French Ministry of Culture (Read our blog entry on the topic La photo au musée : vers une solution ?), Adrienne and Rémi Mathis have participated to the third working meeting organized on the subject by the Ministry of Culture. The meeting agenda was about the legal questions about taking pictures in museums. The discussions of the next meeting will be about the usages of the pictures.
- On September 17th, The OpenGlam report has been published and has widely circulated into the Ministry of Culture. Titled “Guidelines on opening cultural data and content”, the report was prepared during sessions held in April and May 2012 with lawyers, staff of cultural institutions, people from the ministry of Culture, and open content advocates.
Read our blog entry on the topic: Open GLAM : recommandations pour l’ouverture des données et des contenus culturels
Semanticpedia; Lobbying at Ministry of Culture
Semanticpedia
November 19th, 2012 — Wikimedia France, the french ministry of Culture and the INRIA launched the Semanticpedia project. The project is a collaboration between INRIA, the ministry of Culture and Wikimedia France whose goal is to conduct research programs based on the Wikimedia projects content in order to extract semantic data and to provide cultural data freely available.
It is important to note it's the first time the ministry of Culture signed a partnership with two key players of the digital world.
Photography in museums
November 7th, 2012 — Rémi Mathis attended to a fourth working meeting on the photography in museums organized by the ministry of Culture following up the open letter published in spring 2012. The photographie usage from the visitors was on the agenda of this meeting.
Wikipedia Club at École du Louvre
Wikipedia Club at École du Louvre
In November 2012, Adrienne Alix (Wikimedia France) and Claire Séguret (Musée de Cluny) presented a project of starting a club of Wikipedia contributors at the École du Louvre. On December 6th, following on this first presentation, Wikimedia France organized a contribution workshop at the École du Louvre where half a dozen students attended. The goals of this first workshop was rather simple: create an account, make a first contribution, and learn how to insert an image in Wikipedia.
News from Toulouse; Contacting GLAMs in Strasbourg; French Bishops; Public domain day
News from Toulouse
The Projet Phoebus, project with the Muséum de Toulouse started in 2010, was especially highlighted this month in different French online newspapers. Some stats about the project were given to show the success of the project:
- around 1,700 photographies with very high quality are uploaded on Wikimedia Commons
- these photographies are used on more than 62,000 articles in more than 260 Wikimedia projects
- each month, around 2.5 millions of pages with pictures from the Museum of Toulouse are viewed on Wikimedia projects.
The material from the Museum de Toulouse is used outside of the Wikimedia projects, for example by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle of Paris. We've learned that an Ukrainian collector — who also happens to be a dedicated user of Wikimedia Commons — gave his collection of valuable shells from the Black Sea to the Museum after assessing the quality of its collections on Wikipedia.
The project was recently highlighted in the media:
- an article in local media
- an article in the regional press
- and an article in a media from Bashkortostan.
On January 30th, Didier Descouens and a wikimedian have presented the project at the Philosophy house in Toulouse. It was a valuable conference to share and discuss about knowledge transmission and free licences.
Contacting GLAMs in Strasbourg
On January 16th, Adrienne was in Strasbourg to explain GLAM projects with people from the different GLAM institutions of the city. 18 people were present, from the direction of cultural communication of the city, to the different curators of the museums. During a three hours meeting, the principles of GLAM projects and various questions about Wikimedia projects, public domain and free licenses were in discussion. We expect to start GLAM projects in the following months, especially with the Musée Alsacien which is especially interested.
French Bishops
On January 25th, Wikimedia France met with the Art commission of the French Bishops conference, and have drafted a contribution project where Wikimedia France would do training workshops. Stay tuned to hear more from this project.
Public Domain Day
On January 31st, Wikimédia France and the French chapter of Open Knowledge Foundation celebrated the Public Domain Day.
It is the second year we celebrate the Public Domain Day with the OKFN French group. This year, we have made an event with 80 people in the Centre Pompidou (Paris). During the evening, we had a various program:
- Presentation of the estate of the Public Domain in France and the positive agenda of Communia and other organizations (like La Quadrature du Net)
- News about the Public Domain Calculator (OKFN)
- Tribute to Aaron Swartz with a lecture of his Open Access Manifesto
- Testimonies from artists who release their works in the Public Domain
- Remix the public domain: musicians and actors who remix the Public Domain or record Public Domain under free licenses presented their works.
With the OKFN, we proposed to open a contest to promote remix of Public Domain works. In the following weeks, we will present the project.
- See the website for the event
Wikipedia in public libraries; Borrowing books from public libraries; POTY
Wikipedia in public libraries
Public libraries in Toulouse have 20 "Framakey Wikipedia" USB keys that contain free softwares and Wikipedia offline that can be borrowed by the public. The computers available at the libraries with no internet access also have an offline version of Wikipedia installed. In order to launch the Framakey Wikipedia in libraries Wikimedia France has organized 3 presentations and workshops on the Framakey and Wikipedia in the libraries of Toulouse.
Borrowing books from public libraries
Wikimédia France has now an "institutional" subscription to the public libraries in Toulouse, which allows us to freely borrow up to 36 books for a period of three weeks and to have access to lots of otherwise restricted documents, mainly about local history.
POTY : The Museum of Toulouse wins over NASA image
The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2012 is an image provided by Project Phoebus, a collaboration between Wikimédia France and the museum of Toulouse. The photograph was taken by a curator from the museum who joined the project in 2012 and illustrates the wider range of the project which extended from pictures of pieces from the taxidermy and paleonthology collection to pictures of living animals and plants. This information was passed on by the local press, from online-only to free daily newspaper to the online edition of the main regionaly daily newspaper.
Photography and future partnership with Notre-Dame de Paris
After discussions with the association Maurice de Sully, which takes care of Notre-Dame de Paris' cathedral, Wikimédia France plans to build a partnership with them, to improve quality and quantity of articles about Notre-Dame with help and contributions by the visitors guides association.
The first action was a photo-party with parisian wikimedians to take pictures about the new bells of the Cathedral. Pictures are available on Wikimedia Commons : Images supported by Wikimedia France - Notre-Dame de Paris.
Afrisson Project
Afrisson project is a new partnership, started on february 2013, related to african music. Afrisson.com is a website dedicated to african music, musicians, musical history and musical instruments. After discussions since july 2012, they decided last month to share a part of their content under a CC-BY-SA license.
All their introductions of pages related to musical styles and instruments are free to be copied on Wikipedia to start new articles about these subjects. All wikipedians are invited to start stubs and share knowledge about african music.
Case study in museum newsletter; Akan; Sèvres; Quai Branly
GLAM/Wiki case study in French museum newsletter
Joconde, the French museums database, included in its March 2013 newsletter an opinion column from Rémi Mathis, president of Wikimédia France, in which he explains the central aspects of a partnership between a cultural institution and the Wikimedia projects.
Akan
During March month, several wikimedians take photographies about Akan collection in the Museum of Toulouse, a collection of ethnographic material from Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast. See the category on Wikimedia Commons.
Sèvres
On March 7, 4 wikimedians went to visit the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and meet artisans to begin the project of documenting historic know-how of the Manufacture of ceramic. The project includes photographs and videos describing the various trades and achievements of this historic factory.
Quai Branly
On March 28, Adrienne Alix was in the Musée du quai Branly to explain the principes of partnerships between Wikimedia movement and GLAM institutions. The speech was included into a workshop for RIME (international network for ethnographics museums). Several people coming from European ethnographics museum were interested to contact Wikimedia chapters in their countries.
Others
- Rémi Mathis gave a talk at the Louvre-Lens on March 26, at a conference for museum librarians, to explain the importance of the Wikimedia projects for them and why they should release their images free.
- Second workshop with the students of the École du Louvre on March 12.
- The NCO (Uncabal of the West — a group of volunteers based in Brittany) have animated a workshop on Wikipedia at Angers during the Archivists' forum.
Brest
Brest archives shares the collection Maurice Marchand
In April, the city archives from Brest have shared on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons their Maurice Marchand collection. Maurice Marchand was a painter, a set designer, theather director. His work entered the domain public in January 2012. Illustrations of his sets have been shared on Wikimedia Commons and a biography was started on Wikipedia with the illustrations from Commons.
Edit-a-thon in Quai Branly
Quai Branly
For the Long Night of Museums,on May 18th and 19th, Wikimedia France organized an edit-a-thon in Musée du quai Branly.
National Archives & Toulouse
National Archives
An agreement has been signed between the French National Archives and Wikimédia France. The Archives will upload photographs from their collections and write articles on the institution and archives.
Toulouse
AncelyBot has finished uploading the Fonds Ancely: Personal collections of Réné Ancely acquired by the city of Toulouse in 1967 and curated by the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse. As a result, over 2000 pictures were automatically uploaded by AncelyBot after volunteers from Wikimédia France GLAM workgroup have worked on the metadata conversion process.
- If you want to see the work done, please go to the list of files uploaded by AncelyBot
The Musée des Augustins (Museum of fine arts of Toulouse) had an intern from end of May to mid-June to upload pictures from their collections on Wikimedia Commons. The intern worked with Wikimédia France GLAM workgroup in order to get some help with the metadata. The result of the intership is that all artworks exposed in the Salon rouge have been uploaded by the Museum.
- If you want to see the work done, please go to the list of files uploaded by the intern
Pompidou
Centre Pompidou partnership
A partnership between Wikimedia France and the Centre Pompidou is to be signed on September, the 18th by the president of the Centre Alain Seban and the chair of Wikimedia France Rémi Mathis.
A conference will be held this day about the relationship between amateurs and professionals and what Wikimedia-style projects can bring to a cultural institution. Three people will talk about collaborative work in the cultural field: Antonio Casilli (junior professor at Telecom Paristech), Henri Verdier (Director of Etalab - French government opendata facility), Louise Merzeau (junior professor à Paris X, sous réserve), chairing Gonzague Gauthier (digital projects manager, Centre Pompidou).
Workshops will be organized at the Centre Pompidou during the year 2013-2014 to write articles about the collections they hold (modern and contemporary art), the wikipedians being allowed to access the resources of the Centre, speak with curator, visit on closing days...
Two others conferences will take place in January and March 2014.
- Link to the conference of September 18th
Aerial pictures of Versailles; In Brief
Aerial pictures of Versailles
In the past year, some photographers from Wikimédia France had worked with the association ToucanWings who promotes aerial photography using UAV. This summer, as part of its partnership with the chapter (see previous TMIG coverage), the Palace of Versailles keenly agreed to three photo sessions above the palace and the park. More than 150 photographs have been uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.
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Parterre de Lantone and the main building of the Palace -
Hameau de la Reine -
Temple de l'Amour in the Petit Trianon garden -
Grand Trianon, viewed from the garden -
ToucanWing's quadrirotor UAV in Versailles
In brief
- Study days in the West
Benoît (User:Trizek) presented the work of the chapter and the GLAM projects at two occasions : in Granville, for a study day of the network of museums in Lower Normandy ; and in Nantes for a study day on the engagement of GLAM visitors.
- National archives
As a result of our partnership with the National archives, GLAM volunteers have uploaded 42 media from the Archives and worked on the metadata of thoses files.
- Pompidou
In September the serie of workshops with Centre Pompidou has started.
- See the program of the workshops on our blog post (fr)
Working on metadata; Symposium on the public domain; News from GLAM in Rennes
Working on metadata
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This month, our volunteers have concentrated their work on the metadata mapping in order to perform the batch upload for the Fonds Trutat from the Archives of Toulouse City. We believe it is important to talk about this work, which is basically the behind the scene of the batch upload.
First, Jean-Frédéric has continued his work on his mass upload python library (which is published on GitHub <https://github.com/JeanFred/MassUploadLibrary>) and specifically on the documentation of his tool which is used by Wikimedia France for its batch uploads.
Secondly, our volunteers have worked on the data translation of the Fonds Eugène Trutat. It's a work in progress, but you can see the first results on pages such as Commons:Batch uploading/Fonds Eugène Trutat bis/Places which maps all the places from the metadata to a commons category.
Symposium on the public domain
On October 31st was held at the French national Assembly a symposium about the public domain, organised by the group SavoirsCom1 and MP Isabelle Attard. During the day several topics were discussed: the lack of a positive legal definition of the public domain in France, the weaknesses of the public domain in France, reuses of public domain material, and voluntary transfer to the public domain. Adrienne Charmet-Alix was invited to present the role of the public domain in the Wikimedia projects, the vision of the Wikimedia movement regarding copyright on PD works, and actions like GLAM-Wiki or Wiki Loves Monuments. The morning roundtables were moderated by Pierre-Carl Langlais, long-time Wikipedian, public domain activist and Wikimédia France member.
- See the program
Rennes city's archives and library
A very active group of Wikimedians lives in Rennes. In October, they planned many events, two of them were GLAM oriented.
Two workshops were held in the City Archives services of Rennes (Brittany). During this workshop, people were able to discover both archives' resources and Wikipedia. For this event, the Archives release high-resolution digitalized documents under Public Domain.
- More information (in French) : http://blog.wikimedia.fr/archives-rennes-6163
- See the images on Wikimedia Commons
The Rennes public library held a conference in October in order to present its new online digital library, Les Tablettes rennaises. This website only includes free content under Public Domain. The licence choice was advised by the local wikimedians and the open data promotion group.
- See the Tablettes rennaises website (in French) : http://www.tablettes-rennaises.fr
Archives nationales
A workshop has been organized on October 1st at the Archives nationales to train 20 archivists so that they can contribute to Wikipedia. Some people from each department were present to learn Wikipedian skills and began to work on articles, which are supposed to use the images they released.
Centre Pompidou
The first workshops have been organized at the Centre Pompidou. About 15 people joined the group to write articles about modern and contemporary art. One workshop is organized every week and the new Wikipedians are both trained by us and visit the museum with curators so that they fully understand the artworks they work on.
In brief
- The "rencontres numériques", a meetup organized every year by the French Ministry of Culture about new media and digital practices, took place in the French National Library. A presentation of Wikimédia France's current GLAM projects was held by Benoît Evellin (user:Trizek) and representatives of Wikimédia France’s major GLAMs partners (museums of Versailles, Sèvres, Pompidou, Cluny, and the National Archives).
- Following a request from the National Archives to more easily put content punctually on Wikimedia Commons (aside from the batch upload we are helping them with), we experimented with using Upload Campaigns for that purpose. The customized upload wizard would add categories and the partnership banner, and restrict licensing options to the bare needed (presumably, public domain for scans of collections, and CC-BY-SA for other photographs taken by the agents).
- The Wiki Loves Monuments jury announced the winners in France
Mass uploads; Wiki Loves Monuments; Edit-a-thon; GLAM conference
Mass Uploads
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In November we continued to work on mass uploads. We are making progress with the Eugène Trutat project, with 280 new files uploaded. The ~200 ones uploaded three years ago in the pilot project will be overwritten soonish; but the Commons metadata and the Archives metadata will have to be merged manually. The City Archives of Toulouse are eager to continue the collaboration with a larger collection from World War I.
With Trutat nearly out of the way, we reactivated the mass upload project with the Haute-Saône museums, and hope to report on progress there soon.
On the technical side, the Python library was transferred to a shared GitHub project, in order to accept contributions more easily. Apart from small changes, we implemented a new feature to compute metrics on categorisation made through the volunteer-driven metadata alignment. We also carried on with our documentation efforts.
Wiki Loves Monuments
On November 29th, we organized the awards ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in France in the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine inside the Palais de Chaillot. About 60 people attended; a short visit of the Gallery of Casts was organized followed by the actual ceremony. See the blog post and the winners on Commons.
Edit-a-thon at Rennes
On November 24th, the Wikipedians of Rennes, Brittany (the so-called NCO) were invited by the central library of Rennes Les Champs Libres for a small editathon on Wikipedia and Wikisource, given this day was exactly the 10th anniversary of Wikisource and given the library concomitantly opened a new digital library centered on local heritage. Nine people were present during the afternoon, and they contributed on Wikipedia on the topics of the library of Rennes and the local heritage and culture, and in reviewing some pages on the Wikisource in French and Breton.
GLAM conference for professionals in Besançon
"Musées en Franche-Comté", a professional association of museums, organized a one-day conference (14 November) to present Wikimedia France actions with GLAMs. The conference was the initiative of the Haute-Saône Museums, with which we collaborate. Our chair Rémi Mathis presented the chapter and the Wikimedia movement. Then, case studies on Wikimedia collaboration were shown, including Centre Pompidou, Sèvres - cité de la Céramique and musée de Cluny. About thirty museum professionals attended the conference, most of whom knew very little about our projects.
GlamWiki Toolset; local actions in Rennes
GLAMwiki Toolset launch
The GLAMwiki Toolset is a system to enable cultural institutions to map metadata and mass-upload content to Wikimedia Commons. This joint project between Europeana and four Wikimedia chapters (including WMFR) was deployed on Wikimedia Commons in December. We participated to the launch by helping translate the interface and the documentation in French. We also touch based with three GLAM partners (two archives and a museum) to discuss their participation to the first batch uploads made using the tool.
Rennes: A year of local actions
On December 21, the local group from Rennes held their monthly WikiPermanence about partnerships with cultural institutions, both local and national. It was animated by Benoît Evellin, with participation from Violaine Le Nénao (City archives of Rennes), de Sarah Toulouse (Rennes Métropole library), Nathalie Martin and Jean-Frédéric Berthelot (Wikimédia France).
The occasion was a good opportunity to reflect on what happenened in GlamWiki in Rennes (new partnerships, workshops held by GLAMs...), and to report it in a blog post.
- See “Wikimédia et les acteurs culturels dans l’Ouest : un an après” − a recap of the actions on Wikimedia France blog
Public Domain Day; photographs
Public Domain Day
On January 26 was held the Public Domain Day in Toulouse. In the morning, a Wikipedia & Wikidata edit-a-thon was organized at the Musée des Augustins, the fine arts museum. The afternoon was at the Library, with a conference about the public domain: general introduction, economical impact of being out of copyright, relationship between Wikimedia projects & public domain, the “living public domain”… The day ended at the cinema, with the projection of a short film by Max Linder and of the movie His Girl Friday.
In brief
- This month we completed a Mass Upload project with the Muséum de Toulouse, about the part of the Fonds Eugène Trutat they held. More than 200 works by the Toulouse photographer were uploaded ot Wikimedia Commons.
- On January 27, Lionel documented the removal of the piping system of the Latone Fountain in the Domain of Versailles, invited as part of the partnership between the Palace and the chapter.
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The pont de Pierre in Toulouse − Eugène Trutat, 1901 -
Removal of the spider (piping system) of the Latone Fountain.
National Archives; Sèvres & mass uploads; Wikipedians in the European Parliament
National Archives − follow-up
As part of our partnership with the National Archives, and as a follow-up to the September project, 32 major documents from the French history were mass-uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.
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Ratification by Henri VIII of the treaty of Ardres, ending the war between François Ier & Henri VIII (1546) -
Treaty of Münster, one of those which ended the Thirty Years War (1648) -
Farewell letter of Charlotte Corday (1793) -
Letter from Charles Baudelaire to Empress Eugénie (1857)
Sèvres: Wikimedia Commons helps to share the best manufacturing practices
Tuesday 25 February 2014, two Wikipedians went to Sèvres Porcelain Manufacture in a partnership with Wikimedia France chapter. It's been almost a year now that Wikipedians come regularly to photograph and film the know-how of the Manufacture specialized craftsmen who create high quality porcelain while preserving gestures and ancient techniques. The Sèvres Manufacture is organized in numerous workshops each specialized in a specific treatment. An object such as a plate can thus pass through several workshops for the different actions to perform: Cast, cooking, glazing, gilding, etc.
Photos and videos taken during the recording sessions are then subjected to validation by the Manufacture in order to communicate the best practices, and those selected are published on Wikimedia Commons. A similar validation has been made by the Cadre Noir (the French cavalery school), who share their photos which illustrate the best practices (and more).
Haute-Saône museums
Preparations for the mass-upload with the Haute-Saône museums is going along. We have decided to use the GlamWiki Toolset, and with our help the museum is proceeding to tests on the Wikimedia Commons Beta Cluster (example).
Wikipedians in the European Parliament
During the plenary sessions of the European Parliament, on the February 3rd to 6th, 2014, a group of Wikipedians performed a photography and editing project in Strasbourg. About 50 users from nine different countries participated to take pictures of the 764 members of the European Parliament. Students from a make up school did professionally the make up of the politicians and experienced photographers took pictures of them. About half of all politicians got their picture taken and all these pictures have been added to the articles about them.
Project page on Commons: Wikipedians in European Parliament
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Martin Schulz -
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GLAM/Newsletter/March 2014/Contents/France report GLAM/Newsletter/April 2014/Contents/France report GLAM/Newsletter/May 2014/Contents/France report
Round table in Brussels; Video at Sèvres; 70th anniversary of the D-Day
Round table in Brussels
On April 23rd, Jean-Frédéric participated to a roundtable in Brussels on « Mass Digitization and Open Access to Cultural Heritage ». The event was organized by Wikimedia movement and UNESCO.
Sèvres
During the partnership with Sèvres (see previous coverage) our volunteers have produced a reportage on the Mill workshop the Manufacture nationale de céramique de Sèvres in France. This video was shot in April 2013, and released in April 2014. It took almost a year to validate and post-process: the validation process of this partnership is really important as it shows accurate ways of producing Ceramic.
Rennes
For the 70th anniversary of the D-Day, the Musée de Bretagne (museum of Brittany) welcomed on June 6th wikimedians and Friends of the Musée de Bretagne. During this workshop, Wikimedians from the Non-Cabale de l'Ouest (the local Wikimédia France group) explained how to contribute to Wikimedia projects. The museum contributed by uploading 58 images from its collection related to WWII on Wikimedia Commons. This workshop is the first step of regular workshops and uploads.
CROTOS − search engine of artworks in Wikidata
Semanticpedia is a collaboration platform between the French Ministy for Culture, research institute Inria and Wikimédia France, which aims at developing reuses of semantic data extracted from Wikimedia projects (see previous coverage). Earlier this year was organised a contest for apps, and the winners were announced in April.
Wikimedian Benoît Deshayes won in the category “valorisation of cultural and linguistic data” with CROTOS, a multilingual search engine of artworks using Wikidata (including a contibution mode to filter some missing properties).
- See CROTOS homepage
Mass-upload
Mass upload of historical pictures of monuments
In July, Jean-Frédéric completed a mass-upload of 3.000 images of historical monuments in the Paris region, from the Ministry of Culture “Base Mémoire” and using open data from data.iledefrance.fr. The upload was made using the GlamWikiToolset, which helped building French expertise of its workings and unveiled some bugs which were filed. A pre-upload alignment, one manually made by Léna and Symac, as well as an automatic mapping of communes codes to Commons categories using Wikidata, resulted in 9237 categories added to the files, and 99.3% of the files bearing at least two categories. Thanks to this upload we now have pictures for a few dozen monuments without any illustration before.
Subtitling, Presenting, Flying
Subtitling of The GLAM-Wiki Revolution
At Wikimania The GLAM-Wiki Revolution, a short documentary about the GLAM programme in the United Kingdom, was premiered. We contributed to the translation effort of the subtitles. Jean-Frédéric prepared the text with the Translate extension on Wikimedia Commons, and Symac, Seb35, Trizek and Anne-Laure translated the subtitles. We plan to use the documentary in our GLAM outreach work.
Presentation of the Centre Pompidou partnership at the IFLA conference
On August 12, Sylvain Machefert spoke at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions pre-conference in Paris. His communication was “Improving modern art articles on wikipedia, a partnership between Wikimédia France and centre Georges-Pompidou”. This communication was a presentation and evaluation of the editing workshops organised as part of this partnership signed in September 2013 (see TMIG coverage).
- See Presentation slides
- See Submission
Aerial photography in Versailles
At the end of August, a small group of wikimedians took off near Paris for a flight which goal was to take aerial pictures of Versailles including the Château de Versailles. The first pictures taken are already online in a dedicated category.
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The Palace -
Gardens of Versailles -
Le Grand Trianon
National archives upload
National Archives upload
As part of our partnership with the National Archives, and as a follow-up to the February project, 65 major documents from the French history were mass-uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, increasing the number of files to 142. It's a small number but these files have been chosen by the archivists because they are cornerstones of the National Archives. And thanks to Wikimedians work, almost every one of these 142 documents are now used on wikimedia projets. The most used being present on 23 pages (Procès-verbal of the Tennis Court Oath and Edict of Nantes).
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Death sentence of Marie-Antoinette, (13-14 October 1793) -
Last notes taken by Robespierre, the day of his execution (28 July 1794) -
Coronation of Charles X of France (29 May 1825) -
Telegram, partly ciphered, from Napoleon III to Empress Eugnénie (7 August 1870) -
1875 Constitution -
Will of Victor Hugo (1885)
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Research project with archives
The French Wikimedia chapter is part of a research project involving archives services (from Vaucluse, Tarn-et-Garonne and Tours). This project has been designed with three parties: Wikimédia France as a non-profit partner, the local archives of Vaucluse as an institutional partner and Anaphore, an archives management software company as a for-profit partner. It has been given a grant from the French government in order to work on archives metadata distribution. The project should start before the end of the year and was part of a selection of 60 projects (see the list) out of more than 200 answers to the call for projects entitled "Cultural innovative digital services in 2014 " issued by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, to encourage projects which foster experimentation around innovative, visible and valuable digital cultural content.
Edit-a-thon & Mass upload
10 GLAM partners for a one-day edit-a-thon in Bordeaux
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On October 18th, the local group of Wikimedians in Bordeaux organized the first even of a partnership between the French Wikimedia chapter and the town council of the town. Before the event, employees of the museums had been trained and were able to assist public for editing Wikipedia, with help from Wikimedians. A complete report is available on French-language Wikipedia. The local group is now planning more activities related to the partnership (new edit-a-thon, mass uploads ...)
Clocks pictures harvested from Flickr
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The Musée de l'horlogerie de Saint-Nicolas-d'Aliermont, a museum specialized in the history of horology, released pictures from his collections on Flickr, using a CC BY License. These pictures have been transferred on Wikimedia Commons by chapter volunteer Pierre-Selim.
Wiki Loves Monuments; mass upload; Musée de Bretagne
Wiki Loves Monuments
The 2014 edition of Wiki Loves Monuments in France gathered 17,842 photographs.
The awards ceremony was held at the Musée des Arts et Métiers at the end of November.
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Stairs from the cave to Château de Gavaudun, Lot-et-Garonne
Fonds Berthelé
Jean-Frédéric and Caroline performed a mass upload of the Fonds Berthelé from the City Archives of Toulouse, partly using the GlamWiki Toolset. These 2000 photographs were taken by Raoul Berthelé and depict scenes from World War I.
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Musée de Bretagne
A global collaboration between GLAMs from Rennes (central library, museum of Brittany...) and the Wikimédia France's local group, including conferences and workshops exists since September 2014. In December, a workshop about local churches is planned. For this, the museum of Brittany (musée de Bretagne) has uploaded images of local churches on Wikimedia Commons (here and there).
GLAM/Newsletter/December 2014/Contents/France report
Celebrating public domain and more
A great "Festival du domaine public" !
3 editathons, 4 bookscanner demo sessions, 2 photo hunts, 2 partnerships, various conferences ...The Public Domain Festival was highly productive thanks to the involvment of Wikimedians, WMFR volunteers & staff. Celebrating new works entering public domain through many activities, it was also an opportunity to have art students design the whole visual identity of the event, and raise awareness about public domain as a great source of creation and inspiration.
Wikipedia illustration workshop at the Toulouse Municipal Archives
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A workshop was run with the staff of the Toulouse Municipal Archives. They were trained to illustrate Wikipedia articles by a volunteer. The partner had done a lot of preparatory work prior to the workshop: institutional communication relayed by the city council, special Saturday opening, special installation of 10 terminals + overhead projector and creation of temporary accounts, guided tours of the reserves... the workshop went well and was attended by people from different backgrounds: archivists, librarians, etc. The workshop leader used a 4-stage methodology: photo insertion demonstration, exercice where you “simply” had to copy/paste the image from Commons to Wikipedia; second exercise where you had to search for or insert an image (from a selection of images chosen for their relevance) and write the caption yourself; autonomous use of the Commons category An aide-memoire had been organized to support this.
Outreach session with the staff of the Musée des Arts et Metiers
The Musée des Arts et Métiers, a partner to the 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest and host for the prize award ceremony, and Wikimédia France organized a half-day session for its different audiences to raise awareness of the work of Wikimedia France and the free dissemination of knowledge. Two of Wikimedia France’s current partners, the Musée National du Moyen-Âge and Sèvres-Cité de la Céramique, travelled to the event to share with their peers the actions they have carried out with the association. Other institutions also attended, including the Musée du Quai Branly, ICOM (International Council of Museums), and CLIC France (Club Innovation et Culture) with a view to discussing future collaboration. The session was led and prepared by volunteers and an employee from WMFR, working with the Museum’s Audiences and Communication department, to answer the questions put by representatives of the Museum’s different professions and encourage them to move towards a lasting global partnership. A questionnaire was handed out to those present – to assess the relevance of the session content, their level of knowledge and understanding of the work of the association, the most useful talks, etc.
From prehistoric era to pirates: an usual month at WMFR
Article about Wiki Loves Monuments published
An 4-pages article written by Trizek and Symac has been published in the January 2015 volume of the serials Espaces, a professional publication about tourism (summary online). The winning picture of the 2013 competition was used on the front cover.
Workshop about prehistoric era in Rennes
After a guided tour of the prehistoric era section of the museum of Brittany, several people (members of the Archaeological Association Men ha Houarn (in Breton "stone and iron"), which popularizes prehistory ; a person working in the castle of Sainte-Suzanne in Mayenne and a person working at the headquarters of INRAP in Paris) came to the workshop.
This led to a follow-up call with the community manager of INRAP, the French national institute for preventive archaeological research, which mission is to ensure the detection and study of the archaeological heritage affected by any planned works on the French territory, and future local initiatives with the volunteers of Men ha houarn in Rennes.
First training at the Musée national de la Marine
After a wave of enthusiastic replies about a potential partnership with the Musée early February, a training was organized a week after for 6 staff members of the musée, all women, who chose their alias among famous women pirates names. A partnership contract is in progress, to implement future actions.
A very busy month!
Europeana and Wikimédia France gather European GLAM Wiki coordinators in Paris
Consistent with Europeana’s strategy to deepen its involvement in GLAM-Wiki collaboration and the Wikimedia movement’s desire to emphasise sharing best practices among its local organisations, the GLAM coordinators from Europe’s Wikimedia Chapters were recently invited together for their first ever gathering, facilitated by Europeana and hosted by Wikimédia France. Following the work done by a dedicated Wikimedia-Europeana taskforce in August and January – in which Wikimédia France participated – Europeana and Wikimédia France are extremely happy to support these efforts as they both help to make European cultural heritage more accessible, re-usable and connected. The 15 nations represented at the weekend’s-workshops all have GLAM outreach programs at different stages of development – sometimes coordinated by volunteers, sometimes by staff, sometimes by elected board members – but in all cases benefited from the sharing of experiences and devising of common goals for the forthcoming year. The full minutes and outcomes of the weekend’s workshop are available online. See also blopost here !
Sèvres' partnership still on track
Our partnership with the Cité de la Céramique nearby Paris is still on : in March, more photo shooting and video recording took place thanks to the continuous involvement of Lionel Allorge and Coyau.
Two Edit-a-thons on completely new topics!
Wikimédia France's volunteers facilitated 2 edit-a-thons : one with the Musée du quai Branly, embedded in a 2-days event about ethnology and one around women in contemporary arts, following the initiative launched last year through "Art + Feminism". The latter was a real success with more than 150 participants over the week-end.
Wikimedian photographers invited for the opening of a sculpture exhibition
The musée national du Moyen-Âge (aka musée de Cluny) opened its press conference to four Wikimedians - both photographers and non-photographers - and allowed them to witness the exhibition basckstage and talk with the curator in charge of the brand new Sculptures souabes exhibition.
Taking pictures of dead animals : it's a hobby too !
The local group of Rennes aka the "NCO" - Non-Cabale de l'Ouest - organized 3 sessions of photo shooting at Rennes 1 university, in the frame of a partnership agreement signed last October. Slowly but surely, they're developing their skills and making more and more pictures available on Commons from one of the greatest zoology collections in France.
No spring break for Wikimédia France!
Despite a slowdown in our country because of school holidays, Wikimédia France took advantage of every opportunity available with its GLAM partners…
Partners and cheese!
Wikimédia France invited some of its cultural partners for the fourth Wikicheese evening. Representatives of Galeries Lafayette Foundation, quai Branly Museum , Hadopi (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet), the Baroque Music Center of Versailles and the Center for Research and Restoration of the museums of France tasted the cheeses of the day! Our guests made short work of the cheeses of the day and paid a tribute to the “gastronomic meal of the French”, inscribed on the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
Museum of Brittany takes the floor
As part of the partnership with the Museum of Brittany (see TMIG February 2015) Léa Lacroix (Board member of Wikimédia France and member of the NCO - Non-Cabale de l'Ouest) interviewed Manuel Moreau. Currently in charge of cultural digital projects, Mr. Moreau spoke about the first steps of the partnership, its achievements so far and the potential still to be released. We hope that this first partner interview will pave the way to further opportunities of joint communication with ambassadors of the GLAM wiki projects. This interview will appear in the next issue of Wikimédia France's Wikirevue.
Wikisource workshop in Rennes
On April 11, a workshop on Wikisource transcription of three books of the historic fund of the Library of Rennes was held. These public domain works were already available on the Tablettes rennaises site. This day gave the opportunity to teach and exchange around the transcription on Wikisource.
As the saying goes… sharing is caring
Over the last months, Wikimédia France worked on formalizing best practices, frame and processes in terms of partnerships. Our Partnership policy was translated into English and is available on Meta : we hope it will be useful to our international counterparts!
Exoticism knocking on the gates of Grenoble
During two days, the local group of wikimedians of Grenoble flooded the “Casamaures”. Members contributed to the Wikimedia projects about this strange neo- Moorish building and Arab-Andalusian inspiration, in the heart of the Alps… What a programme!
GLAM, all over the place!
4th batch upload from the National Archives …and a difficult workshop
For the 4th time, Wikimedia France and the National Archives worked together in the selection and uploading on Wikimedia Commons of forty historical and (very) diverse reproductions: marriage contract of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France , the holograph will of Napoleon III, a handwritten letter of Marcel Pagnol, or a law on freedom of the press; thanks to the great help of Jean-Frédéric.
In parallel, a workshop took place at the Archives facilitated by Kikuyu3, Céréales Killer, Chaoborus, Incognito668 and Jules78120, but didn’t provide satisfactory results, due to connectivity issues and...a lack of participants. Well, that happens too! We plan to meet our partner-contact soon for a debriefing session.
Thinking on a grand scale at Sèvres
Months go by, yet each one is different in Sèvres, at the City of Ceramics. Wikimédia France’s volunteers Lionel & Coyau continue to photograph the expertise of the bicentenary factory workers. May viewed the casting of the largest Charpin vase, a 1.40 m high monumental vase , and also some plates decorated by the students of the factory.
A "Wikipedia galaxy" in Lorraine
As part of the cultural and scientific event "Science & You" organized in Lorraine, a conference entitled "The Wikipedia Galaxy" was unusually held in ...the Planetarium of Epinal! Jacqueline, information & communication sciences researcher and member of Wikimédia France gave the keys to understanding the encyclopedia and contribute to it. This was followed by 3 outreach workshops which took place in media centers and libraries of the region. For the record, in the small village of Attignéville, which has 225 inhabitants, they were 12 gathered to edit Wikipedia!
Building up new GLAM relationships in Isère
On May 12th, 4 representatives of Wikimédia France (Guillaume & Letizia members of the Grenoble local group, Florian board member and Anne-Laure, staff member) introduced Wikimedia and GLAM activities to the Culture and Heritage department of the regional council of Isère. For 2 hours, more than 30 representatives of Grenoble-Isère cultural institutions were able to ask all their questions and the first ideas emerged: highlighting the rich legacy of Vizille museum on the French Revolution, improvement of articles on specific items (equestrian statue of Napoleon, French Revolution, etc.), etc. A great next step after the beautiful edit-a-thon at the Casamaures last April!
There were not only Techies during the Hackathon!
When Wikimedia France started to organize the European Wikimedia Hackathon in Lyon, we never imagined that we would return to the scene so quickly. Indeed, Valpré, the congress and seminar center where the Hackathon was hosted, houses an impressive library of 80,000 books and numerous periodicals. Members of the Lyon local group must be prepared, the bookscanner will run at full speed for a large Wikisource workshop to come!
Surfing on GLAMs' agenda
When tradition meets modernity
Manuel Moreau from the Brittany museum, interviewed by Léa Lacroix last April, had not lied to us: for the last workshop of the year, the Rennes Wikipedians took advantage of the exhibition of photographs by Charles Fréger (Bretonnes, i.e. "Women of Brittany") to tackle the Wikipedia pages devoted to traditional headdresses worn by the Breton women. At the Champs Libres library, they were able to match their contributions with themes from the Brittany museum's current activities ... and reconcile tradition and modernity!
Last stop, all change!
On June 20th, some Wikipedians met at the MAC / VAL (the museum of Contemporary Art of Val-de-Marne) around the exhibition dedicated to the " Grand Paris Express " , a large public transportation project around Paris . In addition to editing on the exhibition's topics (public art, contemporary art, public transportation routes, territories crossed), the Wikipedians informed the visitors who wanted to discover the Wikimedia projects.
"I've got Wikimedia under my skin"
Following the edit-a-thon at the quai Branly museum in March Pierre-Yves Belfils, in charge of periodic and digital collections and working in the library of the museum, invited editors for a workshop related to the exhibition "Tattooists, Tattooed" (Tatoueurs, tatoués). They were given a guided tour and benefited from an access to bibliographical sources previously identified by our partner. Fifty photos have already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. We hope to continue this type of workshop for other exhibitions at the quai Branly museum.
Launch of the "Bibliothèque Wikipédia"
Following the lead of the English-speaking Wikipedians who launched in 2013 "The Wikipedia Library" project, Francophones from the movement did not stay long on the bench! Sylvain Machefert, Benoît Rochon et Mohammed Bachounda launched a few weeks ago the French-speaking branch of the WP Library. The objective of this project is to provide the best working conditions for Wikipedians, facilitating their access to quality sources. Several solutions have been implemented, such as free accounts to access usually paying online databases ... that today represent thousands of resources made available to any Wikimedian who's been registered for 6 months or more, and who's made at least 500 edits on Wikimedia projects.
Wikidata & artworks: a winning team
Initiated by Shonagon and encouraged by the enthusiasm of about ten editors, a workshop on Wikidata and visual arts was held in the "espace Cléry" (i.e. at Wikimedia France's office). They discussed about their current achievements, tools, practices, perspectives ... and anything which could boost this brand new project!
A GLAMourous summer
A festival of editing
For the second time, the Avignon Festival hosted an edit-a-thon during its 69th edition. In partnership with Wikimedia France, 2 week-ends were dedicated to working on pre-selected topics such as the locations of the Festival and its scenes for performance. On July 11-12th and 18-19th, 5 Wikipedians led the edit-a-thons at a local antennae of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Maison Jean Vilar. Articles such as Église des Célestins or La Fabrica were improved and others were created such as Festival d'Avignon 2015 and Lieux de représentation du Festival d’Avignon.
Getting intangible cultural heritage on Wikipedia
The French Ministry for culture and communication has a department dedicated to promoting intangible cultural heritage. Among other things, this department aims at creating an inventory of practices which up to now represents 300 items. Together with other organisations willing to contribute to the protection of intangible cultural heritage throughout France, Wikipedians from Rennes and Paris joined the local antennae of the ICH department in Vitré, Brittany, for a two days workshop on July 21-22. 9 staff members of the related organizations were trained by 5 Wikipedians on getting their head around editing Wikipedia first steps. A first workshop had been set in February thanks to the presence of an editor in Vitré.
August in Brittany
A week-end of editing at "the end of the Earth"
This summer, the Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest (CBN), Finistère opened its doors to Wikipedians. At the initiative of Gaëlle Fily , coordinator of Brest local group, local volunteers were granted access, since the beginning of July, to the CBN greenhouses. For once, it's not about archives files and dusty books, but about natural heritage !
Early August, the local group was joined by other editors from Brittany: the first edit-a-thon was then held at the Conservatoire, with more than ten people attending. The objective was to create and improve a dozen Wikipedia articles and to photograph more than thirty protected species in the four tropical greenhouses of CBN.
To know more about the event, please read the blog's post here (in french)
Wiki takes Josselin !
On the initiative of Tsaag Valren, a wiki-meetup in Josselin (Morbihan) was held on August 29th and 30th. The weekend was an opportunity to enrich photographs from Josselin, a city with a rich architectural heritage. Saturday morning was dedicated to a session of editing at the local library. Participants then left to search the city for beautiful pictures.
Clever September
Heading to Strasbourg
Together with a local Wikimedian, 3 staff members of Wikimédia France went to Strasbourg to start planning future actions. They met with about 20 people from various academic institutions spread across Alsace territory ranging from national libraries to engineering schools. 3 main topics were covered by workshops : semantic web (Wikidata, DBpedia) ; training ; contents dissemination. If enough concrete actions are identified, there could be a budget for a future Wikimedian in residence to facilitate the coordination of actions among this network of institutions...!
From Brittany to Provence
First sound edit-a-thon EVER for Wikimédia France !
Enhancing sound archives on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons library is the common goal that set for themselves both Wikimedia France and the Mediterranean House of Human Sciences (MMSH), supported by the Europeana Sounds program. On October 23, 20 people - librarians, archivists, librarians, researchers, civil society actors, etc., as well as 3 Wikipedia editors - met in Aix-en-Provence, in the premises of MMSH. During one day, participants looked at three sound corpus of testimonials, collected by academics and respectively focused on the memory of the Armenians in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Italian immigrants from Marseille neighbourhoods and Greeks refugees in Syros. With the help of Wikipedians, participants added extracts of these testimonials (which were first uploaded on Wikimedia Commons) to articles of the encyclopedia, to illustrate them. Two articles were also created : the first one on Oddo camp, which hosted Armenian refugees in the 1920s, the second and third on the American orphanage in Syros.
Wiki takes botany ! (*spoiler alert* and archeology, as you'll read further below!)
On October 15, Wikimedians from Brest who edited Wikipedia articles about endangered plant species during the summer, organised a dedicated evening to share this experience. Hosted by the "Conservatoire Botanique National" of Brest (one of the 11 national botanic conservatory of France), which is officially in charge of protecting the threatened or protected plants in the Massif Armoricain area (a territory that includes the Brittany regions, Basse-Normandie and Pays de la Loire) the conference gathered about 25 people who came to discover this action and its results. The evening was also the occasion for Wikimédia France to sign a partnership agreement with the Conservatory, thus envisioning other initiatives. Pictures taken in the tropical greenhouses of the conservatory were displayed. Special attention was given to the Wikipedia article of the Micromeria glomerata that was created in only one day by Tsaag Valren, an editor from Josselin, currently requesting the vote of the Wikipedian community to label it "Good article".
Wiki Loves Monuments 2015
French Wikimedians took part in the 5th edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest. They gathered more than 12 000 pictures, and this year, the competition also included "big objects" listed in the Palissy database, and considered as cultural heritage as well. The award ceremony will take place on November 20th in Paris, at the Conciergerie, an extraordinary venue !
Wiki takes archeology
The Musée d'archéologie nationale is located in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (in the western suburb of Paris). Consisting of 19 rooms, it presents archaeological collections retracing the life of men on French territory from prehistory to the Middle Ages. Nearly 30,000 objects are on display, reflecting the evolution of techniques and artistic expression. The museum also hosts outstanding compared archeology collections or archaeological objects found outside of France, in the former Ballroom of the castle. Also called Comedy Lab, this is where were created many works by Lully, Molière ...and so on. ArkéoTopia went there for a one-day workshop to try and build the first steps of an initiative aiming at improving Wikipedia articles about the history of the National Museum of Archaeology, its collections, the history of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
International festival of geography 2015
Once again, Wikimedians from the East of France (and elsewhere) were there to attend and take part in the Festival International de Géographie, one of the major geography-related event in the world. The theme of the 2015 edition of the International Festival of Geography was "Territories of the Imagination, Utopia, representation and Prospective", and the guest country was Australia. More than 25 different personalities were portrayed during this event: geographers, journalists, writers, politicians… A stand was also held by Wikimedians and more than 100 persons were informed on Wikimedia projects during these three days.
5th batch upload for the French national Archives
Jean-Fred completed the 5th upload for the National French Archives, which included unique documents in French history, such as this study for the Arch of Triumph, in Paris.
And also...
- The first training of GLAM agents from Isère thanks to the Grenoble local group !
- The interview and recording of Marie-Adèle, a kanak language speaker from New Caledonia in Paris
- A workshop on how to use and contribute to Wikipedia in the Université Montaigne located in Bordeaux, around the figure of Félix Arnaudin, a poet and photographer whose collection is currently in the Musée d'Aquitaine.
November comes and November goes, Wikimedians stay!
Enriching medicine history on Commons
Wikimedia France signed a new partnership with the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Santé, attached to the Paris-Descartes University. The Faculty of Medicine, founded in the thirteenth century, led to collections including 400,000 monographs, 21,000 journal titles, more than 1,000 manuscripts, 500,000 theses ...Pharmacy, biology and cosmetology funds include 100,000 books, theses, pamphlets and laboratory publications and over 4,000 journal titles. As a first step in this partnership, the library decided to upload a collection of more than 4000 portraits of doctors and researchers on Wikimedia Commons. The upload should start on the 1st quarter 2016 and will be done thanks to a tool developed by EdouardHue, entitled "ComeOn !"
WLM 2015 award ceremony at the heart of Paris
The awards ceremony for the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 was organized this year at the Conciergerie, in Paris. This spectacular place (formerly a prison) actually hosted the exhibition of the winning photos of two contests in parallel : Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. About 150 guests were able to admire them while enjoying a glass of champagne and take part in the festive spirit of the evening.
Callisto : mapping artworks worldwide
The Crotos project is a searching engione which allows to display artworks, combining both Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons files. Crotos is based on the aggregation of cultural data. The search is available in twenty different languages, which allows for fine searches using criteria such as author, title, place of conservation, creation date or the depicted elements. On November 13th, Shonagon, who designed Crotos, coded a new feature called Callisto : an interactive map that allows you to explore and view artworks, museums and representations of places worldwide.
When art meets science
Wikimedians of Rennes took advantage of the exhibition "Oberthur, Rennes Printing" at the Rennes museum to take pictures of the entomological collections of Charles Oberthür. The photographs were submitted to the European Science Photo Competition organized on Commons within the category Image sets.
GLAM/Newsletter/December 2015/Contents/France report
New year, new start
Languages of France seminar
Since June 2015, Wikimedia France, supported by the General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France, launched a project to train regional language speakers of France (Alsatian, Breton, Occitan, Creole languages... ) on how to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The political context in 2015 saw the return of the debate surrounding the ratification of the European Charter of Languages. Wikimédia France conducted a survey around regional linguistic and digital practices, involving several partners such as Lo Congrès or the Office for the Alsatian language and culture, Lo Cirdoc Béziers as well as universities such as Strasbourg, Sarreguemines ... Following this survey, we held a first training seminar on Jan. 23rd at the "Maison de l'Europe" in Paris. The event gathered about 70 people.
Lingua Libre, a new tool for speakers
Alongside this first step, a second project is in partnership with linguists and contributors as Lyokoï, Psychoslave, Gratus, Vigneron and the APLLOD association. The development of an interface named "Lingua Libre" will record the words in regional languages and allow to upload them on Wikimedia Commons. The objective is therefore to bring an additional tool to help speakers to promote their language. In November 2015, the first recordings with Xârâcùù female speaker ( Kanak language of Canala region ) took place in the House of New Caledonia !
UNESCO make content and data available on Wikimedia projects
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have made over 1000 files available on Wikimedia Commons on a range of subjects and include photographs, illustrations, graphs and videos with many more to come in the coming months. They are also making data on their inscription programmes available on Wikidata including World Heritage, Man and the Biosphere and Global Geoparks.
Open knowledge in education
John Cummings has been working as Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO funded by a Wikimedia Foundation grant. "I think that Wikimedia has a unique role to play in universal access to education which many organisations are working towards as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Wikimedia has a huge audience and receives over 15 billion page views per month as well as providing information in Google searches, Facebook and other sites. I hope that by working with UNESCO to explore how they can use and contribute to open knowledge projects including Wikimedia it will encourage other intergovernmental organisations to do the same."
Wikiproject UNESCO
Wikiproject UNESCO has been created to help people organise improving information on UNESCO programme inscriptions e.g World Heritage Sites and to help navigate and organise sharing of UNESCO media content on Wikimedia projects. It is designed to be accessible for people new to contributing to Wikimedia and covers several of the projects including Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikivoyage. It is structured around activities including writing, translation and sharing media and has clear and simple instructions for all tasks, it has several tools to help people in all languages.
Get involved
There are several ways to be involved in the project with more opportunities including in person events in the future. Many of the current tasks are essential for setting up further cooperation, currently the most important are:
- Add content shared by UNESCO to Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia sites.
- Help integrate UNESCO data into Wikidata through the Wikidata Mix n' Match lists
Getting technical...!
Come On !
In February, EdouardHue came to Paris to present his uploading tool ComeOn ! to Wikimédia France members, staff and two partners. The French National Archives and the Health Inter-Universities Library are both involved in content partnership with our organization, as many others. As uploading files to Commons sometimes takes a lot of time and requires dedicated skills, we tend to run short of volunteer resources to perform these uploads. Edouard proposed to train partners on the tool he developed, to empower them and give them a greater autonomy. The afternoon was a success !
Wikidata for Science
A day of discovery of Wikidata was held on February 2 by Wikimedia France and the Center for Data Science of Paris-Saclay. This day - open to all - was held within the University Paris-Saclay : 40 academics and PhD students attended the workshop to discover how Wikidata is today one of the first open knowledge database in the world, and how to integrate it and use it in the projects of students and researchers.
Data sharing, with the aim of achieving the "Linked Data" also called Giant Global Graph, or Web 3.0, involves costly creation of knowledge databases, which themselves become obsolete very quickly. The alternative is the collective development of these knowledge databases on a contributory basis.
The various scientific fields are already represented in Wikidata. These contributions can be used for example to facilitate the discovery of information, reproducibility and traceability of research. The Center for Data Science worked on tools aiming to facilitate the discovery and reuse of the data contained in Wikidata.
Musée de Bretagne
A new workshop took place at the musée de Bretagne (museum of Brittany) with the Wikimédia France's Rennes local group on February 27. After a one-hour visit of the temporary exhibition “Boire” (french for Drink), several wikimedians gathered to edit and explain the Wikimedia projects around the beverage thematic.
Zoology, feminism and contemporary art
Enriching zoology content on Commons and Wikipedia
Wikimedia France signed a new partnership with the Pierre and Marie Curie University. The university houses some historical scientific collections : zoology, paleontology, minerals, Musée Dupuytren, etc. As a first step in this partnership, volunteers started to photograph the collection of zoology and a student from the university will describe the pictures. A lot of mounted skeletons and taxidermied animals on Commons in the upcoming months! This new partnership features a pedagogical aspect as one of the students of the university will be writing a story about the collection, to put an emphasis on how one can highlight an almost forgotten collection by bringing it to the digital world.
Similar projects have already been done with the University of Rennes 1 and the Natural History Museum of the city of Toulouse.
Art+Feminism 2016
For the second year in a row, Wikimédia France, together with the Galeries Lafayette foundation and the French National archives organized the biggest edit-a-thon ever led in France. More than 600 people came during these 48 hours of editing, listening to conferences and discussions around gender issues and contemporary art. Art+Feminism USA even stated that this Parisian edition gathered more people than the one in the MoMa : we're proud ! This was made possible by an extensive involvement of our local volunteers, and other Wikipedians, led by Kvardek du who trained many newbies, and also coordinated a series of workshops ahead of the edit-a-thon. Kudos to them ! The other great feature of this event was the tripartite coordination with the involvement of the National Archives which reconducted their partnership with Wikimédia France last December, and which hosted the event in their sumptuous buildings.
GLAM/Newsletter/April 2016/Contents/France report
Photography, a true hobby!
#WikiZoo is still on tracks!
On May 24th, 3 Wikimedians attended a session to shoot zoological collections of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, as part of a partnership between Wikimedia France and the zoology department of the university. This time, photographed animals were kept in jars and prepared so as to enhance their cardiovascular system. The challenge was to illuminate these jars so as to minimize reflections and make sure organs were clearly visible. Mission completed ! More information about the partnership can be found here !
"Photo stroll" in Sevran, Seine-Saint-Denis
Sevran is a city located in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the 101 counties of France, which designed a project to have inhabitants edit Wikimedia projects, with the support of Wikimédia France. In May 28th, Wikimedians and citizens took part in a photo stroll in the Parc de la Poudrerie to enrich Wikimedia Commons with almost 50 new pictures. Edit-a-thons also took place in March and April.
Visit at the Ecomuseum of Rennes
Wikimedians from Brittany took the opportunity to photograph species present in the old farm, la Bintinais, which nowadays hosts the Ecomuseum of Rennes. This institution is very active in preserving and reintroducing native species from the area. Its mission is also to present the history of this place and of the former owners of the land, as well as to trace the history of agriculture in the region from the sixteenth century onwards.
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Wikimedians in front of the Ecomuseum -
Bayeux pork -
Ditches goats
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« Veni, vidi, wiki ! »
Wiki Loves Archaeology !
The Saint-Raymond museum in Toulouse is the archaeological museum of the city located in the former Saint-Raymond school, near the basilica of St. Sernin. It offers visitors a rich collection of sculptures and artifacts from excavations done in Toulouse and his area. It develops a dynamic and daring policy of cultural action promoting participatory experience of the public as in the current exhibition " Archeo : An exhibition worth digging in! "
13 editors and 2 curators of Saint-Raymond museum gathered on June 18th in the museum library to enrich Wikimedia projects thanks to documentary resources available around the themes of archeology, the museum and its collections. This workshop was held as part of National Archaeology Days (17-19 June) which aim to promote the dissemination of knowledge about archaeology with the public , an ambition shared by the Wikimedia projects. Some editors worked to improve and enrich Wikipedia articles such as the one on Saint-Raymond museum, and others have created articles on key artworks from the collection. Photographers took pictures to enrich photos campaigns already carried out by Wikimedians on the occasion of temporary exhibitions, such as The Image and the power in 2012. « Veni, vidi, wiki ! »
Wikidata : a rising star
Shonagon did 2 successive Wikidata presentations. The first one took place on June 14th at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), an Academic, Cultural and Professional Public Establishment under the supervision of the ministers of Higher Education, Research and Culture. It was entitled Wikidata : a new resource for Art History and is available in video. The second one was a one-day conference on June 24th, organized by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and AFNOR on Libraries , archives and museums in the hour of Open Data. Best practices, standards and experience feedback . From his perspective, there is a true growing interest for Wikidata from institutions in France : let's support this as much as we can !
Harmonia Amanda and Sylvain Boissel also made a Wikidata presentation on June 16th at the "Journées du réseau documentation archives des ministères sociaux", a day-long workshop about open data and digital archives by the French Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Women's Rights. This short intervention was requested by the organizers of the event themselves, further showing the interest for Wikidata from the French institutions
Cycling for libraries
Have you ever heard of the Cycling for libraries movement ? It's an international conference bike for librarians and libraries enthusiasts. It aims to promote libraries and to make better known the services and resources that libraries offer to their audiences. In France and in French speaking countries, this project is called "Cyclo-Biblio". Symac - one of Wikimedia France's volunteer and a librarian too - gave on June 6th a presentation entitled Wikipedia, from the view point of a librarian in front of 50 librarians taking part in Cyclo-Biblio. A fun way to reach out to a crucial audience !
10th anniversary of quai Branly museum
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the creation of the quai Branly museum, an edit-a-thon took place on June 25th. It is the 4th collaboration between Wikimédia France and the museum. This year, edits were mainly focused around current temporary exhibitions : Jacques Chirac ; Persona ; Mata Hoata ; Homme blanc, homme noir.Les représentations de l’Occidental dans l’art africain du 20e siècle. 7 Wikimedians were there to support and help visitors, several articles were created or improved.
Keep calm and carry on with the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle of Lille
Wikimedians from Lille in the North of France continue to work with the MHN : in June, they did a photo shoot of mineralogy colections. This was followed by another volunteer training session on how to upload photos to Commons, working on categorization, captioning images in multiple languages and making the partnership more visible. Experts will help to complete captions in a future work session.
Bons baisers de France
Basque edit-a-thon in Donostia
Two members and a staff member of Wikimédia France presented French GLAM projects during the edit-a-thon about Peace Treaties in art, organized by the Basque Wikimedians User Group in Donostia on July 9th. They also contributed to several articles about artworks describing peace treaties, contributing to make successful this international and multilingual event supported by Donostia 2016 (European culture capital), San Telmo museum and several other partners.
70th edition of Avignon festival
For the third year in a row, an edit-a-thon took place in Avignon, which welcomes every year the Avignon Festival, an arts festival held in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes, and in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, it is the oldest extant festival in France. This year 5 articles were created and 5 were enriched by wikimedians on site, around 3 main topics: modern creation in Middle-East, danse at Avignon Festival, places of the Festival.
Brest 2016
The year again, wikimedians were at the maritime festival Brest 2016 taking pictures of historical ships and improving articles about these ships. More than a thousand files were uploaded on Commons:Category:Brest 2016.
Celebrating 20th century painters in Lyon
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On July 2nd and 5th, Wikimedians from Lyon edited both Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia to increase knowledge about painters from Lyon during the 20th century. After an extensive preparation and a tough articles' selection the editors managed to create or improved almost 40 articles on Wikipedia, and to upload 43 pictures on Wikimedia Commons from the exhibition "Regard sur la scène artistique lyonnaise au XXe siècle".
Photos and edit-a-thon in Mazamet
France is changing its subdivisions, with several regions merging together. One of the new regions, Occitanie, will be home of two existing local groups : Toulouse, who has been active for several years, and Montpellier, who is younger. The two groups decided to meet in Mazamet, a small town with a strong industrial past in wool. The morning was a photo hunt in the city, lunch was about sharing ideas and projects, and, during the afternoon, an edit-a-thon in the library about local history.
Belles and Bye
Belles du Nord
Les belles du Nord (Beautifuls of North) is the name of a group of four sculptures.
Two of these scultptures are considered exceptional and as a "major archaeological discovery."
These sculptures were recently discovered (in 2013) during an archaeological dig in northern France.
They were buried in the ground for more than two centuries (probably since 222 years) in Orchies a small town ot the Northern France in Region Hauts-de-France (halfway between Valenciennes and Lille).
These sculptures have been entrusted by the french State at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, who undertook the restoration in 2016 for a public exhibition in the Museum on the occasion of European Heritage Days (automn 2016).
Before that three Wikipedians were allowed to attend the restoration of these works of art. They interviewed experts and restorers, to produce an article on this subject: Belles du Nord
Goodbye Anne-Laure
After two years as GLAM special advisor, Anne-Laure Prévost left Wikimédia France on the end of August. She was a big help and will be missed.
GLAM/Newsletter/September 2016/Contents/France report GLAM/Newsletter/October 2016/Contents/France report
GLAM in northern France
WikiMuseum ; A new GLAM in northern France
Since one month, and for the next few month coming, everybody can submit photos of the museum Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille online... and share them with millions of people!
This museum associates itself with Wikimedia France and the most famous encyclopedia to launch the first collection of photos online about the history of the museum and invite the other museums of France to do the same.
Inaugurated in 1892, this museum is one of the most important museums in France. It houses collections retracing the history of European art, from antiquity to modern art. With its temporary exhibitions and events, it has also become a key venue of cultural life in Lille, capital of the new big regional Council Région Hauts-de-France.
Did you visit the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille ? Do you have photos of this visit? or are you in possession of archival documents about this museum?
If so, you can share your memories with internet users from around the world by posting them on the Wikimedia Commons platform.
Your photos or personal documents are testimonials of the museum through the ages. They will participate in the reconstruction of the history of the museum in pictures and can be used to illustrate articles of the encyclopedia Wikipedia on many subjects! They are likely to interest thousands or even millions of people. Whether it is a view of rooms, works, exhibitions, postcards or invitation cards... each image will provide a unique insight into what makes the identity and history of the Palais des Beaux-Arts. So, let's share!
This museum is also yours: let's share its history. Enrich the world's largest encyclopedia!
During special sessions, people can come and meet students, wikipedians and members ot the museum staff to deposit documents or oral testimony.
Two classes of university students (master I and II) are involved in the process. And a wikibook was created on this occasion to tell the history of the museum and how this museum is lived by those who visit it or working (in construction).
GLAM/Newsletter/December 2016/Contents/France report GLAM/Newsletter/January 2017/Contents/France report
#1lib1ref and slate museum
#1lib1ref
Several libraries or librarians took part in the second edition of the #1Lib1Ref campaign around the World. On the French Wikipedia, it a total of 317 edits (3.5 times more than last year!) made by 29 accounts (and 3 IP addresses) between January 15 and February 6. Thanks to the universities Bordeaux Montaigne, Rennes 1, and Rennes 2 ; special thanks to Culex who did 191 edits alone!
Musée de l'ardoise
Nine Wikimedians of the local group visited the musée de l’ardoise de Trélazé (Slate Museum of Trélazé). After some sightseeing, they took pictures and notes to improve articles around the museum, its collection and its history.
Monthly "edit-a-thons" in Bordeaux
After a first session on 21st of January, local Wikipedians are now meeting once a month at the public library Flora Tristan. Helped by the librarians, the Wikipedians and public are encouraged to develop articles on a chosen theme, Wiki Loves Africa for the first session, and Women in sciences for the second one. The event will continue throughout the year.
Workshop in Berlin; WikiTrain in Rennes; Edit-a-thon at the National Archaeological Museum
Workshop in Berlin
A workshop around France and French Culture took place in Wedding, in Berlin on March, 18. On the menu, translation and improvement of articles (read more in French in this blog post).
WikiTrain in Rennes
Already the third workshop about Trains and rail transport in the museum of Brittany (musée de Bretagne). The next workshop will be on May, 20 in the Rennes City Archives ; two members of these Archives were here to learn how to import files on Wikimedia Commons and how to use them.
Edit-a-thon at the National Archaeological Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye
An edit-a-thon was conducted at the French National Archaeological Museum (musée d'Archéologie nationale) in Saint-Germain-en-Laye on march, 27th 2017. The goal was to improve the article about the museum in French and English and to create other pages in French about the creation of the museum by Napoleon III. Several photographers were allowed to take pictures of parts of the museum usually closed to the public like the roofs, the moats and the archives: Edit-a-thon Musée d'Archéologie nationale 2017.
GLAM/Newsletter/April 2017/Contents/France report
Rennes Archives; Archives Nationales
Rennes Archives
Almost 4 years after the first workshop (blog post), a second one was organised at the City Archives of Rennes (Archives municipales de Rennes).
Archives Nationales
After eight uploads with the GLAM Wiki Toolset requiring heavy volunteer support, the Archives nationales de France (French National archives) have successfully completed their first upload by themselves, using the ComeOn! upload tool. The Archives published 26 ancient documents from their temporary exhibition Présumées coupables (presumed guilty [women]). Some staff from the Archives was trained with the tool, more uploads are to come.
Conference for Archives of Gironde
Conference for Archives of Gironde
As part of international archives day, local Wikimedians were invited on 9th of June for a conference in order to introduce Wikipedia to archives' visitors. Around 25 people gathered to discover how to contribute. This was a first step towards a partnership with this institution. More to come next year.
WikiTrain in Rennes
WikiTrain in Rennes
On saturday July 1st took place the fifth and last monthly workshop about Trains and rail transport in the museum of Brittany (musée de Bretagne).
Images from Jean-Auguste Brutails
2,500 images from Jean-Auguste Brutails
Jean-Auguste Brutails (1859-1926) was a French archivist with a great interest for places of worship in South-West of France. ~2,500 of his pictures have been given to Bordeaux Montaigne University after his death. These pictures which have been digitized by the university are now available on Commons: commons:Category:Fonds Brutails - Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
Heritage Wiki Days
European Heritage Days
Musée de Bretagne
A two days workshop and edit-a-thon was held at the musée de Bretagne (museum of Brittany) in Rennes for the European Heritage Days. There was a Wikimedia stand and a OpenStreetMap stand. Among the outcome was some import and improvement of data in Wikidata, some uploads of photos on Commons and interior cartography of the museum on OpenStreetMap. More collaboration are expected.
La Teste-de-Buch
A conference about Wikipedia was held in the newly opened library of La Teste-de-Buch. Local Wikipedians hope that it will be the first step of a cooperation with local historians.
Uploads on Commons
743 files were uploaded on Commons for the European Heritage Days 2017 in France.
Follow-up of wikidays 2014 in Bordeaux
In 2014, Wikimedia France concluded a partnership with the city of Bordeaux and its museums. This partnership continues to operate and on 14th September, the museum welcomed Wikimedians to visit the exhibition about Georges Dorignac. The visit was followed by an edit session at the library of musée des beaux-arts de Bordeaux.
Wiki Loves Monuments; Opérations Libres
Wiki Loves Monuments
In 2017 was the 7th edition of Wiki Loves Monuments in France and the dynamic is still very strong. 9501 photos have been uploaded by 358 contributors, 61% of them being new contributors. After 4 years of decline, the figures are going up again: +23% of images and +19% of participants.
See more statistics on tools.wmflabs.org/wikiloves/country/France
The top 10 has been chosen and will soon be revealed.
Opérations Libres
There has been two Opérations Libres in October, one in Bretagne and in Occitanie the week after. An Opération Libre is a 48h hackathon where contributors from free projects (like Wikimedia but also OpenStreetMap or OpenData plateform, etc.) collect and release contents with the help of the inhabitants and local institutions. It is quite fun and it's a good opportunity to share with allies in others communities and to engage with the public.
Edit-a-thons in Saint-Brieuc and Montpellier
Edit-a-thon in Saint-Brieuc
On 19 November was held the second edit-a-thon at the museum of Saint-Brieuc (Bretagne). A dozen Wikimedians and « museum friends » created and improved articles (beginning with the one about the museum itself Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Brieuc) and took pictures of the collection.
Edit-a-thon in Montpellier
On 25 November was held the first edit-a-thon at the department Archives in Montpellier (Occitanie) about Women and Feminism in Hérault.
Greek Rituals; Wiki Loves Monuments 2017
Greek Rituals
WLM 2017
The results of the 2017 edition of the photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) were announced in December, first the ones for France then the international results. An award ceremony was held in the Wikimedia France office.
See all winners country by country on Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners.