Conference videos, new committee and more

By Rock drum, Witty lama, HaeB, Kippelboy, John Vandenberg and SMasters

Wikimedia Australia reports on State Library of Queensland donation[edit]

The second report by Wikimedia Australia summarises the activity in February 2011 of the State Library of Queensland's donation of images to Commons. In addition to 209 images that were in use at the end of January, an additional 91 images were put to use during February, and of these, 42 were added to new Wikipedia articles which were started during that month. The report also covers categorisation, project infrastructure and image usage.

The March report by Wikimedia Australia is also out. An additional 209 images from the State Library of Queensland were put to use during March, with German Wikipedia increasing its usage of the images by 227%, and English and French Wikipedia increasing by 77% and 74% respectively.

Barcelona GLAM-Wiki conference[edit]

On 23 March, the first GLAM-WIKI meeting at the Museu Picasso of Barcelona took place. It was well attended and several leaders of cultural organizations came together with Wikimedians to find ways of collaboration.

More than 100 professionals from museums in the Catalonia area came to Barcelona to learn how to engage in a mid-term collaboration with local Wikipedians. There is an official blog post in english about the event.

Liam Wyatt gave the keynote presentation on one of the days. Other speakers included representatives from the government, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and obviously, a number of museums. Attendee and GLAM ambassador Àlex Hinojo, noted that they "Put on the table some quite interesting discussions, from property rights to museum missions."

First official GLAM ambassador and blog[edit]

Witty lama (Liam Wyatt) announced on his blog that, Kippelboy (Àlex Hinojo) is the first GLAM ambassador to be approved by the Steering Committee. As a result, Àlex has start a blog documenting his experiences as an ambassador at theglamwikiexperience.blogspot.com.

New residency opportunity[edit]

The Berlin State Museums (a group of fifteen collections in several museums, including some of the German capital's most widely known) and Wikimedia Germany invite applications for a six-month Wikipedian in Residence position. Based at the institution's head office, the Wikipedian will collaborate with the museums to create a "sustainable concept" for the use of Wikipedia and its sister projects within the museums, for supporting the generation of freely licensed content related to their topic areas, for collaboration between Wikipedia volunteers and museum staff in curating Wikipedia content, for the advocacy of free licenses among Berlin museums, and for supporting the museums' PR work. The German Wikimedia chapter and the State Museums will provide a monthly allowance of €1200 for the position.

Briefly[edit]

GLAM-Wiki UK: 2010 videos: Last November, the first GLAM-Wiki conference in the UK - and the second in the world - was held in the British Museum in London. Following the release of audio recordings of some of the sessions,^{[See previous coverage]} videos of the keynote speeches have been released in several parts. They are available on Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive.
GLAM Ambassador Steering Committee forms: After a couple of months of discussion, the GLAM ambassador steering committee has formed with a group of members including Wikimedia Foundation staff, Campus Ambassadors and other volunteers. The members include Witty lama, Aude and Pharos. The full list of members can be found here. Their primary task is to approve new ambassadors, although there are more.
Image donation from antique maps dealer: Geographicus Rare Antique Maps, a New York-based specialist dealer in fine and rare antiquarian cartography and historic maps of the 15th though 19th centuries, have donated their collection of digital images of maps via Wikimedia Commons, encompassing more than 2000 old maps.
Wikipedian in Residence at US National Archives: The US National Archives and Records Administration (which recently hosted Wikipedians for a one-day conference in Washington D.C. celebrating Wikipedia's tenth anniversary, see previous coverage) have announced that they are seeking a Wikipedian in Residence, a student internship this summer (Application + details, PDF)