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EU policy group meets in Brussels

From 23 to 25 April 2014 several representatives of chapters who are involved in the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU had a meeting in Brussels to discuss the achievements in the past year and what we are going to do in the coming year. This was the second meeting of this group, after the start up meeting in Brussels in 2013. Our representative in Brussels monitors the European policy making and the discussion around the copyright reform and more.

One of the participants was Wendy the Weasel and was presented as mascot of the group.

  • The building of the European Parliament is copyrighted as result of no freedom of panorama in France. The copyright holder is the architect.
    The building of the European Parliament is copyrighted as result of no freedom of panorama in France. The copyright holder is the architect.
  • The same situation exists in Belgium for the building of the European Commission
    The same situation exists in Belgium for the building of the European Commission

More information can be found at:

Seminar: Mass digitisation and open access to cultural heritage

Together with the EU policy group meeting a seminar was organised together with UNESCO at 24 April because of the World Book and Copyright Day. 23 April is a symbolic date for world literature for on this date in 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

  • Panel of speakers
    Panel of speakers
  • Rossitza Atanasova, British Library
    Rossitza Atanasova, British Library

Read more about it at World Book and Copyright Day.


"Coding da Vinci" - an open culture star is born!

First Open Culture Hackathon with GLAM content

Coding da Vinci
Coding da Vinci

On 26/27 April "Coding da Vinci", the first German open cultural data hackathon, started in the facilities of Wikimedia Deutschland. 150 participants set themselves the challenge to develop apps using open cultural data sets provided by 11 cultural heritage institutions. Hackers as well as representatives of the GLAMs had the opportunity to exchange views on digital cultural heritage and furthermore develop projects for the cultural sector as well as the public.

A total of 24 project ideas were pitched during the weekend, e.g. a Cyberbeetle based on data from the Museum für Naturkunde, that could dance to the drumming beats of the music instruments of the Ethnological Museum. The project “Poetic Relief” creates new access to the Jewish grave inscriptions of the Steinheim Institute. During the next 10 weeks, all team members will further develop their projects. On 6/7 July, the apps and projects will be presented to the public, the GLAMs and a jury that awards prizes to the best projects at the end of the hackathon. Coding da Vinci is a joint project by Wikimedia Germany, the German Digital Library, Service Centre Digitization Berlin and Open Knowledge Foundation Germany.

See more: codingdavinci.de


Clontarf 1000 - Easter Saturday edit-a-thon in Dublin

First Edit-a-thon in Ireland

The Battle of Clontarf. A thousand years on, was this defining moment in Irish history the occasion when Brian Boru himself drove the Vikings out of Ireland much as Saint Patrick had driven the snakes out a few hundred years earlier; Or was it a Game of Thrones style slaughter with two alliances of Irish and Vikings killing each other in sight of the walls of Dublin, leaving Dublin an independent Viking city state for a generation after?

The First Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in the Republic of Ireland, held in partnership with 1014 Retold, brought historians, Wikipedians and others together to improve the articles on Gormlaith, her various husbands and other interested parties.

The battle of Clontarf edit-a-thon took place in the Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin on Easter Saturday and was written up by 1014 retold. Coverage has been on Silicon Republic and Buzzfeed in their article the real Game of Thrones.



GLAMwiki Toolset workshop; Wikidata workshop; War Memorials; WiRs

GLAMwiki Toolset workshop at the Amsterdam Museum

GLAMwiki Toolset workshop

The Amsterdam Museum hosted a GLAMwiki Toolset workshop on the 4th of April. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Museum, University Museum Utrecht, National Archives of the Netherlands, National Library of the Netherlands,Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Wikipedians in Residence and volunteers participated in this workshop. Every step of from choosing suitable content to uploading it was covered during the workshop. The lessons learned are being collected in the GLAMwiki Toolset Manual.

Program evaluation and design workshop

WMNL has developed a "program manual" consisting of several forms (registration, evaluation, etc.), instructions (communication on wiki projects, writing press releases, etc.) and other tools to make organising an event as easy as possible for volunteers. Working with these standard forms also improves the ability to measure the outcome of events and to compare these with other events. Sebastiaan ter Burg attended the Program Evaluation and Design workshop in Berlin to learn how to improve the program manual.

Wikidata Workshop

On the 11th of April The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision hosted a Wikidata workshop given bij Gerard Meijssen. The workshop was focussed on explaining what wikidata is, to show how single and batch edits can be done and to discuss the different possibilities for GLAMs to use Wikidata. Apart from a variety of participants from the institute itself also the Rijksmuseum and Wikipedians in Residence were present. More workshops will be organised in 2014.

The Ladder in Amersfoort

War memorials

In 2013 the National Committee 4 and 5 May (4 and 5 May are Remembrance of the Dead + Liberation Day in the Netherlands) donated their database of all the known war memorials in the Netherlands to be added to Wikipedia. In total that are about 3700 memorials. From a lot of memorials we have pictures, but from many more we hadn't any picture.

To improve the visibility of this part of the Dutch cultural heritage we organized during April a photo action in what we requested visitors from Wikipedia to take pictures of war memorials in their environment. We chose not to organize a contest, but to select randomly the participants who win a prize package because of the sensitivity of this subject. In total more than 2100 new pictures were uploaded during the photo action in April and added to the lists. Each memorial has an unique identifier which is also added to the file pages on Commons.

Besides the new photos, it was also part of the project to add a template with the unique identifier to all photos of war memorials to identify which photo shows which particular memorial. About 1800 earlier uploaded photos were identified. Together with the new photos uploaded with the photo action, we now have more than 3900 photos with the unique identifier.

The war memorial who got the most photos was the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.

Wikipedians in Residence

The Wikipedians in Residence had a meeting on the 28th of April. The notes of this meeting are public (Dutch).

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Two workshops were organized for employees of Sound and Vision in which they were encouraged to consider the platforms of Wikimedia when setting up new projects. At a later stage an editing-workshop will be given for those who will indeed be active on these platforms in their professional capacity.


Umeå, literature, sami life and central museums, they all #JoinUs

Umepedia

Guitars - the Museum
Umepedia edit-a-thon at Arkitektur- och designcentrum

As part of Umepedia, the first Wikipedia City in the Nordic countries, a series of edit-a-thons have been organized in Umeå and also one edit-a-thon in Stockholm at the National Centre for Architecture and Design (sv:Arkitektur- och designcentrum). The edit-a-thons have been organized in order to prepare the articles mainly in Swedish and English, as part of the preparation before the Umepedia Challenge that is taking place the 1-31 May.

During the annual Spring meeting of Swedish Museums the first two QRpedia signs were placed on site in Umeå, at Västerbottens museum and Guitars – the Museum. Two days before we asked the international community to help translate the newly improved articles about the museums to as many languages as possible. We figured that we this way could show what the community can do and impress media, our partners and the GLAM professionals and the conference. The response from the volunteers was incredible and the articles were translated to around 10 languages each!

At the annual Spring meeting we had a chance to give a short presentation about our project and QRpedia for museums for around 30 GLAM professionals. We also had the opportunity to mingle with many more during dinners and social events. There was a large interest from GLAMs to use QRpedia codes in their museums. Also, in time for the event Guitars – the Museum had installed 18 QRpedia codes to different musicians in their collection which was a great addition.

The project has had an incredible response in the local and regional media. As far as we can tell most (or even all?) the newspapers, local TV and radio news programs has picked up the press releases we have sent out.

Umeå University has released 24 aerial images of its campus area in Umeå.

Women in literature

As a follow up to the Women in Wikipedia project, a bunch of new and old Wikipedians get together once a week at Litteraturhuset (House of Litterature) in Gothenburg to improve articles on main characters that are Women. So far 20 articles have been improved or created.

More work with the Council of the Central Museums

Following the pilot that started in 2012 the Council of the Central Museums has agreed to continue work with Wikimedia Sweden and to contribute with both articles and images. During the year there will be both workshops on batch uploading and editing, training in how to work with stats tools to measure impact and also projects where the museums will collaborate to improve material on specific topics. Also as a result of this agreement all Central museums will become organisational members of Wikimedia Sweden.

Sami life and of the province of Västerbotten

As a pilot case for the GLAMwiki Toolset the Swedish National Heritage Board, in collaboration with Europeana, uploaded 993 images from their archives with motifs of Sami life and of the province of Västerbotten (West Bothnia). These images will be usefull for the UmepediA edit-a-thons (above) and for the the upcoming photo competition Nu och Då (Now and Then).

Photos and videos of ESC14, #JoinUs

Although the real contest is in May, the meet and greet of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen started in April. Albin Olsson, (user:abbedabb) is on site with a photo accreditation and have already started uploading images and short presentations on video to Commons. Some images have already found their way in to articles, but international help is needed to make use of the rest of the images.

  • Conchita Wurst
    Conchita Wurst
  • Signature of Aram Mp3
    Signature of Aram Mp3
  • Armenian show
    Armenian show
  • Marija Jaremtjuk presentatino


Art, Tanks and WIRs

Live Art

One of the tables at the editathon

Wikimedia UK and the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) ran a very successful editathon on Feminism and Live Art at the LADA offices.

The Editathon focussed on Women artists, and was at LADA so the editors had access to their archives. Discussions have already started re a follow up event.

WIR Review

Daria Cybulska is leading a review of the Wikimedian in Residence program, anyone wishing to give feedback is welcome to contact her.

Tank Museum photography

Wikimedia UK is running a tripod friendly photography event at the Tank Museum in Dorset, the museum has given us some free tickets for Wikimedia photographers and various participants online are assembling a wish list.

Future Events

The program for Wikimania is firming up as the Program committee decides which of 64 GLAM submissions to include in the GLAM track. Potential attendees of Wikimania and others are welcome to join in the assessment process by signing up for the talks they would like to attend and querying on the talkpages those that need discussion.


Wikimedia Activities in the U.S.

Wikipedia Activities in Delaware

Colored Conventions Edit-a-thon

The University of Delaware held its first Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Saturday, April 26, 2014. The event was organized by Jim Casey, Audrey Hamelers, Jordan Howell, and Tracy Jentzsch, with support from various departments at UD: the Department of History, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory, the History Media Center, and the Library. The Edit-a-thon focused on the Colored Conventions Project. Starting in 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans held conventions to discuss the political, legal, social and educational issues of their day. The minutes of those meetings are a rare and invaluable record of early African-American leaders.


Wikipedia Activities in Philadelphia

The monthly GLAM Café had a good turnout of Wikipedians, who were involved in planning for the UDel edit-a-thon and a proposed GLAM Wiki day at CHF, date to be determined. The May 13th GLAM Café will be in memory of Adrianne Wadewitz, and the June 10th GLAM Café will celebrate Wiki Loves Pride.


Wikipedia Activities in Washington, D.C.

Edit-a-thon at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. 2014

April saw the conclusion of the Andrew Lih's class at American University, Wikipedia & Public Knowledge, which engaged four different GLAM institutions in edit-a-thons with students, curators and Wikimedia DC community members.

The final National Museum of the American Indian edit-a-thon featured a talk by museum staffer Holly Stewart, addressing topics such as the recent Redskins mascot naming controversy and popular historic topics that may be erroneously interpreted in the public sphere, such as Pocahantas, Trail of Tears and Thanksgiving. Working with a "living cultures" museum was an interesting contrast to the National Archives and Smithsonian Institution Archives from earlier in the semester.

There were nice outreach benefits as well - staff from the Freer/Sackler Gallery of Asian Art and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center attended the earlier edit-a-thons, and were inspired to have events of their own. The Freer/Sackler Edit-a-thon was held on April 29, where some of the American University students went to shoot video for Wikipedia articles. The Smithsonian APAC created an edit-a-thon for May 10 spanning several cities to commemorate Asian Pacific Heritage Month in the US. So far, NYC, DC, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin, TX will have simultaneous events.

April was also our first Africa Collection Editathon at the Library of Congress. All agreed that it will take more than one meeting to explore the Library's reliable sources, and several enthusiastic attendees extended our three hour event for the remainder of the afternoon.

Wikipedia Activities in New York City

Center for Jewish History Hosts "Women in Jewish History" Edit-a-Thon

A "Women in Jewish History" -themed Edit-a-Thon was held at the Center for Jewish History on May 4th, 2014. Articles added to Wikipedia at the event include: Dina Abramowicz, Pauline Wengeroff, and Rosika Schwimmer. The event brought some 30 attendees and included librarians and archivists, scholars, Wikipedians, and members of the public. The event was organized by CJH’s newly created Wiki Subcommittee.

CJH Women in Jewish History Edit-a-thon

The Guggenheim Museum begins a GLAM Project

Guggenheim Museum in NYC

New to the GLAM world, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is working on improving Wikipedia. A group of staff members at the museum have participated in an editing training back in March and have since incorporated article management into their weekly workflows. The top priorities for the museum right now are fact-checking and enhancing the information on the Museum and Foundation pages, adjusting broken external links, and providing more external links to the digital resources on the Guggenheim's library and archives website for relevant pages that include artists, founders (Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim), and past exhibitions. More of what they're working on can be found on their GLAM Page.

WikiConference USA

Wikimedia NYC continues to plan WikiConference USA 2014.

WikiConference USA 2014
WikiConference USA 2014


Wiki Edit-a-thon Handbook

By Gregory Markus

Europeana Fashion Publishes Wiki Edit-a-thon Handbook

In an effort to improve fashion knowledge on the web, Europeana Fashion has organized a series of edit-a-thons with Wikimedia volunteers and fashion institutions around Europe. The experience and knowledge gained from these events are now compiled in one handbook, The Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon Handbook for GLAMs.


Making Wiki Fashionable

Wikimedia and fashion institutions are not old pals. But as part of the project, Europeana Fashion took up the challenge to forge bonds between the two. For some this meant starting from zero, explaining Wikipedia's aims, clarifying the terminology like the difference between Wikimedia and Wikipedia, and providing hands-on guidance for learning how to write and edit the encyclopedia. This would not have been possible with out the assistance of the local Wikimedians.

Fashion Edit-a-thon Handbook for GLAMs

But now, most of this information and guidance is available in the handbook. The handbook gives an overview of Wikimedia, Wikipedia, ways to ensure a successful edit-a-thon, how to measure success, tips for getting content on Wikimedia, event promotion, as well as a suggested day programme, a 3 month preparation agenda, and an abundance of relevant links.

Europeana Fashion hopes that more GLAMs, not just fashion institutions, who read the guide will see how easy and beneficial it is for all parties, strike up a partnership with Wikimedia and host an edit-a-thon.


Wikipedia-based altmetrics; Barriers to reuse of OA materials

Towards Wikipedia-based altmetrics

Schrankia pelicano, a species of moth described in one of the articles most cited on the English Wikipedia
This comparison of Triceratops skulls is from one of the articles most cited on the English Wikipedia, weighed by page views

Wikipedia-based altmetrics made some steps forward this month: a blog post looked at scholarly references cited on the English Wikipedia using the Cite doi template and identified the ten most cited ones. Only one of these was openly licensed - a description of a new species of moth, accompanied by a revision of the corresponding genus, Schrankia. In a next step, the citation counts were combined with page view stats, much like BaGLAMa (for which a new version has just been released) does this for categories on Wikimedia Commons. This produced another top ten list, again with only one article being openly licensed - this time a revision of the dinosaur genus Triceratops. As a final step, the citations were aggregated by publisher (similar to the Wikipedia Cite-o-Meter, which has just been ported to Wikimedia Labs), thereby creating another top ten list, in which open-access publishers were not represented.

Inconsistent XML as a barrier to reuse of Open Access content

JATS is an XML standard used for scholarly articles, e.g. those hosted at PubMed Central, the largest repository of free-to-read biomedical literature. The JATS community held its annual meeting on April 1-2 at the National Library of Medicine, and one of the talks there dealt with inconsistencies in this XML as a barrier for reuse. It resulted from bug reports related to the Open Access Media Importer, as briefly reported in the November 2012 issues of the Open Access report. In a commentary, the conference organizer called upon the JATS community to act upon these reported inconsistencies in order to facilitate future reuse of JATS-based resources.

Open Access Media Importer

The following represents a selection of the ca. 300 files that have been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month, bringing the total to over 16,100. If you can think of wiki pages where these files could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.

Open Access File of the Day

The following files have been featured as Open Access File of the Day this month:


May's GLAM events

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