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Some personal thoughts on GLAM

Recently I saw a documentary about new developments on the internet. The internet is used more and more for collaboration projects in all kinds and sizes. Everyone can participate in the subjects they like. A regular housewife who was interested in stars and the universe took part with many others in a project to classify stars and other objects in the sky. A university had developed a program in what a large set of images of objects in the sky was shown to random people who participated in what they had to identify based on multiple choice visual suggestions (Does it look like... A, B or C). Based on the program she discovered a new object in the sky which later was named after her. Another example is about a schoolboy who came up with a scientific invention based on information on the internet and got awarded for it. Worldwide thousands of projects have been set up in what people can participate to enlarge the knowledge of the world and to make the world a better place. Internet is just a tool, how well it works depends on what we do with it. The documentary ended with saying that all these project are part of a new way of working, they called it  the Wikipedia effect.


In their eyes we started this changing way of working and they went further with it. What I can't describe is the feeling they extra give in the way they work, but I think we can learn from them. We are certainly not with empty hands in the new way of working, but we should realize we need more tools to make tasks easier to do. We already have for example, or are working on, the GLAMwiki toolset, QRpedia, Wiki Loves Monuments App, VisualEditor, Wikidata, all relative new ways but all changing the way people work on/with the Wikimedia projects. They make it easier to contribute, each in their own way, all handy tools that we need in our future developments, to move forward. Also with GLAM I think we should try to open it up more, making tasks better visible so that more people can participate and easier can join in.


Our role as GLAM organisers and volunteers is to reach out to GLAMs to help them open up. We communicate with them and to the communities so that they can pick up the works we make available for re-use, as we preserve the world's knowledge. Also we need to show what we do so that this stimulates others to participate as well.


GLAM-WIKI conference

Open To get your image somewhere up there [ in the first three suggestions when searching for an image with Google ] so that people know that we have this picture in our museum, that is why we put all our best images online. If school children write a report, we want them to use our image, we prefer them to download ours, instead of getting it somewhere else.
— Lizzy Jongma from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
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The GLAM-WIKI conference was great! All the present people from Wikimedia work with GLAMs to enrich the Wikimedia projects and all the GLAM people work or want to work with Wikimedians and aim to spread information around the world. An inspiring environment which promises a lot for the future.


Open If a Wikipedian asks you a question, you only need to answer that question once.
— GLAM professional from the Netherlands
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Wikipedia in academia and libraries in Australia

By 99of9

Wikimedia in Higher Education Symposium at The University of Sydney

The Writing Hub at The University of Sydney hosted a free one-day Symposium on using Wikipedia in Higher Education, which attracted around 50 participants from across Australia. Wikimedia Australia also supported the event, providing travel funding to some of the participants. The Symposium included a keynote address from Kerry Kilner entitled "Teaching Research Methods Using Wikipedia", and eight other talks from academics, Wikimedians, academic Wikimedians, and even representatives from the State Library of New South Wales who shared their perspectives as a GLAM institution who have recently engaged with Wikimedia in a big way (see last month's report for details of their Wikipedian in Residence). Five attendees new to Wikipedia participated in an editing workshop. There were two extended discussions (roundtable and panel) where the future of open education was vigorously debated. The multi-disciplinary diversity of participants was striking, and with it came a broad range of both imaginative uses and robust criticisms of Wikimedia projects and their openness/closedness to student contributions.

More details can be found at Wikimedia in higher education/2013/University of Sydney.

The Sydney Wikipedian-in-Residence story (Part II): Libraries and us

By Whiteghost.ink

Some of the non-English language newspapers published in New South Wales and held by the State Library

April was a very library month. One of the speakers at the Higher Education Symposium (see item above) organised by 99of9, was the leader of library’s Innovation project with whom I work at the State Library of New South Wales. Her presentation was about the library’s online engagement projects, including its experimental use of a Wikipedian in Residence.

Meanwhile, back at the library itself, work continues on integrating the newspapers published in New South Wales into the encyclopedia. The List of newspapers in New South Wales, which has over 2,000 entries, has been re-organised and more effectively linked to its parent article List of newspapers in Australia. This is turning out to be a bigger and more surprising project than anticipated. The cataloguing and organisational effort is becoming both a research product and a research tool. Librarians would not have produced such a list themselves and it is not likely that Wikipedians would have either. Yet the list is revealing a very contemporary and useful relationship between libraries and Wikipedia in support of research and their respective missions. The whole process is demonstrating some things that may be of interest elsewhere, such as:

- the model, including developing a master list from which individual newspaper articles can be developed, may be relevant to other large libraries, particularly those which have subsidiaries or are part of a library network;

- the list is answering research questions as well as provoking them. For example, it has revealed what looks like a mini media war in the 1880s in the rural city of Goulburn. (See Goulburn's changing Chronicle/Post/Herald/Advertiser);

- the spin off article List of non-English-language newspapers in New South Wales may be a useful reference for other Wikimedia Chapters and overseas Wikipedia readers or researchers.

People involved in the project are coming to realise that libraries are more like Wikipedia than they are like museums and other GLAMs. For example, they live to give information away. Librarians, like Wikipedians, work hard at making it easy to find things out. As well, every piece of advice the librarians dispense from their reference desks in reading rooms must be sourced. Making it up or saying “just because I know” is not allowed. Sound familiar?

We have had one evaluation meeting related to the Wikipedia initiative. The State Librarian and the Director of Library Services, among others, came to hear about the trials and triumphs of engaging with us. Work with the Indigenous unit at the State Library is also proceeding. We hope to have some ideas to share soon about doing this successfully.

In other Library news, the National Library of Australia in the capital Canberra now has a Wikimedian on its permanent staff. Former WMF GLAM-fellow and WiR at the British Museum, Liam Wyatt (Wittylama), started there as Social Media Coordinator in April.


Upcoming Edit-a-thon 1864

Edit-a-thon 1864

We're holding an edit-a-thon in Copenhagen on the 8th of June, hoping to gather some ten Wikipedians and a similar number of GLAM professionals.

On the subject

1864 was 149 years ago, so we assume that a number of GLAM institutions will have anniversary exhibitions next year. This (hopefully) means that we can feed into their process now rather than going with the finished product next year. The year 1864 was chosen very much from a Danish perspective, as neither 1914 nor 1814 seem to gather much attention here.

Location and participants

The edit-a-thon will take place at the National Archives in Copenhagen. We have invited a wide spread of institutions. There will be a list here.

Elsewhere

The event has been announced on Facebook and on Google+, and we hope to have people all over the world help with creating content in their respective languages - and to see local events.


WLPA; GLAM Sessions; Funding

Wikimaps taking off at GLAM-Wiki 2013

Susanna Attended GLAM-Wiki 2013 in London and presented the historical maps project that has grown out of our GLAM cooperation with the Finnish National Archives. It was decided that the project shall be called Wikimaps, and it will be developed along the lines of an earlier proposal by Maarten Dammers. The core team is now working on a proof of concept to present at the Amsterdam Hackathon, and we have been making contacts with development within the OpenStreetMap community. In addition to the Wikiteam we are building a collaboration team in Finland to support the project, including historians, GIS experts, archivists, wikipedians, open source and open content activists, linked data research team and also relevant organizations, who can help realize the project. Other than maps, the London event was a great dive into the GLAM world of Wikimedia. Thank you!

Wiki Loves Public Art

Wikimedia Finland has had its hands full starting up the public art photography contest. The task of compiling a list of public domain works took the most effort, but local jury and prize sponsorship turned out to take some time as well. WLPA has a political aspect to it that we'd like to highlight. The nature of public works of art is that they should be accessible and enjoyed by potentially everyone. While this is the case in the physical world, copyright restrictions severely hamstring their impact online. Simply treating all public works as being in the public domain might be excessive, but we don't claim to have any clear answers to the dilemma of accessibility. We hope to start public discussion in this matter, as the debate on copyright restrictions seems to focus mainly on digital piracy and contracts these days.

Wiki School, GLAM meetups

Kiasma seems to be our go-to partner and primary testing ground for new events. We took part in a short educational session on how to edit Wikipedia. The model was somewhat similar to the one used with Ateneum where a smaller group meets around a table and cooperates on a given topic. My wish is that these meetups would become regular and that they would foster the idea of open knowledge as a rewarding hobby.

I was also present at the monthly meeting of the Finnish Open GLAM group where we shared ideas on how libraries could be of help in promoting open culture. There were some exciting news from the team working on the Helsinki Central Library. Openness starts with taking the wishes of the public into consideration and they've done a good job at it so far.

Public Funding

Our chapter applied for public funding for GLAM-related activities from the Ministry of Education and Culture. They have an application process for projects relating to culture and our overall goals are overlap neatly with theirs. So far, our Chapter's activities have been completely dependent on volunteer efforts by our members and our partner institutions. If the funding materializes, we'll be able to cover the expenses of outreach programs, training, workshops and trips to GLAM events. This would give essential continuity to our work.


Brest

Brest archives shares the collection Maurice Marchand

A set by 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.



Hamburg Museum; Museum August Kestner

News from the Hamburg Museum

In late April, the Hamburg Museum launched a new CI. Next to their new website www.hamburgmuseum.de (not available in English so far), the Hamburg Museum which used to be known as hamburgmuseum and Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, is now known as Hamburg Museum.

Additionally they launched a new special exhibition "Wohin mit der Stadt?" (What to do with the city?). It focuses on questions related to urban planning and getting the people of Hamburg involved in this process. The exhibition design features several cubicles, one of them has two computer terminals where people can access and browse through Wikimedia's projects and explore the Hamburg Museum GLAM cooperation.

Moreover the Hamburg Museum released another 155 files showing bits of their various collections. These files are part of the Museum's stamp collection, pharmacy collection, death mask collection, toy collection, medical-historical collection, weights and measures collection and love padlock collection which are not on display and rarely seen by the general public. Out of 500,000 items, 140,000 have been digitised since 2008. That said, 155 files aren't even the tip of the iceberg, but a chance to make a case for GLAMwiki and eventually give the Hamburg Museum a friendly push into more open access.

Museum August Kestner

Museum August Kestner is a cultural history museum in Hanover, Germany. On 3 May 2013 a meeting has been held with Dr. Loeben and Dr. Siebert of the Museum August Kestner and Christoph Braun. Siebert had a first encounter with GLAMwiki through "Wikidata meets Archaeology", Loeben already in 2011 through "Wikipedia meets the Classics". Both were interested in gaining more insights about concepts, projects and strategies in GLAMwiki. Understanding the risks and chances of GLAMwiki is crucial, not only for Museum August Kestner, but also other cultural institutions in Hanover. A follow up is going to be planned, aiming to illustrate key areas of GLAMwiki and experiences from other institutions to a wider audience of Hanover-based institutions.



Article writing contest about statistics and related sciences

By Vince
The office building of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in Budapest

When it comes to statistics, people are mostly thinking about numbers (especially sports statistics) but there are much more beyond that. Statistics are actually heavily bonded with sociology since many stories that can be told through the numbers are having a sociological and/or historical and/or a cultural background, thus filling those numbers with a lot of life and history. Statistics are the backbones of most of the economy related articles as well; without them, writing about the economy of a county, a region, a city or and industry would be much harder. Statistics can be powerful, just think about the US unemployment rates and its sometimes heavy effect on the US stock market and politics. The same applies to the rest of the world as well.

The Hungarian Central Statistical Office (Központi Statisztikai Hivatal or simply KSH), its library (KSH Könyvtár) and Wikimedia Hungary signed a three side agreement to conduct an article writing contest in statistical sciences (about famous people from these sciences, Hungarian censuses, general terms, etc.) starting on May 1 and finishing on June 30 on the Hungarian Wikipedia, as part of the International Year of Statistics.

The library will give free access to all of its contents for the participants for the time of the contest, while the office took on the job of advertising the event and reaching out to those high schools and universities where these sciences are being taught. Wikimedia Hungary took the responsibility to create a separate page and coordinate everything on the Hungarian Wikipedia.


Wikipedia workshop; Editathon on women's biographies

Wikipedia workshop

On April 20th, we held an introductory workshop for library patrons at Biblioteca Salaborsa, one of the first examples in Italy of this kind of collaboration between wiki projects and the libraries. Fourteen people attended the workshop, ranging from young to quite old people, most female. The workshop covered basic issues, personal account creation and the first steps in reading and editing entries.

Editathon on women's biographies

On May 4th, we ran an editathon focused on women's biographies at Biblioteca Salaborsa. The event was the perfect occasion to work on two important themes Wikimedia Italia has been addressing this year: promoting collaboration with libraries and bridging Wikipedia's gender gap.

We had thirteen participants, some of whom already attended the workshop of April 20th. We created five new articles and improved three existing pages, working mainly with resources provided by Biblioteca Salaborsa but also from a couple of other libraries and the web.


Fotofestín activities; DIY scanner project progress and Winners of the Holy Week in Mexico photo contest at ITESM Campus Ciudad de Mexico

Fotofestin festival

One of the uploaded photos in Fotofestín contest

Fotofestín (in English: Photo feast) is a university photography festival, affiliated with the National School of Arts of the UNAM, the main university of Mexico and fully organized and produced by volunteers. In its third edition, held from 18 to 26 April 2013, the program expanded to workshops, lectures and master classes to professional and amateur photographers. This year the organizing committee, headed by Ariana Oropeza and Claudio Briones through our chapter member Verónica Segundo, invited to Wikimedia Mexico to participate in the festival. The main objective for the Mexican chapter was Wikimedia Commons and increase the awareness about the value of Creative Commons licenses in the work of the photographic community and volunteers attending the festival. Renowned Mexican photographers such as Pedro Valtierra and Gerardo Montiel Klint, as well as the jury of Wiki Loves Monuments México 2012 participated in the festival program.

The activities that Wikimedia Mexico performed within Fotofestín were:

  • Volunteer Workshop: Ivan Martínez and Carmen Alcázar gave a workshop about Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons the staff of Fotofestín on the facilities of ENAP. The audience were mostly graphic designers and visual artists.
  • Talks on Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons and Wiki Loves Monuments: Wikimedia México Vocal Carmen Alcázar gave two talks (April 22 and 25) at the main auditorium of Fotofestín, one about Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons, and another on Wikipedia and Wiki Loves Monuments.
  • Massive upload to Wikimedia Commons contest: as part of the festival, Wikimedia Mexico held a contest in which the winner would be the user who donated the most photos to the Commons, under the criterion of referential cultural value and be useful to Wikimedia projects. The 408 photos uploaded for the contest can be found here.

DIY scanner in UNAM and UV

Wikimedia Mexico began the development of DIY type scanners in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Universidad Veracruzana (UV), aimed to digitize incunable and high value books with low-cost digitizing devices that operate at both universities.

In the case of UNAM, the material to digitize will be the Fondo Reservado of the Samuel Ramos Library of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, an institution where there is already a Wikimedia initiative. This project involves Ernesto Priani, Pablo Miranda Quevedo, Francisco Barrón, Filiberto Garcia Solís and Marco Godínez, by the UNAM, and Wikimedia México Board members Alan Lazalde and Carmen Alcázar.

In the UV, the project is under planning will digitize books from the Unidad de Servicios Bibliotecarios y de Información (USBI, Unit of Library and Information Services) of UV in Xalapa, Veracruz. Silvia Gutierrez heads this effort. Both the UNAM and in the UV, the advice of Wikimedia Argentina has been by Evelyn Haidel and Osmar Valdebenito.

In both cases, the digitalized material is going to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and WikiSource.

Fotofestín

fotofestín es un festival universitario de fotografía, que tiene como sede principal la Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas de la UNAM, completamente organizado y producido por voluntarios. En su tercera edición, realizada del 18 al 26 de abril de 2013, su programa se amplió a talleres, conferencias y clases magistrales. Este año el comité organizador, encabezado por Ariana Oropeza y Claudio Briones, a través de la integrante del capítulo Verónica Segundo, invitó a Wikimedia México a ser un aliado en el festival. El principal objetivo para el capítulo mexicano fue Wikimedia Commons y la concientización sobre el valor de las licencias libres entre la comunidad fotográfica y voluntaria reunida por el festival. Dentro de su programa participaron fotógrafos renombrados como Pedro Valtierra y Gerardo Montiel Klint, este último jurado en Wiki Loves Monuments México edición 2012.

Las actividades que Wikimedia México realizó dentro de fotofestín fueron:

  • Taller para voluntarios: Iván Martínez y Carmen Alcázar impartieron un taller sobre Wikimedia, Wikipedia y Wikimedia Commons al staff del festival en las instalaciones de la ENAP. El público en su mayoría fueron diseñadores gráficos y artistas visuales.
  • Charlas sobre Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons y Wiki Loves Monuments: nuestra vocal Carmen Alcázar impartió dos charlas en el auditorio principal de fotofestín. Una sobre Creative Commons y Wikimedia Commons, y otra sobre Wikipedia y Wiki Loves Monuments.
  • Subida masiva de fotografías a Wikimedia Commons: como parte del festival, se realizó un concurso en el que el ganador sería aquel usuario que donara la mayor cantidad de fotos a Wikimedia Commons, bajo el criterio de uso de Wikimedia Commons: valor cultural y referencial y que sean útiles a los proyectos Wikimedia. Las 408 fotos subidas por participantes de fotofestín pueden verse aquí.

Escáner DIY en la UNAM y en la UV

Con el fin de digitalizar fondos reservados, incunables y antiguos, Wikimedia México inició la planeación para el desarrollo de escáneres tipo DIY en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) y la Universidad Veracruzana (UV). Asesorados por Wikimedia Argentina y como parte de la iniciativa Iberocoop, se construirán dispositivos digitalizadores de bajo costo que operarán en ambas universidades.

En el caso de la UNAM, el material a digitalizar será parte del Fondo reservado de la Biblioteca Samuel Ramos de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, institución donde ya existe una iniciativa Wikimedia. En este proyecto participan Ernesto Priani, Pablo Miranda Quevedo, Francisco Barrón, Filiberto García Solís y Marco Godínez, por parte de la UNAM y por Wikimedia México Alan Lazalde y Carmen Alcázar.

En la UV, el proyecto está en fase de planeación y el material a trabajar es sobre libros antiguos de la USBI en Xalapa, Veracruz. Silvia Gutiérrez es quien encabeza este esfuerzo. Tanto en la UNAM como en la UV, la asesoría de Wikimedia Argentina ha sido por parte de Evelin Haidel y Osmar Valdebenito.

Winners of the Holy Week in Mexico photo contest at ITESM Campus Ciudad de Mexico

Winner of the best photo category
Winner of the most original photo category

Due to the success of last semester's Day of the Dead photo contest, the library of the Mexico City campus of ITESM decided to hold another photo contest, this time related to the cultural and religious traditions of Holy Week in Mexico. This is a major vacation period as well as religious event in the country. This allowed students to take photographs in seven Mexican states as well as the Federal District of Mexico City. We received about 240 entries but only 165 of these met the criteria of the contest. Although we received fewer entries than for Day of the Dead, the overall quality of the photos was much greater. On May 2, 2013, prizes were given in three categories. The best photo was that of User:Marcelolaiz called La Cruz (left) The most original photo category was won by with a somewhat disturbing image of a man playing Judas after he hung himself.(right) The third category was for the person who took most pictures which met the criteria of the contest. This was also won by User:Marcelolaiz. He took all his participating photos while on a mission to the small village of Xitlama in the municipality of Tlanchinol, which is in a remote part of the central Mexican state of Hidalgo.


GLAM WIKI UK; Wiki loves Sound; Wikipedian in Residence; Wiki loves Libraries; Wikipedia Training National Museum of Ethnology

GLAM WIKI UK 2013 Conference - Flickr - Sebastiaan ter Burg

GLAM WIKI London

GLAM WIKI was very inspiring and loaded with practical information. It has lead to several ideas for projects in the Netherlands. We will discuss these within our chapter and with others chapters in the upcoming weeks. Examples of projects that we are interested in to repeat in the Netherlands are:

  1. Set up the digital benchmark for the cultural sector that was presented by Nick Poole
  2. Research the Open Data and Crowdsourcing readiness of GLAMs, which Beat Estermann presented

Several Dutch participants gave a presentation/hosted a workshop during the conference:

The hackathon was used to create the bot for the sound donation by The Netherlands Institute For Sound and Vision.

Radio play workshop by rADIO MOBi
Uitleg Luister2 Template
MachineFabriek performed with solely sounds from the Wiki Loves Sound project.

Wiki loves sound

Wiki Loves Sound is a new initiative to promote use of sound in Wikimedia projects. The progress in april was:

  1. 1838 of the 2300+ donated sounds by The Netherlands Institute For Sound and Vision have been transcoded and uploaded to Commons.
  2. A Dutch spoken instructional video about adding sounds was made.
  3. 50+ sounds were added to Wikipedia pages during an editathon. The sounds ranged from bird sounds to throwing up.
  4. A workshop radio plays was organized. The radio play only used sounds from the Wiki loves sound project.
  5. A live remix performance by Machinefabriek in which he only used sounds of this project.

Wikipedians in Residence

Interest in opening up a position for a Wikipedian in Residence is increasing in The Netherlands. The first WiR is expected to start in Q4 of 2013. More specific information cannot be given at this time due to the internal preparation of the involved organisations.

Wiki loves Libraries

It has been quiet around the project "Wiki loves libraries" lately. Talks with new potential partners, like BiSC, also have reestablished contact with previous involved organizations. A brainstorm for strategic cooperation in 2014 is now being prepared by WMNL and BiSC.

Training National Museum of Ethnology 06

Wikipedia Training National Museum of Ethnology

A basic editing training was given to students and employees of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.



Longest edit-a-thon ever at Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona

35 hour edit-a-thon at Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona

6 AM ioga session

Fundació Miró’s Espai 13 is celebrating the 35th anniversary since its creation. Fundació Miró had already collaborated with Wikipedia back in 2011, when they hosted an edit-a-thon about the Catalan artist Joan Miró. But this time Amical Viquipèdia and Fundació Miró agreed to make a huge celebration to commemorate the event: 35 consecutive hours editing Wikipedia.

During that time, around fifty Art and Philosophy university students from all over the country, and around fifteen volunteer Wikipedians, gathered in the workplace to start or expand articles on 300 artists who have exhibited at Espai 13, Fundació Miró’s space dedicated to promoting young artists’ work. To start the event, we held a press conference at 12am on Friday, April 12th, 2013. The first shift of participants was already prepared to start working on the 300 proposed articles about the Espai 13 artists – and some of those artists were present at the event too, so the students were able to take freely licensed pictures of them and post them to Wikimedia Commons. The 26 Art and Philosphy students who participated in the first turn, plus the 5 volunteer Wikipedians who were there to help them, stayed until 10pm – that is, 10 hours. The second turn comprised a similar number of participants. They worked admirably during the whole night without rest until 10am next day, when the third shift took over and stayed until the end of the edit-a-thon eleven hours later, finishing at 9pm on April 13th, 2013. The students and the volunteer Wikipedians didn’t just write on Wikipedia – there were parallel activities scheduled in order to get out, relax the mind and get ready for more work on articles. In addition to lunch and dinner at the magnificient gardens of the museum, those activities included a guided visit to the museum at midnight, conferences by Wikipedians, a couple of performances from two of the artists that were being written about, and two yoga sessions –one of them being held at 6am in the morning at Fundació Miró’s balcony, when Barcelona was waking up and the sight was breathtaking.


Big data Week in Barcelona

Media-TIC center in Barcelona hosted the central conference, where Àlex Hinojo (user:Kippelboy) presented Wikidata among other Wikimedia's sister projects.

Following the World Wide event Big Data Week, Amical co-organized the Barcelona edition with Media 140 and CatalunyaDades, two non-profits based in Barcelona. Big Data Week, BDW, is one of the most unique global platforms of interconnected community events focusing on the social, political, technological and commercial impacts of Big Data. It brings together a global community of data scientists, data technologies, data visualisers and data businesses spanning six major commercial, financial, social and technological sectors. The festival connected a number of global cities through locally hosted meetups, events, networking functions, data visualisation demo’s, debates, discussion and hackathons. Events were designed to provide a platform to educate, inform and inspire – organised by people who are passionate and knowledgeable about data. BDW is a self organising community where anyone is able to host and create an event during the festival; making the platform completely open and community driven. You can see our program here.


Wikipedia Workshop for historians at the History Museum of Catalonia

History Museum of Catalonia

On April 8 Amical organized a Wikipedia & Wikimedia Commons workshop at the History Museum of Catalonia, where User:Galazan is Wikipedian in Residence. Almost 80% of the Museum staff attended the workshop and since then most of them are improving one article on Wikipedia, being guided and helped by the Wikipedian in Residence.


Wikipedia Workshop for heritage professionals at the University of Barcelona

History Museum of Catalonia

On April 26 Amical Viquipèdia participated in a Mobile App & New technologies Seminar, where user:Kippelboy presented Wikipedia's mobile App, stats and future plans. Also talked about GLAM-wiki partnerships and how mobile affects them.



GLAM handbook version 3; conferences; hackathons and Wiki Loves Public Art

GLAM handbook

Kulturskatter på nätet, the Swedish GLAM handbook (download pdf)

Last year, Wikimedia Sverige produced a GLAM handbook called Kulturskatter på nätet, after several meetings with GLAM:s to understand what they needed. The first version was a rather thin and simple leaflet with some basic arguments directed towards GLAM:s on why they should a) digitize and b) work with Wikipedia. Wikimedia Deutschland became interested in the concept and produced a version of their own that was much better than the original one. Now, since April 10, there's a new Swedish version which is even better.

The new brochure, including two cool infographics about copyright law for GLAMs and the digitization process - are easily adapted into many other languages. Just use free software Scribus, research your copyright laws, discuss what issues "your" GLAM:s have with copyright/digitization/Wikipedia, and localize. Already, there is a Finnish version on the way, and the Swedish chapter would love to help out in translating the text into English. Download the zip file here.

Digikult with hackathon

On April 10-11, there was a cultural heritage conference called Digikult, which Wikimedia Sverige helped organize. Kulturskatter på nätet (see above) was presented there first. Present was around 100 persons, which represented all the major GLAMs, university libraries and county boards of Sweden. Most talks mentioned Wikipedia and/or Wikimedia Commons in a positive light, and Lennart Guldbrandsson had a talk at the end (all talks are soon to be uploaded to Digikult.se). From Europeana, Geer Oskam presented some key projects, including Wiki Loves Public Art.

During the conference, there was a hackathon. Instead of competing against each other, the hackers decided to work together to combine three/four databases: Europeana, Wikipedia, lists of cultural institutions and a database of public art. Together this web app produce a list of cultural heritage institutions near a selected point (including one based on your mobile phone's GPS location).

GLAM-WIKI 2013 conference

Wikimedia Sverige was one of the organizations involved in organizing the GLAM-WIKI 2013 conference as part of our project Europeana Awareness. Wikimedia Sverige participated in the preparation of the conference and backed the event financially. At the conference Geer Oskam from Europeana presented about the cooperation between Wikimedia and Europeana so far. Axel Pettersson gave a presentation entitled "Professional GLAM staffers on Wikipedia". There was also a Europeana lead workshop that focused on the GLAMtoolset and on the Sunday there was a small Europeana lead hackathon on top of the other unconference activities.

Wiki Loves Public Art

The preparations for the Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest continued. Amongst other things press releases were sent out, blog posts were written, all the participating countries websites were finalized, lists of artworks were generated on Wikipedia, and all the remaining infrastructure on Wikimedia Commons was set up. In the end five countries, Austria, Finland, Israel, Spain (Catalonia) and Sweden, became ready to participate in this year's contest. In Sweden nine art museums are cooperating and are involved in the contest.

Wikimania

At the end of April four talks with a focus on GLAM was submitted from Wikimedia Sverige for this year's Wikimania:


Swiss Federal Archives looking for a Wikipedian in Residence

Swiss Federal Archives team up with Wikimedia CH

2013 sees the start of a new collaboration between the Swiss Federal Archives and Wikimedia CH– two organisations committed to free access to knowledge. With a view to publishing freely usable, “public domain” source materials from the Federal Archives holdings online via Wikimedia – such as Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiversity – a “Wikipedian in Residence” will be working in the Federal Archives over the next few months.

Wikimedia has been gathering experience with the “Wikipedian in Residence” concept internationally since 2010, at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Library in London and the US National Archives near Washington. The Federal Archives partnership is the first collaboration with a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) institution in Switzerland.

The initial goal is to make more than 5,000 digitised photographs from a collection on the First World War searchable and freely accessible via Wikimedia by autumn 2013, providing researchers with a fascinating, well catalogued and freely accessible body of materials just in time for the centenary of the war’s outbreak in 1914.

As a guest of the Federal Archives, the Wikipedian in Residence will promote entries in the online encyclopaedia that relate to the Federal Archives and their holdings, and publish material under open-content licences. Links between the Federal Archives and the Wikipedia community will also be expanded.

The Federal Archives and Wikimedia CH will report on the collaboration and its results at regular intervals.



Taiwan Government Data Portal Launched

Taiwan Government Data Portal Launched and Cultural Data

On 29 April 2013, the beta version of the Taiwan Government Data Portal has launched. One of the famous museums in the world, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, also submitted data on the portal. The Museum has submitted the meta data of their collection, however the digitization file of the collection is still missing. Although the portal claimed the data is open data, the license is not compatible with commonly recognized open data licenses around the world.

Misuse of Open Data by National Palace Museum

The Palace Museum recently held the competition to encourage people to use their materials to do anything that can be value-added. The digitization files used in the competition was scanned or taken pictures from the Palace Museum. Many people criticize the Palace Museum because they used funds from Taiwan's National Digital Archive Program which is also funded by the government, but they don't release materials under open license. Open Data is now a hot topic in Taiwan, and the Palace Museum used this term to get more funds, but doesn't realize the true meaning of open data.


GLAM-Wiki; new and departing Wikipedians in Residence

GLAM-Wiki 2013

By Daria Cybulska

The dust has settled on the GLAM-Wiki 2013 Conference that Wikimedia UK organised and ran jointly with the British Library, Europeana, Wikimedia Sweden and THATCamp, and we can now look back and reflect on the event.

GLAM-Wiki 2013 took place on the 12-14 April 2013 at the Conference Centre of the British Library. From the start of the planning phase its aim was to bring Wikimedians and GLAMs together to share their experiences, and to inspire any representatives of cultural institutions interested in a partnership with Wikimedia UK. With this in mind, the workgroup (consisting of many volunteers and supported by staff) created three strands to the event:

On the Friday, we looked at the work Wikimedia and other organisations have done in partnership with cultural institutions, presenting case studies and discussing the benefits to both parties. The day included two highly evaluated keynote speeches, which you can watch here: [1], [2].

On the Saturday, we focused on the more practical and technical side, looking at ways to work together and running workshops to share best practice. Valuable ideas have been generated throughout the day.

Sunday was organised by THATCamp as a free unconference and hackathon, exploring the humanities and technology. We have seen some exciting creations and thoughts around free-licensing, open access and the interface between humanities and technology.

Wikipedians and GLAMs are both looking for ways of spreading their information in the widest possible way. It sounds like a perfect match, and indeed over the three days of the conference, with over 150 people attending, Wikimedia UK has facilitated an impressive ideas exchange. It was clear from the start that the conference centre at the British Library was buzzing with possible projects, case studies shared, new approaches. Such a creative atmosphere would not be possible without bringing so many dedicated people together in a physical space.

We will be following up on many of the ideas generated, picking up new cultural projects. I am very proud of being able to contribute to such a successful event, and looking forward to organising many more in the future.

New Wikipedians in Residence

In February it was announced that the Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums and Wikimedia UK were jointly recruiting a Wikimedian in Residence. Robert Forsythe was appointed and was in post in April. A summary of his work so far can be found here, including delivering several training sessions to TWAM staff and more planned for the future.

On 18 April it was announced that the National Library of Scotland are seeking a Wikimedian in Residence. News spread quickly and the story was picked up by the BBC. Applications closed on 6 May, and the residency will last four months.

Burne-Jones' The Nativity, one of the images uploaded by The New Art Gallery Walsall

Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) commenced work as Wikipedian-in-Residence at The New Art Gallery Walsall; see Wikipedia:GLAM/NAGW (Andy also continued as Wikipedian-in-Residence at Queen Street Mill; see Wikipedia:GLAM/QSMM). The New Art Gallery immediately donated a number of high-resolution images of its artworks, including pieces by Burne-Jones, Modigliani, Constable and Cézanne, with more to follow. Articles started in April included Garman Ryan Collection, Sally Ryan, Leo Fitzmaurice, and Jochem Hendricks. The collaboration continues, and a series of backstage pass tours and editathons will be held at the gallery throughout May and early June. All welcome, but booking essential!

End of the British Library residency

Act one, scene one, of Scarlatti's final opera Griselda (1721). In the composer's own hand. (BL Add MS 14168, f. 5r)

The Wikipedian in Residence program at the British Library came to an end on 2 May, after a busy year for Andrew Gray. The program focused on helping disseminate knowledge and understanding of Wikipedia and how it works through the academic and library communities, with over 400 people attending 50 practical workshops across the country. April saw the last public workshops, including the first session aiming to aiming to introduce Wikidata to the cultural sector, and the GLAM-Wiki conference hosted by the Library.

As well as a series of public events, including a four-day editing session in October, over 2,000 files have been released to Commons, including the British Library's first featured picture (right). More images are expected to be released over the coming months.

A report will be available later in the year, but a longer summary is currently available on the British Library blog.

Science Museum and Natural History Museum Wikimedian Residence

An ivory orrery at Blythe House, the Science Museum small object store, photo by Christoph Braun, taken on a tour as part of GLAMwiki

During the first two months of residency John Cummings has mainly focused on researching the possible areas of collaboration, prototyping, and meeting with staff members relevant to the project. Also carrying out presentations, training sessions and informal meetings on Wikimedia projects and how to contribute to them and setting up small test projects to show effectiveness of contributing to and using Wikimedia and other open knowledge projects.

"I'm really excited about working out how to use the QRpedia multilingual links web pages, I've started to create what I believe is the first truly multilingual museum guide."

Images are used to guide people through the gallery and then a link to a Wikipedia article that autodetects the users language, the prototype for this is here.

I'm working with volunteers from Imperial College to create the guide, I think this allows anyone to curate a museum using Wikimedia resources in hundreds of languages."

John has also been working on leaflets for donating images to commons, flickr and picasa here and for content holders at the museums here.



First GLAM Boot Camp; Consortium meeting; GLAMout; plus workshops and editathon

GLAM Boot Camp DC

See also: en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp

Starting on April 26, 2013, 17 Wikipedians gathered in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration to gain more knowledge about the GLAM movement. The first day started with visits from David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States and Michael Edson, the Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian. The rest of the day we discussed the GLAM movement and the different types of GLAM events and activities. Saturday morning we did a series of groups to work on reorganizing content on the English Wikipedia about various GLAM materials, check out some of the new materials and organization at on English Wikipedia. Saturday and Sunday included more seasons related with the inevitable discussions of Conflict of Interest and Copyright, as well as the more practical concerns of running events, getting funding and using Wikisource for collaboration. Overall the weekend was an excellent event for community building and empowering new GLAM-Wiki volunteers.

For a more detailed assessment of the event, see the report in Signpost.

GLAM-Wiki US Consortium advisory group meeting

See also: en:Wikipedia:GLAM/US/Consortium/Advisory Group Meeting DC

Also hosted at the National Archives on April 29th, the day after the conclusion of the GLAM Boot Camp, was the first formal meeting of the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium's advisory group. This is a select group of cultural and academic professionals experienced with Wikimedia projects and Wikimedians experienced in GLAM-Wiki, including roughly equal numbers of librarians, museumists, and archivists. The purpose of the meeting was to have a full-day strategy session in person to kickstart the the activities of the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium. With the Wikimedia Foundation narrowing its scope to exclude logistical support of GLAM-Wiki projects, and most of the United States being chapterless, the Consortium will fill a leadership and organization void in GLAM-Wiki in the US while also incorporating the voices of GLAM institutions themselves in the movement.

David Ferriero opens the first GLAM Boot Camp.

The morning was spent reviewing the current state of GLAM-Wiki in the United States and the organizational problems faced. Big-picture challenges were identified which the Consortium would seek to address in the long-term, like establishing legitimacy (of an institution within the Wikimedia community, or of Wikimedia(ns) within the cultural sphere), making the participation of online volunteers scale to demand, improving documentation, integrating Wikimedia into the everyday workflow of cultural institutions, and establishing financially sustainability. A number of action steps and outcomes were decided upon by the group to meed these needs, including an audit and update of existing documentation, establishing real-world models of institutional Wikipedia policies and practices, creating an "annotated bibliography" of publications, press, and case studies by or about GLAM-Wiki, putting out a survey to GLAM institutions and professionals about their opinions and needs regarding Wikipedia, and organizing an intensive (day-long or more) workshop modeled on the GLAM Boot Camp, but for training cultural professionals. Underpinning all of these discussions were the question of what sort of structure for the Consortium would allow it to be most useful. There was a fear that incorporating as a non-profit would not immediately be worth the effort that entails, and it was decided that official recognition of the group as a Wikimedia-affiliated user group would afford it a level a concreteness and validity in the interim. Two outcomes have already been put in motion: the first GLAMout—intended to be a more lively and discussion-based form of documentation in video format—occurred on May 3, and later that day, the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium's application for user group status was submitted to the Affiliations Committee.

ACRL 2013 workshop

See also: en:Wikipedia:Workshop/ACRL 2013

A half-day workshop was held at the Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 10 for librarians to learn more about using and teaching Wikipedia and how to edit. Around 30 librarians from both public and academic settings attended. The event was led by Chanitra Bishop, Brenda Burk and Phoebe Ayers with help from local Wikipedians Lori Byrd Phillips and Justin Knapp. Participants were particularly interested in how to use Wikipedia to help with teaching information literacy and evaluation of sources in an academic setting, as well as how libraries could share information on their collections. OCLC and IUPUI Libraries sponsored the workshop.

ARLISNA 2013 workshop

See also: http://arlisna2013.sched.org/event/08c5275d25539d7bd67750fd67ebb8eb

On April 26, a group of 19 art librarians and archivists took part in a hands-on workshop, "The Art of GLAM-Wiki: The Basics of Sharing Cultural Knowledge with the World on Wikipedia" (see presentation slides). The event was part of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLISNA), in Pasadena, CA, and was led by (Sara Snyder) of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. Participants learned the basics of contributing to Wikipedia--from creating an account to adding helpful citations--and how they can connect with volunteers and professional peers through WikiProject GLAM.

First edition of GLAMout

See also: en:Wikipedia:GLAM/GLAMout
Video of first GLAMout.

One of the outcomes of the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium advisory group meeting was a decision to hold a monthly GLAMout (using Google Hangout on Air as a platform) in order to highlight projects of interest and share information of interest to the Consortium. In the sprit of being bold, the first GLAMout was held on May 3rd. Topics included VIAFBot (at 1:32), report from the GLAM Boot Camp (at 15:20), report from the GLAM US Consortium meeting (24:40), and discussion about the upcoming exhibit on Wikipedia at the Computer History Museum (36:00).

Editathon at GWU Archives

See also: en:Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/All Things GW

Approximately 30 editors, with a good mix of experienced Wikipedians and students, attended the "All Things GW" editathon at the George Washington University's Gelman Library on Saturday, April 20. The editathon was organized by Jennifer Kinniff, Public Services and Outreach Librarian for Special Collections, in order to expose the university archives' local and university history collections. As well, many students showed up in conjunction with a GWU course on D.C. history in which editing Wikipedia to add content related to their research topics was required, and so they came away from the event more literate in how Wikipedia works, while improving it at the same time. The event included a new user tutorial led by Dominic McDevitt-Parks and a show and tell of some of the university archives' most interesting treasures with assistance from Bergis Jules, University Archivist. Attendees listed a number of outcomes, including a new German-language article on Foggy Bottom and nearly tripling the size of Snows Court from 600 words to 1700.

The event was covered in the school's student newspaper, the GW Hatchet. According to the article, "Freshman Jerrel Catlett said he had prepared for the event for weeks as part of his D.C. History, Culture and Politics course. He said he liked the idea of the editathon because it allowed him to share his new knowledge. 'Here you’re actually contributing your information to something larger that other people can use,' Catlett said."


Intersections between GLAM and Wikinews

GLAM and Wikinews

Cultural institutions, specifically the traditional Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, are a group that could benefit from engaging with Wikinews and its reporters. The reporting on Wikinews is neutral, and fact based. Unlike other Wikimedia Foundation projects, it allows original content, known on projects as original reporting. Several Wikinews projects, including English and Spanish, have their stories feed out to Google News; this improves article visibility and views. Articles can get decent views, with a few interviews outperforming Wikipedia articles about the subject of the internet. In English Wikinews, an article can get comparable views to appearing on the front page of English Wikipedia as Did You Know. Wikinews article publishing often involves improvement on relevant Wikipedia articles and, for original reporting, images being uploaded to Commons for use on all WMF projects.

Before explaining more about how and why GLAMs should engage with Wikinews, two things will first be looked at to provide an idea of the current representation of GLAM related content and activity on Wikinews. The first is a look at the current volume of content about GLAM related topics on Wikinews. The second is a look at case studies done with GLAMs on Wikinews.

Wikinews GLAM coverage

GLAM related news appears on 25 different language Wikinews projects. This includes English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Greek, Farsi, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian and Chinese. A category for art related news appears on 18 of these projects. The other projects, including Catalan, Czech, French, Serbian and Turkish languages, either include this material in a general culture or another category, or do not have art related news. The most prolific project for reporting on Art is English Wikinews, with 51 articles. Italian and Russian Wikinews are second with 28 articles each. Arabic Wikinews if the fourth largest project in terms of articles in their Art category. The only other project with double digit articles is Japanese with 10.

Once beyond this broad general category of Arts, GLAM representation based on the acronym becomes less obvious and the uniqueness of each language's contributor base and each project's internal organizing policies becomes apparent. Only one project, Russian Wikinews, has a libraries category. Only one project, English Wikinews, has a galleries category. German Wikinews has 15 different categories relevant to GLAM. French Wikinews has 12. Russian Wikinews has 8. English, Polish and Italian Wikinews only have 6. Arabic Wikinews has 5 categories.

The categories can be highly specific on these projects. For example, Bulgaria's only populated GLAM related category is Irina Bokova. Catalan language Wikinews's two categories include Museums and Maritime Historic Site of Pointe-au-Père. Spanish language Wikinews's two categories include historical memory and Egyptology. Turkish Wikinews has Archaeology. Schneerson Library is found on Russian Wikinews. Serbian Wikinews has Vatican Museum.

There are seven categories that appear on ten language Wikinews projects. The graph above shows the total number of articles found on the nine different language Wikinews projects that have articles in two or more of those seven categories. French Wikinews leads the Archaeology category with 14 articles. English Wikinews leads the Art category with 51 articles. German Wikinews leads the Art exhibitions category with 23 articles. English Wikinews leads the Museums category with 84 articles. Italian Wikinews leads the Paintings category with 16 articles. German Wikinews leads the Sculptures category with 4 articles. German Wikinews also leads the World Heritage Sites category with 18 articles.

While total article counts by category numbers may look somewhat large on some projects for a comparatively small project, there is the issue of time. Wikinews, unlike Wikipedia, is news based. News is news for only a small window of time where you can write about it. After that, news ceases to be news. This begets a question of when historically have GLAM related articles been published? 5 English Wikinews categories, 1 Finnish category, 3 Polish categories, 3 Russian categories and 2 Spanish language categories easily allow for determining of publication dates in bulk. For all these, all articles in the category and their publication date were determined. Articles appearing in multiple categories were removed. The total list of articles was originally 259 and it went down to 220. Years were assigned based on publication date. Understanding that this is a sample of publication dates based on a limited dataset, in 2005 there were 15 GLAM related articles published. There were small increases in 2006 and 2007, before there was a 2 article per year drop in 2008 when only 23 GLAM related articles were published. There was an increase in 2009, before a big drop in 2010 to 18 total articles. 2011 saw a big increase from the previous year to 35. 2012 saw another increase with 41 total articles. As of 20 April 2013, there have been 17 total published GLAM related articles.

The languages/categories with easily available publication date information include English and Russian Wikinews's museum categories. This includes 104 of the 259 total articles. From 2005 to 2012, with the exception of 2010, the total yearly volume of articles published in these two categories ranged between 12 and 16. Year to date, there have only been 3 articles published. While this specific category represents 40% of all articles published, the growth levels have been historically stagnant.

The graph above shows the average total daily views for articles published in 2013 in the local project museum category. Catalan Wikinews is not included because no articles were published in that category in 2013. Russian and German Wikinews are each represented by one article, Венский музей проведёт экскурсию для нудистов and Luthers Sterbehaus wieder zugänglich respectively. English Wikinews is represented by two stories, Science museum hosts first-ever 'Maker Faire' for city of Tyler, Texas and Andrew Sayers resigns National Museum of Australia directorship. French Wikinews is represented by 8 articles, including France : La Liberté guidant le peuple vandalisée, Québec : entente entre le MNBAQ et l'église Saint-Dominique sur une possible conversion muséale, Québec : exposition sur le Pérou précolombien et colonial au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Québec : le nouveau Planétarium de Montréal ouvrira ses portes le 6 avril 2013, Québec : le SHMP reçoit une subvention pour réaliser deux spectacles sur l'Empress of Ireland, Québec : ouverture du nouveau Planétarium de Montréal ce week-end, Québec : une exposition sur les Beatles au musée de Pointe-à-Callière de Montréal, and Québec : une exposition sur les plasticiens au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. The dates in the graph above are from 20 March 2013 to 19 April 2013. Both of English Wikinews's articles were published in this period, and 3 of the French articles were published in this period. On average, English Wikinews articles got around 42 more daily views than their counterparts on French, German and Russian Wikinews. As the max average daily views for any single day is 244, this is a large volume of additional daily views that the English project gets. Russian Wikinews only averages 4.3 views a day for their 2013 museum category article. French Wikinews is worse at 2.95. German Wikinews is the worst performer on average at 2.73 daily views.

A similar traffic picture exists for articles in the Arts category. Finnish, German, Swedish and Italian Wikinews had nothing published in this category so far in 2013. English and Farsi Wikinews each had one article published, Andrew Sayers resigns National Museum of Australia directorship and آرجو_يحصد_جائزة_أفضل_فيلم_في_الحفل_السادس_والستين_لتوزيع_جوائز_الأكاديمية_البريطانية_لفنون_الفيلم_والتلفزيون respectively. There were three articles published on Arabic Wikinews between 1 January 2013 and 20 April 2013: مجلة_«شارلي_إبدو»_الفرنسية_تنشر_سيرة_مصورة_للنبي_محمد, فوز_فيلم_آرغو_بجائزة_أفضل_فيلم_في_حفل_الأوسكار_لعام_2013 and آرجو_يحصد_جائزة_أفضل_فيلم_في_الحفل_السادس_والستين_لتوزيع_جوائز_الأكاديمية_البريطانية_لفنون_الفيلم_والتلفزيون. There were ten Russian Wikinews articles published in this period. Like the museums category, English Wikinews had the greatest daily average visits, bearing in mind the sole article was published on 26 March, several days after the start of the reporting period, with 41 views a day. This compares to 2.4 views a day on Arabic Wikinews, 12.0 views a day on Farsi Wikinews, and 1.9 views a day in the Arts category for Russian Wikinews.

Both Russian and English Wikinews did average higher per day views for articles in the Museum category than the Arts category. This suggests that people are more interested in getting museum news on these projects than they are in getting general Arts news.

Wikinews GLAM projects

On English Wikinews, most of the GLAM work completed to date has involved cultural institutions affiliated with sports, including the National Sports Information Center, one of Australia's premiere sports related Libraries that is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Sport. Other work has been done with the Australian Paralympic Committee who have an extensive Archive of historical information on disability sport and disability culture in Australia. Other work has been done with the Spanish Paralympic Committee.

Rollers and Gliders World Challenge
Australian Rollers vs Japan at the Sydney Olympic Sports Centre. 14 Nick Taylor. Rollers and Gliders World Challenge.

In July, the Australian Paralympic Committee asked if anyone was available to cover the Gliders & Rollers World Challenge in Sydney. The competition was the last domestic tournament for both Australian teams before they headed off to London. The APC wanted license acceptable pictures of the players for Commons.

Two Wikinews reporters volunteered, if funding assistance could be found as the event was several days long and required transport to get there and a hotel. The APC and the University of Queensland covered the costs as there was no time to request funding from Wikimedia Australia. Both reporters had previously covered several sporting events for Wikinews and had taken pictures at these events.

While the funding was secured, we had to set up the press passes on our own by calling Basketball Australia to set it up. Going into the event, the goal was to test some mobile reporting tools we planned to use in London. We had developed a tool for dropbox that allowed mobile uploading to Wikinews for notes. At the same time, the goal was also to see how Wikinews’s reviewers would cope with multiple articles being submitted for review in a short period of time. We were going to publish as many articles as we could. There were no plans to update Wikipedia articles at the time we did this.

Once there, a decision was made to cover games beyond the ones played by Australia in order to provide broader coverage, make our coverage less Australian centric, hopefully encourage contributors from outside Australia to cover their own Paralympians by providing news stories and pictures. Interviews were set up, with a focus on the new Australian players on the women’s team and two of the guys on the Great Britain team. This was set up through team management and the coaches as the Basketball Australia media guy was not present for this event.

Wikinews articles published for this event included:

2012 Summer Paralympics in London

The Australian Paralympic Committee provided two press passes for a pair of English Wikinews contributors. 3 IRC workshops were held in advance of the Games to teach people how to contribute to Wikinews and how to support Paralympic reporting.

20 English Wikinews articles were published about the 2012 Summer Paralympics in advance of the Games to teach others how to write for the project and to test how to use it in advance of on the ground reporting. English Wikinews broke one story before traditional Australian media: the Evan O'Hanlon and elite Paralympian sponsorship story.

While in London at the Games, a large amount of Wikinews reporting was done with 70 totals articles being publish. While in London, the pair published interviews on Wikinews with Amber Merritt in the Mix Zone, Tyan Taylor in the Mix Zone, Greg Smith in the Mix Zone, Claire Harvey in the Mix Zone, Michael Hartung, Paul Bird, Duncan Campbell, Trischa Zorn, Samoa Paralympic representatives, Vanuatu Paralympic representatives, Fiji Paralympic representatives, Tonga Paralympic representatives and Solomon Islands Paralympic representatives.

Following the Games, the reporters brought back a number of print materials for archiving at the National Sport Information Center.

IPC Nor-Am Cup
Cameron Rahles Rahbula competing in the Super G during the second day of the 2012 IPC Nor Am Cup at Copper Mountain, Colorado.
Interview with Australian skier Victoria Pendergast

Following the London 2012 Paralympics, steps were taken to get in touch with the APC regarding the possibility of gaining media accreditation for the Sochi Paralympics. The Wikinews reporters were basically told that they needed to demonstrate competency in covering winter sport to gain accreditation from the APC. They were told by Steve Graham, the APC alpine coach, that the whole team would be at the IPC Nor-Am Cup in Colorado in December 2012.

The reporters indicated they would attend the event as this was a goal myself, another Wikinews reporter and a Commons photographer wanted to work towards. We contacted the APC, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Paralympics New Zealand to ask about setting up interviews and for more information on reporting from the event. A list of goals was created on English Wikinews at Wikinews:IPC Nor-Am Cup that the reporters wanted to accomplish while covering the IPC Nor-Am Cup. Articles published included:

IPC Alpine World Championships
Matthias Lanzinger of Austria celebrates. 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships at La Molina in Spain. Day 2 of competition. Super-G final.

In late February 2013, with assistance from the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE), an English and Spanish Wikinews reporter attended the IPC Alpine Ski World Championships. The CPE provided a list in advance of Spanish skiers competing and facilitated getting media accreditation. They also provided some print source materials for reference use. Wikinews related accomplishments as a result of this GLAM assistance include:

  • Two interviews conducted for English Wikinews, including one with a high profile Spanish personality who participates in the sport.
  • IPC Alpine engaging reporters on Twitter.
  • Over 13,000 views of Wikinews articles covering the event.
  • Experience gained on English and Spainish Wikinews for doing bilingual interviews by a member of the Spanish speaking community.
  • Produced more Wikinews and Wikipedia content, and shared more pictures than traditional media, which excludes Olympic specific news sites and NPCs.
  • Wikinews coverage of some skiers was the only media coverage they received during and for their participation in the competition. Examples include Ralph Green and Christopher Devlin-Young of the United States, Mitchell Gourley of Australia, Corey Peters of New Zealand, and Laura Valeanu of Romania.
  • 20 English Wikinews articles published about the 2013 IPC Alpine World Championships.
  • 3 Spanish Wikinews articles published.
  • 1 article translated into Russian for Russian Wikinews.
  • 101 para-alpine skiers photographed with their pictures uploaded to Commons. Average skier has 5.8 pictures of them.

Based on daily articles published with data current for 28-Feb, interest in a news article peaks on the first day an article is published. Unlike most new sources though, English Wikinews maintains article traffic at a higher level than more traditional media. Daily average views for the IPC Alpine World Championships on English Wikinews was comparable to daily views on English Wikinews during the London Paralympics and IPC Nor-Am Cup for similar coverage. 16 articles were published on English Wikinews and 3 were published on Spanish Wikinews in this period. Spanish Wikinews articles were published on 20-Feb, 22-Feb and 27-Feb. English Wikinews stories were published on 16 (1), 20 (3), 21 (2), 22 (1), 24 (3), 25 (3), 26 (3), 28 (1) of February and 1 (3) March. There were 13,756 views for event coverage on Wikinews between between 16 and 28 Feb.

How GLAMs can work with Wikinews

If you are a connected to a GLAM or a Wikimedian generally looking to support GLAM work, there are a couple of ways Wikinews and a GLAM can work together.

Training

Training sessions are a great way to share news related to a GLAM. Basic article writing and the review process can be discussed, with contributors writing an article for submission by the time training is complete.

  • Contact a Wikinews project and ask if there are any local Wikinews contributors who could organize an in person Wikinews workshop.
  • Contact a Wikinews project and ask if anyone is available to organize a virtual Wikinews workshop.
  • When doing other GLAM related project work on Wikimedia projects, consider including a Wikinews component.
Wikinews reporter event access

If you are connected to a GLAM and there is a media event, consider dropping a message on a relevant language Wikinews Village Pump/Water Cooler and invite local Wikinews reporters to show up. Some Wikinews projects, including English and Spanish, feed out to Google News, which makes finding any content produced by reporters at the event more likely to be found by people searching for news about that event. Wikinews reporters often take pictures as part of original reporting and upload pictures to Wikimedia Commons for use on other Wikimedia projects. A number of Wikinews reporters will also update relevant Wikipedia articles related to their Wikinews reporting.

  • Drop a message on a relevant language Wikinews Village Pump/Water Cooler and invite local reporters to an event that you would like news coverage for.
  • When doing other GLAM related project work on Wikimedia projects, consider including a Wikinews component or invite a Wikinews reporter to cover that other GLAM related work.
Article writing

If there is news in your GLAM's area of interest, consider writing an article about it. Often people connected to GLAMs have access to potential interview subjects related to news stories. There is also the possibility that people may have access to events that are newsworthy and worth writing about that the general public does not. The key to remember with article writing is all writing guidelines should be followed, potential Conflicts of Interest should be discussed on the article talk page or your user page, and submitted articles are not and should not be treated like press releases.

  • Write and submit interviews for review.
  • Write and submit photo essays for review.
  • Write and submit original reporting.
  • Write and submit synthesis articles.
Subject experts

GLAMs often have subject specialists. Consider making a list of them related to their area of expertise that a local project can use for any reporting they may want to do on a subject. This benefits Wikinews because it enhances our ability to do original reporting. It makes the GLAM look good by having a person affiliated with the GLAM quoted by the media.

  • Develop a list of experts Wikinews reporters can contact for stories they may write in certain areas.
  • If there is news, request a Wikinews reporter interview a specific person in affiliated with the GLAM.



  • From Commons to OA: Pachypodium rosulatum.
    From Commons to OA:
    Pachypodium rosulatum.
  • From OA to Commons: Cicindela marginata.
    From OA to Commons:
    Cicindela marginata.

On April 24, the frontpage of the journal PeerJ displayed an image of the flower Pachypodium rosulatum in order to highlight a new article that had been published on the species. This image - by User:Daderot - had been available from Wikimedia Commons since 2009. An attribution would have been nice, but since Daderot had placed the file into the Public Domain, that is OK.

Two days earlier, a photograph of the tiger beetle Cicindela marginata had achieved Featured picture status on Commons (nomination). The image had originally been published in an article by Yves Bousquet in ZooKeys. It is the fourth file from an Open Access source to be featured on Commons, and the first since 2009. Further potential candidates that meet the technical requirements are listed here.

At least three previous Featured picture candidates from Open Access sources had not been promoted:

Open Access materials on the Dutch Wikipedia

Used in pages like nl:Spaanse griep and nl:Eerste Wereldoorlog, the image - originally published by the National Museum of Health and Medicine - came to Commons via an article in PLOS Biology.

The Dutch Wikipedia is the fifth one to use files from the Commons category Open access (publishing) more than 1000 times. The German and French Wikipedias as well as Wikispecies had reached that milestone earlier this year, whereas the English and Vietnamese ones had passed it long ago, mostly due to their heavy use of stub templates, many of which contain images, including some from Open Access sources.

WikiProject Open Access membership

Six new members have registered with WikiProject Open Access in April - more than in any previous month. In total, the project had 38 members by the end of the month, handling 325 pages altogether.

Wikimania submissions

The submissions for Wikimania 2013 include three that are directly relevant to Open Access: a panel on Open Access & Wikipedia as well as presentations on Wikimedia and Open Access (broader in scope than the panel) and on the Open Access Media Importer.

Uploads by the Open Access Media Importer to Wikimedia Commons between July 2012 and January 2013. The activity is reflected in the Commons Report Card, which indicates that the amount of OGV files available on Commons has almost doubled since the bot started operating.

Open Access Media Importer

Plugin for images

In its current version, the bot uploads only audio and video files. There are many more image files in Open Access articles, and a good number - but by far not all - appear to be usable in Wikimedia projects, so a variant that allows an automated upload of selected images to Commons is currently being discussed.

Categorization

So far, a few hundred files uploaded and pre-categorized by the bot have undergone a review of the categorization. Thousands are still waiting for this treatment. Conversely, on the order of 2000 categories have been created to accommodate files uploaded by the bot, with a few hundred still to be done.

The following represents a selection of the 279 files that have been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month, bringing the total over 11,000. 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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GLAMwiki Workhop for Librarians Tour in Catalonia (11-20 May)
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GLAMwiki Workshop for Civil Servants in Barcelona
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Silesian Museum Night, Silesian Museum, Opava, Czech Republic
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Edit-a-thon at Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico.
Wikipedia town Yokohoma, Japan.
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