GLAM/Newsletter/April 2016/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume VI, Issue IV, April 2016

Africa report • Argentina report • Belgium report • Bulgaria report • Germany report • Italy report • Macedonia report • Netherlands report • Norway report • Poland report • Spain report • Sweden report • UK report • Special story • Open Access report • Wikidata report • Calendar

Wiki Loves Women in Africa

By Anthere

Launch of Wiki Loves Women

The Wiki Loves Women Project was officially started in January 2016 and is getting up to speed.

Gender inequality is rife across Africa. The Wiki Loves Women project focuses on bridging two significant gaps on Wikimedia projects – women and Africa – both in terms of content about these subjects and in terms of participation by people from these groups.

In January, the project was launched on the 15th, with a writing contest. A minimum of 15 teams were challenged to write one article each to result in at least 15 articles that highlight notable African women. By the end of the (very successful) contest, 15 English teams (27 participants), 18 French teams (24 participants) and 1 Armenian team (4 participants – this was not planned, but super!) produced 71 new biographical articles in English, 122 new biographical articles in French and 41 new articles in Armenian. The writing contest was followed by a Call for Participation, to decide in which countries the WLW project would run.

In collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the project works in four countries, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, to encourage the contribution of existing information from Civil Society Organisations and Gender-equality groups to Wikipedia. The donated content will specifically focus on women’s contributions to the political, economic, scientific, cultural and heritage landscape, as well as the current socio-political status of women, in each country. In addition, the project will encourage the activation and support of new and existing editors (both female and gender-sensitised male Wikipedians) in the focus countries.

Some wikimedians involved in the project include

Florence Devouard
Isla Haddow-Flood
Geugeor, from Cameroun
Dominique Eliane Yao and Papischou, from Wikimedia UserGroup Ivory Coast
Rberchie, from Wikimedia UserGroup Ghana
Olaniyan Olushola, from Wikimedia UserGroup Nigeria

And many others volunteers (check out the project pages)

The project is also supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia France and Sydney Poore, in particular to support and mentor the new Wikimedians in Residence.

Next step is a whole team meeting in South Africa mid May...

Links

to the website : http://www.wikiloveswomen.org
the writing contest : in English and in French
the project page on the French Wikipedia : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Wiki_Loves_Women
the meta page : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Women
on the Goethe Institute site : http://www.goethe.de/ins/za/en/joh/kul/sup/wlw.html?wt_sc=wikiloveswomen

Edit-a-thons in Buenos Aires

By Giselle Bordoy

Empowering Cultural institutions: Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires

Proyecto de digitalización de Wikimedia Argentina
Proyecto de digitalización de Wikimedia Argentina
Proyecto de digitalización de Wikimedia Argentina

During 2016, the project will be lead by Mauricio Genta, who assumed its leadership at the end of 2015. While WMAR has been working continuously with the institution, the Executive Director changed after the national elections, and it is right now when we are starting to work normally together. The main goal of our visit, was to train the former and new staff in the use of the scanner that has been loaned by WMAR. First they showed us the archive facilities again, which confirmed the few resources and significant lack of equipment and budget they have to ensure an adequate work for digitizing the cultural and historial heritage; per example there are no elements to regulate the temperature or humidity , which is essential in an archive. Once the staff was ready, Giselle Bordoy (WMAR) gave an introductory talk regarding Wikimedia Commons; while the rest of WMAR's staff checked the scanner and its configuration and the camera's calibration to be able to teach the archive's staff how to use it. We tested with different materials provided by the institution, being very pleased with the result of the images, though it was clear they could not scan documents longer than 30cm as records. We explained to the staff that would be in charge of the digitizing project, how to use the post-processing software. Finally we exchanged ideas and we agreed to make some changes to the scanner to suit the needs required for the conservation of material, such as the use of LED lights; as well as changing the camera support screws and provide a more durable shutter.

Brunch along with Mujeres en Igualdad Network

Wikimedia Argentina was invited to join the working breakfast of the organization Mujeres en Igualdad. This working breakfasts are very prestigious in Argentina. During our participation we presented our programs and we introduced the importance of including new women actively as editors of Wikipedia. The proposal was very well received and new contacts (9) were done during our participation.

Red Pea online contest released

Wikimedia Argentina has release an online contest with Red Pea. The contest's goal is to improve the content related to sustainable development in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons by the students from the PEA network. The contest means the continuation of our partnership with UNESCO, with whom we have been working since 2014.

The Woman you never met: end of the contest

The contest driven by Wikimedia Argentina along with Iberocoop , The woman you never met 2016, ended on April 12, 2016. During one month, +100 editors and +1000 were created in the Spanish Wikipedia. At the end of May we will be announcing the final results and the growth compared to last year.

Iberocoop editing challenges released

Wikimedia Argentina along with Iberocoop has launched the editing challenge Translating Ibero-America. The main goal is to improve the content in the English Wikipedia related to Ibero-American culture. For the 1st time, Iberocoop launches a contest in the English Wikipedia. We believe that by putting in value our cultural heritage in other languages we are improving the impact of our culture outside our borders.

Writing weeks in and about Brussels

By Gereon K., Romaine & Taketa

Wiki Loves Brussels

A writing week about the Brussels-Capital Region was held from 4 to 17 April 2016. There is a long tradition of writing weeks in the Dutch language Wikipedia. Writing weeks have been held about the Baltic Region, Brazil, Denmark (in December 2015), the Caucasus, Poland and Sweden. Organized by Romaine, SvenDK and Taketa, supported by Wikimedia Belgium and coordinated on the Dutch language Wikipedia and Meta a call for volunteers was placed on the general forum of de.-, en.-, fr.- and nl.wikipedia. About 100 contributors were found to write and expand articles, donate photographs and create maps. Surprisingly almost half of the users had never written an article for Wikipedia before.

Belgium newspapers and radio stations reported about the writing week. Articles and interviews about the event appeared in Brusselnieuws, Deredactie.be, De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad and VivaCité.

During the event 409 new articles related to the Brussels-Capital Region were uploaded, 48 already existing articles were majorly expanded. New photographies and maps were uploaded as well. Another surprising success was that the event spread around the globe. The articles were written in many different languages: Czech, Dutch (resp. Flemish), French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Romanian, Russian, Slovak and Spanish. The contributors of articles that were not written in Dutch and French had found the event on their own and helped to make the writing week become a very international event.

The Brussels Network of Public Libraries and InfoGroep, a student organisation of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the Flemish Community Commission helped to organise 11 Wikimeets, where staff of the libraries in Brussels learned how Wikipedia works, what they need to think of when writing an article, and an understanding of what Wikipedia and Wikimedia are about. The Wikimeets were held in the City of Brussels, Anderlecht, Ixelles, Jette, Koekelsberg and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre.

All this happened without any costs for the participants. There was no need for financing the writing week and the Wikimeets since all participants did not have any costs for contributing. Neither did it cost anything to find enough participants.

Even politicians showed interest in the writing week. Belgium has three official regions: the Flemish Region, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital-Region. The Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region, Rudi Vervoort invited contributors to the writing week on 21 April 2016. Because the reception was postponed for 1 hour on short notice a guided tour of the nearby Museum „eB!“ was arranged by his office. The eB! Is a museum about the Brussels-Capital region. Rudi Vervoort explained that Brussels can need all attention that is not related to the March bombings. The slogan of the writing week was, accordingly, Time again for love. On 25 April 2016 the Flemish Minister of Culture Sven Gatz held a meeting with Dutch language contributors.

See also:

Project page

Meeting lots of museum directors

By Vassia Atanassova - Spiritia

Wikipedians participated in the first National Meeting "Volunteers in Bulgarian Museums"

On 7-8 April 2016, the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture organized the National meeting "Volunteers in Bulgarian Museums". Among the lecturers and the audience, almost completely composed of museum directors and employees, Bulgarian Wikipedia was represented by two of its most active editors, Plamen and me, Vassia.

The meeting, explicitly focused on volunteering in museums, was the first of its kind to be organized in Bulgaria. It was hosted by the National Polytechnic Museum in Sofia, which has already declared interest in starting a GLAM collaboration with us. Most of the speakers at the meeting presented their own experience with volunteers and students, including various forms of: physical assistance in renovations and cleaning of museum premises; linguistic services like translation and interpretation for foreign visitors; musical and artistic performances during celebrations organized by/in the museums; design of museum websites and online promotion. Despite this variety of practices, many of the museums shared similar patterns of cooperation with their pools of available volunteers, and quite common problems and challenges were outlined.

This is how the topic about the Wikipedia/GLAM partnerships, all the more presented by people like us, of completely different background, made great impression and resulted in a number post-conference discussions. In my 30-minute presentation, I gave an overview of eight popular and replicable practices of collaboration between Wikipedia and cultural institutions. Instead of simply being listed, I tried to visualize these models as points in a scatter plot diagram, featuring the levels of engagement of both the museum and the wiki community in the project. A palette of possibilities from which both smaller and bigger museums, with less and more resources and possibilities, could equally select.

Knowing that we'd never get a second chance to make a first impression, we did much more than just give that presentation. We went to the meeting prepared with something to give and something to take. Wikipedia is all about sharing and giving to others, and we wanted to demonstrate it in practice! We handed 50 CDs with a copy of the presentation and many other PDF documents, explaining the basics of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, free licensing, GLAM, as well as good practices from Wiki/GLAM collaborations implemented around the world (check the CD contents).

We also asked for something in return. We distributed 80 copies of a survey among the conference attendants, asking them for feedback about their attitudes towards Wikipedia and towards a possible GLAM partnerships with us. We received back 40 completed surveys, containing details about the museum staff's user experience with Wikipedia, readiness for collaboration, interest in implementing any of the eight presented models, as well as their preferred contact data (check the figures).

In general, what we managed to do was not only to meet individual museum representatives and negotiate future partnerships. We also made the name of Wikipedia loudly voiced at this forum, legitimizing it as a key player in the digital preservation of the cultural heritage of the world. We made the museums community aware that, albeit small, the Wikipedian community in Bulgaria is interested in museum partnerships and ready to offer innovative ideas and projects that would benefit not only the readers of Wikipedia, but also the museums and their audiences.

Learning in the GLAM field & how to edit the GND

By Barbara Fischer & Raymond

Sharing knowledge on GLAM at the Wikimedia Conference

This year edition of the Wikimedia Conference was GLAMorous. I counted four sessions on GLAM topics.Kippelboy from Amical and me presented the workshop "How to become GLAM proof". In the session we focused on Why do we want to cooperate with GLAM. High lights beyond the often mentioned content gains and quality edits were arguments like: estimating volunteers, gain reputation for Wikimedia and access to GLAM facilities. Please find further arguments both for Wikimedia and GLAM why to cooperate in this Learning Pattern. For Wikimania we aim to collect more Learning patterns on GLAM in a library of knowledge, so please add your Learning patterns to the category. Read more about WMDE GLAM activities in 2016; cooperation with libraries and discuss with us GLAM metrics.

How to edit the GND

In April an bilateral agreement between Wikimedia Deutschland and the German National Library was filled with live. This agreement allows Wikipedians to create and edit datasets in the Integrated Authority File (German: Gemeinsame Normdatei, GND). In a workshop 14 Wikipedians were trained by staff of the German National Library to work with the system. More information: GND-Kooperation (in German only).

MUSE Edit-a-thon and Backstage pass and Small Museums in Italy

By Jaqen & Virginia Gentilini

MUSE Edit-a-thon and Backstage pass

Thanks to Wikimedia Italia from March to April 2016 Niccolò Caranti was the Wikipedian in Residence at MUSE - Science Museum in Trento.

More than 400 images have been donated to Commons: you may find them here.

Two books from the library of MUSE were scanned and published on Italian Wikisource: L'arte distillatoria by Pietro Andrea Mattioli is now complete; Il Trentino by Cesare Battisti is a work in progress.

Contributions have been made on English and Italian Wikipedia (articles such as Atheris matildae and Inostrancevia have been created).

As a conclusion of the residence, on the 28th of April an Edit-a-thon and a Backstage pass were held. A group of Wikimedians met the staff of the museum and helped them to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedians then had a guided tour to the museum and its backstage.

National Association of Small Museums

The National Association of Small Museums (APM – Associazione Piccoli Musei) is an Italian association established in 2007 with the aim to bring together, represent and enhance the specificity of small museums, which are very different from those of the great ones, more common subjects of GLAM-wiki projects. Advantageous specificities of this type of museums are, in particular, the close link with the territory and with the local community, and the ability to be welcoming and offer original experiences to visitors. In its work, APM continually deals with the professionals of the sector and with the most authoritative experts, which are involved in the annual national conferences.

Last conference was held on 29 and 30 April in Monselice (province of Padua) and for the first time Wikimedia Italia was invited too. Stefano Caneva (Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia Belgium and association weLand) and Cristian Cenci (national contact point of Wiki Loves Monuments) participated with a talk entitled Small museums and OpenData. The experience of Wiki Loves Piedmont. Inspired by the excellent results of the first regional competition of WLM Italia, GLAM activities regarding Italian museums were presented, including framework agreements, collaborations, and document donations. A special focus on the experiences of active Wikipedians in Residence was provided.

Establishing contacts with young Italian museums is the most significant result of the event.

ArchiWiki edit-a-thon; Wikimedian-in-residence

By Ehrlich91

ArchiWiki edit-a-thon

ArchiWiki (Архивики) was our second edit-a-thon for this year, held in conjunction with the architectural design centre Arhipunkt (Архипункт), and architectural website MARH. The purpose of this undertaking was to enrich the Macedonian Wikipedia with varied content about architecture.

On Friday, 15 April 2016, members of Shared Knowledge held a workshop in NewMan's Business Accelerator in Skopje, where Arhipunkt is located. On the first day, participants were introduced to the basics of Wikipedia editing and free licencing. The edit-a-thon itself started on Saturday, 16 April and lasted for about 8 hours.

Prior to the edit-a-thon, the organisers prepared a list of article topics, covering the following areas:

Architectural terms;
Architectural movements and styles;
Architects of Macedonia and the world;
Notable buildings in Macedonia;
Architectural events, awards and institutions.

The participants had been provided with a wealth of literature to use. They also created a draft-article structure for each page, so as to insure the conceptual integrity of their writing.

With this topic and this kind of cooperation we want to increase quality and quantity of Macedonian Wikipedia, because we don`t have a lot of articles about architecture on the Macedonian Wikipedia. With this edit-a-thon we changed that and we hope that these "newcomers" will continue writing to improves article about architecture.

Outcomes and results of the competition

After the all preparations such as providing and distribution of literature, making draft-article structure for each page, teaching of basic editing tools, the beginning of the edit-a-thon was scheduled to start on Saturday, 16 April 2016, and lasted a full 8 hours. The edit-a-thon had 23 participants (plus additional three members of Community like mentors and our photograph), who created a total of 41 and improved 8 articles. Over 80% of the participant were female, which was a nice surprise for all of us.

Wikimedian-in-residence

Due to the involvement in the field research activities of Shared Knowledge such as the projects Wikiexpedition to Lakavica Region, Geoexpedition on Mokra Mountain and Photohunt in Župa and Drimkol Region, Wikimedian-in-residence at the library of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) had a month with an average outcome of scanned material and edited articles on Wikipedia. During the month of April the Wikimedian-in-residence at MANU had scanned the entire book Macedonian Monasteries on 169 pages (the book was introduced to the members on the ArchiWiki edit-a-thon), created 1 new article and improved with materials 16 other articles in the fields of archaeology, history, botanu, films and personalities. Few other books about linguistics, geography and history have started to be scanned but due to technical problems with the scanner their completion would be ready in the months of May and June.

Edit-a-thon Attic Nights

By Romaine

Edit-a-thon Noctes Atticae

On 14 April 2016 we organised, as part of the Week of the Classics, an edit-a-thon about Attic Nights, a work from the author Aulus Gellius from the second century. This we did in collaboration with the archive Tresoar in Leeuwarden.

The edit-a-thon included a tour though the archive with a visit to the treasury of Tresoar (Tresoar = treasury in Frisian), and a lecture about old hand writings.

Editing Wikipedia
Lecture about hand writings

Photographic portraits

By Tore Sætre

Wikimedia Norge has run a project to increase the number of photographic portraits.

Governor's speech to the Norwegian central bank

Governor Øystein Olsen held the annual address to the Supervisory Council of the central bank and invited guests. Wikimedia Norge were present with a photographer and the result was 194 images of politicians and other official persons from Norwegian institutions.

Prime minister Erna Solberg
Minister of Foreign Affairs Børge Brende
Anita Krohn Traaseth
Olav Thon
Kristin Skogen Lund

Collaborating with artists

We have collaborated with music venues, festivals, artists and promoters to get photo permits and access to artists while in Norway. The response has been incredible well, and in less than a year several hundred images of artists has been added til Commons. The artists are often of international interest, and the result of the project have reach far outside of the Norwegian community. The project will continue in the summer with many of the outdoor music festivals.

Folk vocalist Ingvild Koksvik (Norway)
Jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stańko (Poland)
Vieux Farka Touré (Mali), the king of desert blues
Comedian Sam Simmons (Australia)
Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet (Poland)
Spiritual jazz from vocalist Simin Tander (Afghanistan / Germany)
Bettye LaVette (USA)
Adrien Moignard (France), Jon Larsen (Norway) and Olli Soikkeli (Finland) at the Django festival

Faras discoveries, Carpathian ethnography, and a spreadsheet-based uploader

By Marta Malina Moraczewska

New Commons upload tool for GLAM contributors!

A new open-source upload tool called Pattypan, intended for all, but especially small-to-medium GLAMs and their volunteers, is now available for use. The program is a desktop Java application that generates an .xls file to be filled in with file descriptions, based on extensive choice of file description fields, and supporting wikicode in any field. The application was written by Yarl - author of Vicuna uploader. We would like to hear opinions and requests: Yarl is still working on the uploader so modifications and improvements will be added.

The download page on Github; Quick instructions.

Yarl is still adding modifications so all interested volunteers are encouraged to participate in testing.

Help place unique archaeological discoveries on Wikipedia

The National Museum in Warsaw is currently beginning a new project with its Wikipedian-in-Residence, centered around the Faras Gallery, the archaeological discoveries at Faras, Nubian culture and related themes.

Over the next 5 months, a group of volunteer Wikipedians and new volunteer editors (most of whom study or work in archaeology, art history and related fields) will work on a set of articles; the Museum, and the Polish Academy of Sciences are in the process of uploading the Faras images to Commons (images of artwork/documentation photos of the excavations/other related images) - to illustrate the articles. Meanwhile, the volunteers have already put together an impressive bibliography for the new articles, largely in English.

We would like to invite volunteers from your communities to participate in this project! We are looking for interested Wikipedians to help verify, translate or contribute to articles in other languages, as well as make suggestions regarding the selection of articles.

See the initial list of articles to expand or create.

Ethnography of the Carpathians

Wikimedia Polska and the National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw are working on an extended project to expand, order and improve content on Wikipedia (in English and several Central European languages) related to ethnography, particularly ethnography of the Carpathian region.

The goal of the project is to collect bibliography, other source material, photo and audiovisual material regarding local, traditional folk culture of the region, release it on open licenses on Wikimedia Commons – and use it for better coverage of related articles. Teams consisting of Wikipedians, ethnographers and local contacts will be organized and sent to destination places in order to document folk culture in Wikipedias and Wikimedia Commons. All team members will then write, expand and illustrate a predefined set of related articles on related language versions of Wikipedia.

Wikipedians from the team are going to establish contacts with Wikipedians from all the visited countries, inform them in advance, and involve them in editing, as well as in local training workshops and documentation trips. Each trip will be linked to at least one museum of ethnography in the visited region, with whom the team will collaborate on the project (list of museums). We will also conduct a wikiworkshop for local residents, students and staff.

The project plan can be found here: please sign up if you are interested in taking part!

Free pictures, edit-a-thons and new partners

By Rodelar

Wiki Loves Folk

This year, for the first time, we organize Wiki Loves Folk, a public photo competition around folklore. In line with the celebration of other Wiki Loves contests, we think that another important aspect of the culture of a country or territory is its folklore. In this case, we proposed the promotion of those celebrations or traditions (religious celebrations, carnivals, festivals, food festivals) that have any of the following statements: International Touristic Interest, National Touristic Interest, Regional Touristic Interest and Provincial Touristic Interest.

The contest has two periods of participation; the first one was during the month of April and 25 contributors uploaded 1150 images to Wikimedia Commons.

Spanish Civil War contest

2016 will mark eighty years since the start of the Spanish Civil War. For that reason -not in commemoration- we started a project to obtain images of the historical places linked to such a painful event. The list of places chosen was linked to the conflict itself, between July 17, 1936 and April 1, 1939. The project consisted of a photographic contest in which participants uploaded the images during the month of April. We obtained 716 images from 23 contributors and we plan continuing this initiative in the future.

Events coverage

In April we covered six events for obtaining pictures and upload them to Wikimedia Commons under a free license. They were the following events, mainly sports: the Rally of Noia, the WRX 2016 Rallycross of Portugal, the Handball Queen's Cup 2016, the European Wheelchair Basketball Cup, the Rugby King's Cup 2016 and a concert of El Langui.

Wiki Takes Camí de Vera

This activity consisted in taking pictures of one of the neighborhoods of Valencia. Camí de Vera is located at northeast of the city and is the last example of the orchards irrigated by the channel of Vera, today threatened by urban growth. We spent one day there; in the morning we walked around the neighborhood, taking pictures and talking to the last farmers in the neighborhood. In the afternoon we went to the library of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, close to Camí de Vera, and uploaded the images from there. In total, we got 395 images.

Social sciences and humanities edit-a-thons

As part of the Complutense Week of Letters, on April 19 and 21 a double edit-a-thon on Spanish researchers in social sciences and humanities was celebrated. It was an activity promoted by the libraries of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology and the Faculty of Information Sciences, with the support of Wikimedia Spain.

Research in the social sciences and humanities typically have less visibility in society that scientific disciplines, so it was interesting to check this field in Wikipedia. It was also positive that the University promoted editing articles of Wikipedia to recognize their social importance and value. In the event participated teachers and students from both faculties of the Complutense University of Madrid and it was a success. In fact, the celebration of these edit-a-thons was the start of a new collaboration with this university, involving journalism students in editing Wikinews.

New partners

In April we met for the first time with two GLAM institutions: the first one, the library of the Pontifical University of Salamanca. They heard in a radio interview to a member of Wikimedia Spain talking about a Wikipedia workshop, so they contacted us; after a first meeting, we are talking about organizing several Wikipedia sessions in the coming months. The second one, the Museum of Almería, heard about the GLAMing Madrid project and they are interested in collaborating with Wikimedia, so we are planning a set of activities to develop at the museum.

Connected Open Heritage; Offentligkonst.se; Digkult; ArbetSams museidagar; VISS; Museernas vårmöte; GLAM/ED collaboration

By Axel Pettersson & André Costa

Offentligkonst.se

In the ongoing court case between BUS and Wikimedia Sverige (regarding images of public art at offentligkonst.se) the Supreme court answered the questions asked by the district court in a reply April 4. The answer was in favour of BUS, saying that a large structured database might have a commercial value and that transfer of images to the public might infringe the copyright of the artists. The district court will now take the answer under consideration before they make a decision, and a verdict might come after the summer. The effects on Freedom of Panorama in Sweden are still unclear, but there is an ongoing discussion on Wikimedia Commons about it.

Connected Open Heritage

For Connected Open Heritage the work in April has continued with participation at some conferences, talking to GLAMs about what images they can contribute with, preparation of a landing page and templates at Commons and the first upload of images.

Digkult

Wikimedia Sverige, represented by Lennart Guldbrandsson, helped organizing Digikult 6-7 April. The conference has a focus on digital heritage in the cultural sector. Among the talks were one from Lydia Pintscher about Wikidata, Anna Troberg (ED at Wikimedia Sverige) talked about the ongoing court case, and Calle Eklund talked about WikiProject Hedemora and the use of QRpedia codes there.

ArbetSams museidagar

At the annual gathering of the Council of Workinglife Museums they highlighted their participation in Wiki Loves Monuments as a great example of how to get visibility for small GLAMs, and also one of the projects they will continue to support with prices and attention in their communication.

VISS

A collaboration with the Water Authorities of Sweden (Vattenmyndigheterna) has started where we are looking at mapping their data about surface waters (and surface water quality) onto Wikidata. This data is reported to the EU as part of the Water Framework Directive and the aim is that the work done with the Swedish data will make it possible to map (and import) such report data from all participating EU states onto Wikidata.

Museernas vårmöte

At the annual spring meeting for the Association of Museums there was a full day workshop in editing Wikipedia and contributing with images to Wikimedia Commons hosted by the Swedish Exibition Agency and Wikimedia Sverige. As it was a side program most participants at the conference had selected other seminars and workshops to attend, and the turnout was not as great as expected. Still some help were given to GLAM staff who had both tested to edit articles earlier and some who were new to editing and contributing to the Wikimedia projects.

GLAM/ED collaboration

In the intersection between education and GLAM the Council of Central Museums invited Sara Mörtsell (education manager at Wikimedia Sverige) and Gunnel Thydell (a teacher using Wikipedia a lot) to talk to the staff involved in education and pedagogy at the museums. 22 participants learned about how they can make better use of Wikipedia and other projects, and also more specific about project Välkommen till min plats (Welcome to my place) and the collaboration between Wikimedia Sverige, National Heritage Board and Stockholmskällan and how that will lead to an open educational resource.

GLAMwiki work in Yorkshire; Mitchell Arts Centre

By PatHadley & Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing)

Curators continue with GLAMwiki work in Yorkshire

The curator of numismatics at York Museums Trust - Dr Andy Woods - has instigated the upload of a number of high-resolution images of Roman coins from the collection. This is a fantastic example of GLAMwiki work continuing more than nine months since the last official Wikipedia project in the organisation and more than three months since Pat Hadley (former WiR) was working for the organisation. A museum volunteer was trained to edit Commons and Wikipedia and this led to the placement of these images on a range of biography articles for Emperors. The images are in the Commons Category Numismatic collections of York Museums Trust

A selection of the coins
Denarius of Commodus (obverse)
Denarius of Commodus (reverse)
Radiate of Gordian III (obverse)
Radiate of Gordian III (reverse)
Solidus of Valentinian II (obverse)
Solidus of Valentinian II (reverse)

Mitchell Arts Centre

A small edit-a-thon was held at the Mitchell Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. Andy Mabbett trained five new editors, who wrote articles about the centre itself, as well as Lancers in Italy During the Second World War, The Black Dog of Newgate and Fun Palaces; and improvements to Supermarine and List of surviving Supermarine Spitfires (the centre is named after R. J. Mitchell, er the inventor of the Spitfire.

Other news

Andy led a session on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedians-in-Residence, for health and science librarians, at #HASLibCamp, an unconference event in London, which he also facilitated.

Halfway point of the Europeana Art History Challenge

By Wittylama

Having begun in Mid-April, the 6-week Europeana Art History Challenge is now at the halfway mark!

Europeana 280 is a pan-European campaign to get people excited about Europe’s shared art heritage by celebrating the diverse and magnificent artworks that are a part of it. The campaign coincides with the launch of the Art History collections, one of Europeana's first thematic collection sites. All 28 EU Member States were invited to nominate 10 pieces of art held in their country that have contributed to a major European art movement. Every EU member state is involved, and Norway too!

As part of Europeana 280, we are running the Europeana Art History Challenge: to improve the Wikidata item, and create/translate the Wikipedia article about the 10 important artworks from each participating country. This is therefore the largest ever GLAM-Wiki competition, and also the largest to be hosted on Wikidata - a project of increasing significance to GLAM-Wiki collaborations.

Following announcements in the Wikimedia Foundation and Europeana blogs; and also, thanks to the Wikimedia Chapters, to the local communities in Finnish, Bulgarian, Danish, Polish, and Spanish, participants representing 24 nations have signed-up to join the challenge, and to list their progress, and many others are participating unofficially without claiming points. There are also active participants from countries that are not part of the campaign itself - including Armenia, Ukraine, Israel, Switzerland and Australia! You too can join (and learn about the prizes available) by visiting the sign-up page.

At the beginning of the challenge, the combined number of Wikipedia articles about the selected artworks across all target languages was 472. Now, just three weeks later, it is over 850 articles and rapidly rising! A series of editathons are also planned around the continent - including this coming week in Warsaw.

Of the dozens of language versions being tracked, these are some of the highlights:

English Wikipedia now has articles about all 10 artworks from: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Italy Latvia, Malta, Netherlands and Sweden. It is also very close to complete with having articles about all the works from Bulgaria, Spain, and Hungary. It now contains over 200 articles for these works, up from less than 50 at the start. (stats) Many of these articles were created by a new Wikipedian - Sudowoodoo - using the new Content Translation tool.
Bulgarian Wikipedia is very close to having articles about all of Hungary's artworks, and also has the fastest proportional growth - from only 7 pre-existing articles across the whole project it now contains over 50! (stats) Thanks in particular to Спасимир for this work.
Swedish Wikipedia has articles about all 10 items from both Denmark and Sweden and is very close to compete with Finland and Norway. Apart from English it is also the only language to have a complete set of Wikidata labels and descriptions. (stats). Boberger deserves much credit for this work.
Danish is almost complete with Denmark and Belgium's artworks, and almost has a complete set of Wikidata labels and descriptions (stats), Slovak Wikipedia has all the Slovakian artworks (stats) and Norwegian has articles about all the artworks from Latvia (stats)!

You can view the full statistics of translations and metadata, as well as download the dataset to create visualisations on the project page.

The Challenge coincides with Wikimedia CEE Spring, a large article writing contest in which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe write about the history, culture and art of the other countries in the region. Many artworks from the Europeana challenge have also been included in the lists of important articles about each country - multiplying the two projects together to achieve a common goal.

Of course - many of the articles are still short, so please do join the challenge and improve them!
There are Prizes provided by Europeana for each country, and by Wikimedia Norway for articles of quality overall.

Hypercycle; Wikipedia Year of Science; Snake envenomings

By Daniel Mietchen

New Topic Page: Hypercycle

A hypercycle: at each step, a reaction is catalyzed that produces the catalyst for the next step.

Another article in PLOS Computational Biology's Topic Pages series was published this month. It is a rewrite of the article on the chemical concept of a hypercycle of molecules that can keep reproducing themselves as a group. The article was featured on the homepage of the English Wikipedia shortly thereafter under Did you know.

PLOS supports the Wikipedia Year of Science

The Wiki Education Foundation has declared 2016 to be their Wikipedia Year of Science. A number of organizations across the scholarly landscape have engaged with the initiative already, and this month, The Public Library of Science (or PLOS, for short) have voiced their support as well, e.g. in this blog post.

Recent uploads: snake envenomings; a parasitic flower; brain morphometry

Unusually few files have been uploaded from open-access sources this month, with no obvious reason for the change. In any case, a selection is embedded below. If you can think of wiki pages where the following files (or other files from the same sources) could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.