GLAM/Newsletter/April 2026/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue IV, April 2026

From the team • Albania report • Argentina report • Asia report • Australia report • Brazil report • Colombia report • Italy report • New Zealand report • Nigeria report • North Macedonia report • Poland report • Serbia report • Switzerland report • UK report • USA report • Biodiversity Heritage Library report • Memory of the World report • Calendar

How the GLAM Community Can Shine in the 2026–27 Annual Plan

By Conbene

Annual Planning

I'll be upfront: I haven't followed previous annual plans closely, nor tracked how priorities have shifted year to year. Even so, reading through the draft for 2026–27, I can see real opportunities for GLAM priorities, activities, and engagement to play a meaningful role.

For those who have been following GLAM activities — through the Global Calls, last year's conference, newsletters, mailing lists, and the Diff blog — the Strategic Pillars will be familiar: Small GLAMs, Minority Languages, Robust Technical Infrastructure, Community (Mental) Health, and GLAM recognition.

Reach

The first objective in the annual plan is Reach: ensuring that people searching for encyclopedic information online — including outside Wikimedia projects — find relevant, valuable results that draw them into Wikimedia projects. One of the key results under Reach is making content from more projects findable across platforms, search engines, and AI tools. As Nat Baca mentioned at the March Global Call, recent improvements mean Commons content is now more discoverable across the open web. In other words, the wealth of content that GLAM contributors and partners have spent 20 years building and improving is finally reaching new audiences — like light pouring through a newly opened arch. Better metrics and data management will also help translate the value of this content to other WMF teams, all GLAM partners and stakeholders. This is a meaningful tailwind for GLAM, and your contributions directly support it.

Attribution

A new attribution framework is also being designed and tested across Wikimedia projects, with the goal of drawing more people back to the Wikimedia projects. Attribution sits at the very heart of the GLAM sector. Beyond the familiar resource constraints — staffing, funding, and more — the lack of clear attribution is one of the most consistently cited barriers stopping cultural heritage organizations from making their collections openly accessible. This is an area where the GLAM community is uniquely positioned to help. Not only can improved content reuse attribution benefit individual Wikimedia projects, but GLAM contributors can help design and pilot successful use cases. Wikimedia tools and projects already serve as a reliable, low-barrier option for small and under-resourced GLAM organizations. Showing that open contribution can lead to broader impact — and bring audiences back — strengthens the case for GLAM engagement across affiliates and contributor communities worldwide.

Do you see other ways the GLAM community can benefit from or support the annual plan?

Share your thoughts and feedback directly in the draft. On 26 May we will have the next Global Call, and the recording from the April call is also already available on commons, from the meta-wiki page, and neatly organized on Metabase. Be sure to submit your proposals and requests for topics ahead of time.

All the best, Connor

International Roma Day 2026 in Tirana, Albania

By Vyolltsa

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group joined the 7th global International Roma Day edit-a-thon by organizing an event in Tirana, Albania. This was the sixth year we took part in this campaign, where contributors around the world write and improve Wikipedia articles about Roma people, their identity, history, and culture.

This year, 12 editors joined the event. We were happy to have participants from the wider community and we had experienced and new editors working together. This created a friendly space where people could learn, share ideas, and contribute to free knowledge.

During the event, participants created 21 new articles, improved 92 articles, and made 69 total edits on Wikidata. These results helped increase information about Roma communities on Albanian-speaking Wikimedia projects.

Social media

We have a public channel on WhatsApp of Albanian Language if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects.

If you want to see more about our activities, you can:

Like our Facebook page, follow us on formerly Twitter or X or Instagram.

WikiConf Argentina and GLAM projects

By Angie Cervellera

About WikiConf Argentina

This year, Wikimedia Argentina along with Wikimedistas de La Universidad Nacional de La Plata and Wikimedistas del Litoral, organized a conference for the local community to meet and share experiences and knowledge about creation and of free knowledge and culture in digital environments. During the day, more than 80 people from all the country joined panels, workshops, and discussion forums.

Open Culture and GLAM track

Open Culture and GLAM was one of the main topics of the conference, along with Education, Open data and community initiatives. The GLAM section was co-leaded by Angie Cervellera and Laura Casareto (director of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata's Historical Archive).

The program presented one section dedicated to the Digitization Proyect, presented by Fernanda Dequi (WMAR's Culture and Education assistant), and another for lightening talks organized under the idea of re-using heritage in an innovative way.

Roundtable: "Digitization and open access: experiences of museums and archives"

The roundtable discussion brings together cultural professionals from several institutions that have successfully collaborated with the Wikimedia Argentina's Digitization Project. It focused on three key aspects of digitization and open access processes in museums and archives.

The first moment of the roundtable addressed the internal preparation needed before beginning digitization, which ensures the proper contextualization of documents; The second relates to the digitization process itself, including details about the equipment used, the selection criteria and the technical decisions made during the process; The third discussed how digitized materials are made available to the public through platforms like Wikimedia, highlighting the relevance of guaranteeing open access and user participation to enrich information.

This roundtable's participants were:

Ignacio Lardizabal, Museo de la Ciudad de Rosario "Wladimir Mikielievich"
Rocío Caldentey, Archivo General de la Nación
Mauricio Genta, Academia Nacional de Historia.
Silvana de Sousa Frade, Museo Regional Palacio Arruabarrena de Concordia

The proposal offered an overview of the stages before, during, and after digitization, considering the diverse realities of the participating institutions and the speakers' personal and professional background. Furthermore, concrete examples of collaborative work in workshops—both virtual and in-person—were be shared with the goal of promoting access to knowledge and open culture.

Lightning talks: “Activation and dissemination of collections: innovative strategies with a territorial and community focus”

To provide a cohesive thread for the talks and facilitate their moderation, the lightening talks were organized around the theme of “activating and disseminating collections: innovative strategies with a territorial and community focus.”

The selected proposals for sharing their experiences towards open access, archives and local communities were:

- “Archivos en Vigilia: A regional reference in Archives and Memory.” Casareto, Laura Mariana (Historical Archive, UNLP) and Cervellera, Ángela (WMAR).

-“The Culture of Northwest Argentina on Wikimedia Commons through Projecto MIL.” Granizo, María Gabriela (Provincial Directorate of Heritage and Museums of Catamarca).

-“A Guide for the Wikimedista barrial: How to Bring Wikimedia to Your Community.” Couto, Barbi (Casa Imaginada Ltda. and Libre Base Workers' Cooperative).

-“Archives, Archival Science, Wikimedia Projects, and Universities: Collaboration for the Preservation and Dissemination of Cultural Heritage.” Cueto, Julián (UNLP Wikimedia Team) and Casareto, Laura Mariana (Historical Archive, UNLP)

-“Heritage at Play! The Creation of the Open Access Video Game “Guardianes de las coplas.” Granizo, María Gabriela (Provincial Directorate of Heritage and Museums of Catamarca and School of Archaeology, National University of Catamarca) and Nora Tristezza (ICOM, Argentina).

In this context, we encouraged the participants to focus your presentations on the strategies implemented to address a topic relevant to a specific community, territory, or institution: why they had chosen these strategies, what challenges they went through during implementation and how were they overcame, and to what extent Wikimedia projects served as allies in these processes.

This full-day meeting made us clear that we're working together with people all around the country, in different kind of projects, showing a cultural diversity worth sharing with the Wikimedia movement and beyond. We're very happy to support our local community all around Argentina by opening up their collections, providing technical aid and thinking together new and meaningful ways of making culture available for everyone.

Documenting and citing oral knowledge in audio and video

By Subhashish Panigrahi

Tools, framework and GLAM collaborations

A Gorum language speaker shares how he and his family code-switch between three languages, a common phenomenon among Indigenous-language speakers

Recording speech, performance, and community memory as audio, video, subtitles, transcripts, and structured metadata has never been easy for Indigenous and other low-resourced languages. Oral knowledge documentation is used when written sources are limited, incomplete, or not the primary form of knowledge transfer. OpenSpeaks Archives has worked with nearly 20 communities from South Asia, collaboratively documenting their languages. The documented media is gradually entering language archives and libraries and has enriched nearly 1,000 Wikimedia pages in over 100 languages. These media files are being deposited in a dedicated collection on Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) and two languages, Kusunda and Sora, are already up on Language Archive Cologne (LAC). The focus languages were recorded in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

OpenSpeaks has published an open framework for oral knowledge and language documentation, combining FAIR and CARE, community review, multilingual transcription, and time-coded subtitles. A new tool called Subtitler (alpha version on Toolforge) is getting ready to help language archivists and Wikimedians alike. This subtitle editor loads audio, video, and subtitle files locally and from Wikimedia Commons, letting users edit and translate subtitles and upload them to Commons. The Metadata Generator helps import, create, and edit metadata, and export it to three destinations: ELAR, LAC, and Wikimedia Commons.

Upcoming training and resources

OpenSpeaks is also running a community language documentation and archiving training series with seven online workshops and one in-person workshop in Kochi, Kerala (co-located with WikiConference India 2026) on 7 September 2026.

The application deadline is 15 May. Trainers and learners apply here.

The series will produce a curriculum, to be co-authored with the trainers. Some of the resources to be used for the training are a text style guide for captioning, subtitling, and transcribing, a framework, tool documentation, templates and example workflows from recording to Wikimedia upload and external archives.

WikiCon Australia, ICIP, Orphan works and Trans-Tasman partnerships

By AlphaLemur

April has been a busy month for Wikimedia Australia (WMAU). WikiCon brought the community together in Canberra, a long-awaited copyright reform finally passed into law, a GLAM training day is underway in Newcastle, and a Trans-Tasman collaboration for 1Lib1Ref is ramping up ahead of May.

WikiCon Canberra 2026

On 19–20 April, the Australian Wikimedia community gathered at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in Canberra (Kanbarra) for WikiCon Australia 2026. The program mixed technical sessions on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons with broader discussions on AI, policy, culture and community practice. The slightly longer format this year gave more room for conversations to continue beyond the formal sessions, and the NFSA's courtyard got a workout in the cool Canberra autumn sun.

A workshop on the Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) draft guide prompted some of the most substantive discussions of the weekend. Participants stressed the importance of building genuine relationships with Indigenous communities, thorough analysis of sources and awareness of cultural sensitivities when engaging with cultural knowledge and research materials. The conversation will continue well beyond the event as WMAU continues to develop the guide collaboratively with its members, the First Nations expert panel and Terri Janke & Company staff.

WMAU also marked Wikipedia's 25th birthday by asking two of Australia's longest-serving editors - both editing for more than 20 years - to cut the birthday cake! Feedback from participants was warm: sessions were described as "inclusive and inspiring," and many spoke about how much they valued the in-person connection with comments including "I feel like I'm with my people." Post-event, several local meetup groups are already forming, with gatherings being planned in Canberra and Melbourne as well as the regular monthly Community calls. Read more: WikiCon Canberra 2026: Bringing the Community Together.

Australia Passes World-Leading Orphan Works Legislation

On 2 April 2026, the Copyright Amendment Act 2026 came into force and for Australian Wikimedians, it's a genuinely significant development. Orphan works are materials still under copyright whose rights holders can't be identified or located. Until now, Australian law has left members of the public with no safe pathway to share these works publicly - only major institutions could act under section 200AB of the Copyright Act. That meant many historical and culturally valuable photographs, recordings, and documents often sat inaccessible, their educational and heritage value unrealised.

The new scheme changes that. It provides a practical, balanced pathway for using orphan works after a diligent search has been conducted and documented. The protections apply when a user has made a genuine effort to find the rights holder, kept a record of that search, and clearly noted that the material is being used under the scheme.

For the Wikimedia community, this opens up real opportunities: sharing family and community archives, publishing historically significant materials, expanding representation of Australian stories, and supporting GLAM partnerships more broadly. WMAU was quick to welcome the legislation, while also highlighting several important clarifications for community members to keep in mind. This is reform that has been decades in the making, and Australia is now setting a standard that other jurisdictions will watch closely. Read more: Wikimedia Australia welcomes the passage of the Copyright Amendment Act 2026

Sugar Valley Library Museum GLAM Training

In late April, WMAU hosted a GLAM training day at the Sugar Valley Library Museum in the Newcastle region as part of the AMaGA: Building Digital Skills, Sharing Stories, Sustaining Culture Partner Project. Its main focus is on upskilling Museum and Gallery volunteers with Wiki editing and contributing skills and knowledge. The outcomes will include building Wikipedia content about the region, ensuring that diverse local collections, stories, and knowledge are visible to both national and international audiences.

A Trans-Tasman Partnership for #1Lib1Ref

This month, Wikimedia Diff published a piece by Hillmenco on the joint WMAU and Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand (WANZ) campaign for #1Lib1Ref Australasia 2026.

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, #1Lib1Ref traditionally runs in January. But that's summer and typically a holiday season in Australia and New Zealand, when academic libraries are quieter, and engagement is much harder. The Southern Hemisphere window of 15 May to 5 June is better timed, and the two chapters are now running it jointly to pool resources, co-host workshops and share training materials across the Tasman. The collaboration is aimed at closing the gap in how Southern Hemisphere communities, histories and biodiversity are represented on global knowledge platforms. Whether a librarian working in a small regional library in rural Otago or a major state library in Queensland, the campaign is designed to make participation straightforward and fun. Read more about the campaign on Wikipedia.

Looking Ahead

May brings 1Lib1Ref Australasia, more GLAM training, WMAU representation through attendance at global conferences and the ongoing work on the ICIP and IDSov guide for WMAU. If your chapter is working through similar questions — particularly around Indigenous Cultural & Intellectual Property (ICIP) or orphan works — WMAU would be glad to compare notes.

Find out more about Wikimedia Australia at wikimedia.org.au or connect with our Community via the monthly Community calls.

Images

Photographs by Gnangarra...commons.wikimedia.org, CC BY 2.5 AU, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Brasil publishes book on the power and challenges of free knowledge

By HGodinho

Free Cultural Difusion

Organized by João Alexandre Peschanski and Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno, and featuring more than 40 authors, the book A wikimedia no Brasil - o poder e os desafios do conhecimento livre (Wikimedia in Brazil - the power and challenges of free knowledge) includes an entire section dedicated to the dissemination of free culture, featuring case studies, reports, and technical debates within the Brazilian GLAM-Wiki ecosystem.

In seven chapters, Part III - Free Cultural Diffusion discusses topics such as the democratization of access, FAIR principles, relicensing, feedback loops, Media and Information Literacy (MIL) practices, interoperability with key systems of Brazilian digital culture like Tainacan, linked data, semantic web, and diffusion strategies:

Digital Collection of Brazilian Sheet Music – reuse through Wikimedia Commons, from Rosana S. G. Lanzelotte, Nivia G. Zumpano and Thiago Rocha

The GLAM-Wiki initiative of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of the University of São Paulo, from Mauricio Candido da Silva

Wikidata as sociotechnical infrastructure for academic and cultural data, from Erika Guetti Suca, Éder Porto Ferreira Alves, Tiago Lubiana and Mike Peel

Brazilian university libraries and Wikimedia projects: the experience of the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) and the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) in the GLAM Libraries of the University of São Paulo (USP), from Lilian Viana, Stela do Nascimento Madruga

Expanding boundaries: The Electronic Language International Festival (FILE) and its incorporation into the GLAM ecosystem, from Paula Perissinotto

Linked Data with Wikipedia and Wikidata: reducing information silos on the web with news about Music in 19th-Century Periodicals (MPO), from Cláudio José Silva Ribeiro and Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa

Diffusion of GLAM collections via partnerships with Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB): analysis and contributions, from Adriane Gomes, Rodrigues Batata, Sandra Schmitt Soster

Certificadora Social is the newest WikiProject and has already delivered its first upload!

The newest partner joining the effort to diffuse media through Wikimedia platforms is Certificadora Social. The institution is a civil society organization that seeks to certify other NGOs, encouraging a culture of donation and strengthening trust in the Brazilian social sector. Responsible for initiatives such as the Selo Doar and the Melhores ONGs (Best NGOs) Award, the organization made part of its photographic collection available on Wikimedia Commons this April. This first upload is linked to the most recent edition of the awards ceremony.

Photographs taken during the Best NGOs 2025 Award ceremony held at Melicidad. by Don Visual / Mercado Pago
Celio Costa and Érica Azzellini. Photographs taken during the Best NGOs 2025 Award ceremony held at Melicidad. by Don Visual / Mercado Pago
Photographs taken during the Best NGOs 2025 Award ceremony held at Melicidad. by Don Visual / Mercado Pago

We celebrate Public Domain Day with an expert panel / Celebramos el día del dominio público con un Panel de expertas

By Hiperterminal

(En español más abajo)

Panel on Wikidata and digital heritage

On April 24th, at the facilities of the National Library of Colombia, we met with the Virtual Library of the Bank of the Republic, Wikimedia Colombia and Fundación Conector to discuss possible collaborations to make the Colombian public domain more visible and accessible through Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

Among the comments from the event, the possibility emerged of forming a working group to collaborate between heritage institutions and civil society, to appropriate Wikimedia tools and participate in the Movement's communities. Also, the possibility of having political influence on updates to copyright law in Colombia.

The video of the meeting can be accessed at this link and the minutes of meeting at Wikimedia Colombia's Wiki (in Spanish).

Panel sobre Wikidata y patrimonio digital

El pasado 24 de Abril, en las instalaciones de la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, nos encontramos también con la Biblioteca Virtual del Banco de la República, Wikimedia Colombia y la Fundación Conector para conversar sobre las posibles colaboraciones para hacer más visible y accesible el dominio público colombiano mediante Wikidata y Wikimedia Commons.

Entre los comentarios del evento, surgió la posibilidad de conformar un grupo de trabajo, para colaborar entre instituciones patrimoniales y la sociedad civil, para apropiarnos de las herramientas Wikimedia y participar de las comunidades del Movimiento. También, la posibilidad de tener incidencia política en las actualziaciones de la ley de derecho de autor en Colombia.

El video del encuentro puede consultarse en este enlace y las memorias del evento en la Wiki de Wikimedia Colombia.

Ongoing and New GLAM-Wiki Projects

By Marta Arosio

GLAM-Wiki Event at CNR Library

On 19 May, the Central Library “Guglielmo Marconi” of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), in collaboration with Wikimedia Italia, will host a public event in Rome dedicated to GLAM-wiki projects.

The meeting will present the CNR ongoing GLAM projects, developed together with several CNR institutes and external partners. The program will highlight current projects, achieved results, and future perspectives in the fields of digitization, open access, semantic enhancement of collections, and dissemination through Wikimedia platforms.

The event will also showcase educational activities carried out with lower and upper secondary schools, including the Wikibook Wikicarte geografiche digitali per una Città Educante, created by students using CNR shared contents. Contributions from graduate interns in Archival Science and Library Science from Sapienza University of Rome will also be featured, reflecting the value of cooperation between libraries and higher education.

The initiative aims to strengthen long-term connections between research institutions, schools, universities, and the Wikimedia movement, demonstrating how collaborative open knowledge projects can support access to scientific and cultural heritage.

Among the speakers are representatives from Wikimedia Italia, CNR research institutes, Sapienza University of Rome, the Scuola Normale Superiore, and the Library of the Conservatory of Rome. Sessions will cover topics such as digital tools for heritage preservation, collaborative cartography projects, open data for libraries and archives, musical heritage digitization, and the integration of library catalogues with Wikidata.

First steps with new GLAM partners

Wikimedia Italia have recently taken the first steps in building collaborations with two major Italian GLAM institutions: the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin and the Biblioteca Nazionale di Potenza.

Initial online training sessions have been delivered to staff at both institutions, focusing on contributing to Wikimedia projects and understanding the opportunities offered by open knowledge platforms. These early exchanges mark the beginning of a broader collaboration aimed at supporting the institutions in sharing their collections and expertise with a global audience.

Both partners have expressed a strong interest in uploading materials to Wikimedia Commons, including photographic collections and digitized documents, as well as contributing to Wikipedia and Wikidata.

The Museo Nazionale del Cinema, housed in the iconic Mole Antonelliana, offers a unique, immersive journey through the history of cinema, with extensive collections ranging from early visual devices to contemporary film production. The Biblioteca Nazionale di Potenza, a state public library under the Ministry of Culture, plays a key role in preserving and promoting local heritage, with significant historical collections and a strong focus on the cultural history of the Lucania region.

These collaborations highlight a growing shared commitment to making cultural heritage more accessible, reusable, and visible through open platforms, while strengthening ties with leading cultural institutions across the country.

Women in Wartime event at Auckland Museum & an update for WiR NZBSI

By Winnieswikiworld

Women in Wartime

On Tuesday 7th of April, an Online Cenotaph x Wikipedia event, Women in Wartime: A History of New Zealand Military Nursing was held in Auckland Museum's Te Pātaka Mātāpuna Research Library. Led by Wikimedian in Residence Anjuli Selvadurai and Sophie Elborough (Collection Information Technician), the session focused on the history of New Zealand military nursing, Online Cenotaph and Wikipedia as open access knowledge sharing tools and promoted the Wikiproject, Women in Red. This was the second installment of the Women in Wartime event series with plans being made for the next event. The project will be presented in a session at the upcoming 2026 ESEAP conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Update on the NZ Bioeconomy Science Institute Wikimedia in Residence

Much of April has been spent preparing for the two upcoming staff workshops to be held at both the Auckland and Lincoln sites of NZBSI. The Auckland Workshop will be held on the 15th of May and will be focusing on Wikidata. Editing tasks will be undertaken and various tools and gadgets profiled. The Lincoln Workshop will be held on the 20th of May and will be focused on providing an overview of various Wiki Projects including Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Editing of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons will be focused on and the interrelationship between the three platforms profiled.

Ambrosia10 has also been co-organising a session at the upcoming TDWG 2026 and drafting an abstract for submission to that session. If accepted by her co-organisers she will be presenting on the work undertaken during the WiR to produce a type specimen Wikidata item data model and is intending to highlight not just the data model but also the supporting documentation produced including the cross walk between the model and the TDWG maintained data standard Darwin Core.

Ambrosia10 has also been invited to submit an abstract to another TDWG session on "Publishing and Communications Promoting Biodiversity, Natural History Collections, People, Data and Data Standards". The organisers of that session have requested that she present on how she uses platforms such as Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Bionomia and Zenodo to help promote biodiversity people, institutions, datasets, workflows and data standards.

Wikimedia Commons Upload Campaign

By Olubusola Afolabi

Preserving Nigerian Heritage, One Cropped Image at a Time

Within the digitised pages of some Nigerian public-domain newspapers lies a visual archive comprising hand-drawn illustrations, period advertisements, and historical photographs that document the everyday lives of Nigerians across decades of Nigerian history.

The Free Knowledge Africa's Commons Upload campaign brought together 51 volunteers who supported our belief that African heritage belongs on the world stage, freely accessible to researchers, educators and curious minds everywhere. This Campaign was painstaking, but purposeful, as we carefully cropped out individual images from previously digitised Nigerian newspapers and uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons as standalone files. This campaign resulted in over 2,000 new images now part of the global open knowledge commons.

Some of the Interesting images found within the pages of these historical newspapers

A 1954 Advertisement of Mentholatum
An Advertisement for Broadway Chemist
A 1948 Cinema schedule
A 1948 Badge Competition for the Nigerian Youth Movement

These illustrations give us a peek into the everyday life of the average Nigerian in the 1950s. This campaign also underscores that digitisation alone does not make cultural heritage discoverable. Historical illustrations and images buried inside these newspaper scans remain invisible to anyone who isn't already looking for them. By extracting these images, we have transformed raw digitised data into usable, shareable stories and resources, increasing the visibility of these visual heritage on Wikimedia platforms.

Wikimedia MKD in Action: Digitization, Wikisource and Educational Workshops

By Velkovski.b

Within the framework of Wikimedia MKD’s educational activities in 2026, a series of thematic workshops were organized with the aim of combining knowledge about biodiversity with active contribution to Wikipedia. These workshops focused on introducing students to the plant world in their immediate environment, while also providing hands-on experience in creating and improving encyclopedic content. By linking field-based learning, basic botanical knowledge, and Wikimedia editing practices, the activities encouraged participants to better understand local flora and to actively engage in documenting it through free knowledge platforms.

Training workshop “Plants Around Us“ for students from "Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi"-Skopje primary school

On April 24, 2026, the workshop “Plants Among Us” was held, intended for members of the Wiki Club at the Primary School“Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.” The workshop was thematically focused on the plant world, with the aim of helping students gain a deeper understanding of different plant species, their characteristics, significance, and distribution, and then transform their acquired knowledge into encyclopedic articles on Wikipedia.

A total of 7 students and 1 teacher participated in the workshop, demonstrating great interest and dedication throughout the entire process. The work was organized through a combination of theoretical and practical activities. A short introductory part of the workshop included a lecture delivered by Bosa Filipović and Snežana Štrkovska. They introduced the students to the mission of Wikimedia, the importance of free knowledge, and the opportunities that Wikipedia offers as a platform for learning and sharing information. Through their presentation, they further motivated the students to actively engage in editing and creating high-quality content.

This was followed by the practical part, where students independently, but with the support of mentors, began writing and editing articles. As a result of their work, a total of 23 new articles were created, representing a valuable contribution to enriching the content of Wikipedia in the Macedonian language.

The atmosphere during the workshop was dynamic, motivating, and full of enthusiasm. Students actively collaborated, exchanged ideas, and helped one another, which further contributed to the success of the event. This hands-on learning approach proved to be very effective, as students were directly involved in the process of knowledge creation.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

The students with Snezana Strkovska
The students listening a lecture
The students listening a lecture
The students listening a lecture
The students editing on Wikipedia
The students editing on Wikipedia

“Plants Around Us: Kumanovo” workshop

On 1 May 2026, a workshop for members of Wiki Club Kumanovo was held under the theme “Plants Around Us: Kumanovo”. The event was dedicated to exploring plant life in the local environment, with a focus on species found in both urban and rural areas of the Kumanovo region. Its main goal was to encourage greater awareness among students about the importance of plants in everyday life and their role in maintaining ecological balance.

The workshop began with an introductory presentation by the coordinator, Stojna Arsovska Donevska, who introduced participants to basic concepts in botany and plant classification. This was followed by a discussion on the most common plant species in and around Kumanovo, highlighting their presence in parks, yards, forests, and other natural habitats. Particular attention was given to the importance of local flora as a valuable part of natural heritage that should be explored, documented, and preserved. During the theoretical segment, students actively participated in discussions and engaged in observing the natural environment around them, which helped create an interactive and collaborative learning atmosphere.

In the second part of the workshop, participants took part in a practical activity focused on editing Wikipedia articles about various plant species. Under mentorship, they applied their theoretical knowledge while developing skills in translation, selecting relevant information, and presenting content in a clear and structured way. A total of 10 students participated and created 30 new articles.

The workshop concluded with a brief group discussion, where participants shared their impressions and reflected on the knowledge gained, emphasizing the value of such activities in understanding their environment and contributing to free knowledge.

You can see how it went through the photographic material uploaded on Commons, but also some of the photos are bellow:

The students with plants
The students with plants
Editing on Wikipedia
Editing on Wikipedia
Editing on Wikipedia
The students with the coordinator of Wiki club Kumanovo

GLAM Coordinator activities

In the following period, the GLAM Coordinator continued with the same structured and consistent approach, maintaining monthly activities focused on the digitization, documentation, and dissemination of scientific and cultural heritage materials in collaboration with relevant institutions.

On a monthly basis, the work with the Macedonian National Herbarium at the Institute of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje was sustained, where additional endemic and rare plant species were photographed. These activities further expanded the collection of high-quality visual documentation, with new photographs of herbarium specimens uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. All materials continued to be carefully categorized, described, and integrated into relevant Wikimedia projects to ensure accessibility and long-term usability.

In parallel, the coordinator continued the digitization of literary works aimed at preserving intangible cultural heritage. Folk tales were again uploaded on a monthly basis to Wikisource within the category “Folk Tales Collected by Marko Cepenkov,” following the same process of formatting, review, and organization in accordance with Wikimedia standards.

Work on improving Wikipedia content related to endemic and rare plant species in Macedonia also continued, with further translation and expansion of articles, as well as the addition of references, structured information, and relevant media. This ongoing contribution further strengthened the quality and coverage of scientific content in the Macedonian language.

Overall, the GLAM Coordinator maintained steady and consistent output across Wikimedia platforms, continuing to combine fieldwork, digitization, content creation, and editorial work in support of open access to knowledge on Macedonia’s natural and cultural heritage.

GLAM-Wiki Developments: Residencies, Partnerships and Audiovisual Heritage

By Kamila Neuman

New GLAM-Wiki partnerships with university libraries

In March 2026, Wikimedia Polska began new conversations and introductory activities with academic libraries interested in developing GLAM-Wiki cooperation and exploring the role of Wikimedia projects in open access strategies.

An introductory workshop was organised for the staff of the University Library in Toruń. Participants were introduced to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikisource, with discussions focused on how academic libraries can use Wikimedia projects to increase the visibility and accessibility of their collections, research, and institutional activities. The workshop was designed as the first step towards developing a longer-term GLAM-Wiki partnership and identifying possible directions for future collaboration.

Introductory meetings and presentations were also held in Wrocław together with the Regional GLAM team and the University Library in Wrocław. The visit focused on familiarising library staff and regional GLAM representatives with the Wikimedia ecosystem and discussing how Wikimedia projects can support cultural and academic institutions in sharing digital heritage and building public visibility within open knowledge networks.

Polish Wikimedians in Residence test Commons Impact Metrics tools

In March and April, Wikimedia Polska organised two meetings for Polish Wikimedians in Residence. Participants included Kamila Neuman, Katarzyna Makowska, Agata Stadnicka, and Grzegorz Gogacz, while the April meeting also welcomed two new residents: Maciej Szostek (Piastu) and Marta Malina Moraczewska.

The meetings focused on Commons Impact Metrics (CIM) tools and methods for measuring the impact and reuse of materials shared through Wikimedia Commons. Participants exchanged first experiences with testing the tools and discussed future plans for developing onboarding resources and a practical toolkit for new Wikimedians in Residence in Poland.

The meetings also reflected the growing network of GLAM-Wiki residencies in Poland. Maciej Szostek recently began a Wikimedian in Residence programme with PKO Bank Polski, focused on opening and sharing archival materials related to the history of Polish banking and economic heritage.

Marta Malina Moraczewska joined the network as Wikimedian in Residence at EC1 Łódź – City of Culture, where the residency is connected with activities around film, audiovisual heritage, and digital culture. The project also includes an English-language section inviting members of the international Wikimedia community to engage with and contribute to the initiative.

New Wikimedian in Residence at PKO Bank Polski

At the end of March, a new Wikimedian in Residence programme was launched in cooperation with PKO Bank Polski, one of the most historically significant financial institutions in Poland. Long-time Wikimedia contributor Maciej Szostek (“Piastu”) began working with the institution to analyse archival and historical materials for possible inclusion in Wikimedia projects.

The collaboration aims to increase public access to resources documenting the history of Polish banking, architecture, and economic heritage. The residency will focus particularly on identifying archival and iconographic materials that could be shared through Wikimedia Commons and used to expand knowledge related to economic and social history in Poland.

“Women Behind the Camera” edit-a-thon at FINA

On 28 March 2026, Wikimedia Polska and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA) organised the edit-a-thon “Women Behind the Camera” at the FINA headquarters in Warsaw. The event was part of the nationwide “(Un)known Women of Wikipedia” editing campaign organised by Wikimedia Polska, with FINA joining the initiative as one of its institutional partners.

The edit-a-thon was dedicated to women creators in Polish cinematography whose contributions remain underrepresented in public narratives about film history. Participants worked on biographies related to film directing, editing, cinematography, sound production, costume design, and other areas of audiovisual creation. During the event, participants created a new Wikipedia article about Jolanta Słobodzian and expanded or improved 14 additional biographies.

The event combined Wikimedia editing activities with broader discussions about visibility, representation, and cultural memory, and included a lecture by Dr Paulina Kwiatkowska. Volunteer Wikimedians played an important role in supporting participants throughout the edit-a-thon. StrzydlatyMuflon conducted the introductory Wikipedia editing training, while experienced editors Gytha and Bonvol provided mentoring and practical support for participants during the editing session.

Discussions on openness and AI during the EUscreen symposium

In April, Kamila Neuman, Open Culture Manager at Wikimedia Polska, participated in the EUscreen symposium “Reframing Openness: Empowering Authenticity and Reuse in Audiovisual Heritage”, co-organised by EUscreen Foundation and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA) in Warsaw.

The symposium focused on the changing meaning of openness in the context of AI technologies, platform infrastructures, and the reuse of audiovisual heritage. Discussions addressed questions related to reciprocity in digital commons, responsible AI use, copyright, and the sustainability of open cultural infrastructures.

The keynote lecture was delivered by Alek Tarkowski from the Open Future Foundation and a board member of Wikimedia Europe. He discussed the growing “paradox of openness”, in which cultural institutions continue to share collections openly while new technological ecosystems increasingly reshape how these resources are accessed and reused. The presentation highlighted how AI systems consume cultural collections at unprecedented scale and how heritage institutions must develop new governance and infrastructural models that protect digital commons while remaining open and accessible.

Particular attention during the symposium was given to the growing role of trust, authenticity, and institutional responsibility in managing and sharing digital heritage collections. The event brought together representatives of cultural institutions, researchers, and practitioners working at the intersection of openness, archives, and emerging technologies.

Presentations from the symposium, including Alek Tarkowski’s keynote lecture, are available on YouTube.

April in Wikimedia Serbia

By Nebojsa Ratkovic

Engagement in the Content Partnerships Hub

Wikimedia Serbia has been actively engaged in the global Content Partnerships Hub initiative, an important program that brings together Wikimedia organizations and volunteers worldwide who are interested in collaborating with diverse partners to support the free sharing of knowledge. This Hub aims to strengthen cooperation with institutions such as museums, libraries, archives, scientific institutions, and international organizations, enabling their content to become accessible on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Wikipedian in Residence Program at the Nikola Tesla Museum

A Wikipedian in Residence program has been initiated at the Nikola Tesla Museum, lasting one month. During this period, the Wikipedian in Residence will be engaged in the digitization of materials related to the life and work of Nikola Tesla.

Partnership with the National Museum in Pančevo

A memorandum of cooperation has been signed with the National Museum in Pančevo. As part of this collaboration, a one-month Wikipedian in Residence program will begin at this institution in May.

Hosting the Global GLAM Call

During May, Wikimedia Serbia will host the global online meeting Global GLAM Call, which gathers participants from around the world interested in collaboration in the fields of culture, heritage, and free knowledge. This call represents an important opportunity for sharing experiences, presenting projects, and strengthening international cooperation within GLAM initiatives. The call is open to all interested participants, who will have the opportunity to hear examples of good practice and take part in discussions.

Expanding GLAM Partnerships

Representatives of Wikimedia Serbia have also engaged in discussions with several cultural institutions with the aim of establishing partnerships within the GLAM Wikipedian in Residence program. During these meetings, opportunities were explored for involving individuals in the digitization, processing, and opening of cultural heritage through Wikimedia projects. These initial negotiations represent an important step toward further developing partnerships and strengthening the presence of open knowledge within cultural institutions.

Le Donne di Villa Massimo

By Medea7

Le Donne di Villa Massimo

The edit-a-thon in Rome focusses on women at the German academy in Rome Villa Massimo. The academy is financed by the German culture ministry and hosting international guests. It has been the second edit-a-thon inside the Villa Massimo. The first one took place in 2024 and was a cooperation with WMIT. This one was a cooperation with the DACH chapters: WMDE, WMAT and WMCH. User:Käthe17 also received a grant from WMCH. This was a small grant taking care of the lunch and dinner during the event. The group invited was the Ku-Wiki group. This is a group of art historians that meet regular online and in person. The group consists out of professionals from GLAM institutions: professors, freelancers, students. The team is well connected to the scene in Rome, an international network of culture. Find here the project page with all the subjects and results.
At the Villa Massimo we could use a great working space and had inspiring talks on culture besides writing articles on the presented artists at the Villa Massimo and their subjects. Besides there was a programme on further cultural institutions in Rome as the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Swiss institute. Rome is traditional centre of cultural heritage. The Istituto Svizzero was a highlight with good wheather and the group climbing up to the roof. The exhibition presented was on decolonialisation. The work of Latefa Wiersch has been inspiring.

SAPA Uploads

Data import: we successfully imported 8'000 new theater productions to Wikidata. As a next step, 300 photos from the Erismann fund where the actors are identified will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Find more details on the project page.

A tenth-century Quran and Islamic Art in Urdu

By MartinPoulter

Khalili Foundation

Progress on a variety of fronts this month: a new article about a Quran, our first Simple English article, and new articles in Persian and Urdu using images from the Khalili Collections.

The Khalili Collections have more manuscripts (or manuscript folios) of the Quran than any other private collection. Some of these Qurans have their own scholarly literature and Wikipedia articles, including the Blue Quran and the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus. I noticed this month that the Palermo Quran, of which two sections are in the Khalili Collections, is mentioned in multiple scholarly sources. So I created a new article about it using images that were already uploaded. This now awaits Did You Know review. I've also created new representations of the manuscript and its parts on Wikidata, meaning that if we ask Wikidata for tenth-century exemplars of the Quran or for Arabic manuscripts in Kufic script, it will include the Palermo Quran in the results.

Speaking of the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus, a volunteer has translated its English article into Persian, mentioning the Khalili folio and including the image from the Khalili Collections. In Kurdish Wikipedia there is now a short article about cultural diversity, translating material that I added to the English article. Another volunteer has created a short article in Urdu about the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, translating a summary of the English article.

I am experimenting with "translating" articles for Simple English Wikipedia. Simple English is useful to a huge international community of non-native English speakers, as well as for native English speakers who find English Wikipedia difficult. As a first step I have created a Simple English article about the Anis Al-Hujjaj. This involved manually simplifying the text and using automated tools to measure its complexity and identify sentences to improve. The total number of Wikipedia articles directly related to the Khalili Collections created by this project has now reached 96.

The article I created about the Japanese artist Yabu Meizan is quite a high-quality article but has not yet got any quality awards. I have made some improvements and submitted the article to Good Article Review. The added text in the article created space for another image of a Meizan art work from the Khalili Collections.

The French article about the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents had a few problems: it was tagged for lacking citations and the same image was included twice. Although my French isn't great, I managed to put in all the citations and replace an image.

The Department of Education updated their website, and their link to Interfaith Explorers was mistakenly taken down. I got in touch with them and got them to restore the link. Thinking ahead to the next phase of content for Interfaith Explorers, I have acquired a couple of books for children about Dharmic religions, including one aimed at Key Stage 3, and downloaded the Collins teacher guides for Key Stage 3. These resources 1) help identify which concepts are appropriate for that educational level, 2) are a guide to appropriate language for that level, and 3) can be used to fact-check candidate text.

The stats server reports 3,660,839 image views for April.

Wiki MIT launches and US meetups

By Fuzheado & ZoraNealeH

Announcing Wiki MIT: Prototyping university-wide collaboration with Wikimedia

In February 2026, the meta:Wiki MIT project officially launched with Andrew Lih serving as the Wikimedian at Large. This experimental project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a strategic collaboration with their MIT Open Learning initiative.

In association with Curt Newton, director of MIT OpenCourseWare, and Peter B. Kaufman, Associate Director of Resource Development at MIT Open Learning, the initiative is an experimental evolution of the established GLAM-Wiki model by exploring how one of the world's top research universities' curriculum can contribute to and co-create content with the Wikimedia movement at scale.

Our core inquiry: how we might transform a university’s freely-licensed courseware materials, expert faculty knowledge, and vast multimedia archives into a global public good through the Wikimedia ecosystem.

While we are patterning the effort after the digital Wikimedian in Residence work of peers such as the University_of_Edinburgh and the Smithsonian Institution, crafting an academic-expertise model at scale with MIT's catalog of more than 2,500 online courses requires its own carefully crafted set of best practices.

Therefore, this initiative is being treated as a collaborative experiment that includes a "multimedia-oriented" strategy. Visual assets such as scientific diagrams, simulations, and video demonstrations are valuable because they can often bridge knowledge gaps across 300+ language editions without requiring immediate translation.

The project also works to identify and respond to the "signals" already present within Wikimedia projects that indicate a need for more or better content. This includes assets such as WikiProject worklists, en:Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos, addressing {{unreferenced}} tags, or utilizing advisory templates like {{refideas}} to suggest high-quality academic sources on talk pages. The project aims to prototype methods to identify and contribute MIT’s openly licensed materials where they are most needed.

This is not MIT's first connection to the Wikimedia movement:

MIT hosted the Wikimania 2006 Hackathon and has had longtime Wikimedians, and former WMF board members, Phoebe Ayers and Sam Klein advising their wiki endeavors over the years.
In 2018, the MIT Open Learning unit hosted an AI-oriented hackathon with Wikimedia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Microsoft Research, which led to a successful Wikidata Game Andrew Lih implemented as a GLAM wiki project - "Tag, That's It" (MIT News and Combining AI and Human Judgment to Build Knowledge about Art on a Global Scale) that was described in the GLAM Wiki newsletter in January 2019
The next year, in 2019, MIT hosted WikiConference North America.

We invite fruitful collaboration from other editors, universities, the emerging Education Hub, and global affiliates to help refine these approaches. This is designed as a collective effort to build a sustainable pipeline for academic knowledge, and we look forward to discussing these new modes of engagement at Wikimania 2026.

Project page: meta:Wiki MIT
Contact: User:Fuzheado

Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia

City Tech Library and Wikimedia NYC held a workshop, Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia.

Wiki-Play Fridays

Wikimedia New York City held a pop-up exhibition and laboratory, Wiki-Play Fridays, at NYC PIT Pop Up.

NYC PIT Pop Up in October 2025

WikiSalon 2026-04-11

Philadelphia wikimedians held a WikiSalon, WikiSalon 2026-04-11.

San Diego/April 2026

San Diego Wikimedians User Group held a salon at San Diego Public Library, San Diego/April 2026.

Bay Area Meetup April 2026

Bay Area Wikipedians User Group held a meetup, Bay Area Meetup April 2026.

Update on the BHL Annual Meeting 27 April - 1 May & BHL Day

By Ambrosia10

BHL Annual Meeting 2026

Ambrosia10 attended the BHL Annual Meeting 2026 as the chair of the BHL-Wiki working group. This meeting had the aim of discussing ways forward for BHL after the transition away from the Smithsonian as the previous host of the digital library and the transition team are ending their contracts at the end of June.

A presentation was given by David Iggulden, the Chair of the BHL executive team, summarising the state of BHL and BHL's 20th year anniversary. He also outlined the achievements of the past year since the last BHL Annual Meeting in Berlin. This included the successful transition away from the Smithsonian and the obtaining of a new fiscal sponsor CLIR, a new home for BHL’s technical infrastructure at the Field Museum and the commencement of a successful fund raising campaign.

He went on to list the future challenges for BHL to secure the digital library's future. This included securing funding beyond 2027, technical modernisation, maintaining institutional engagement and ensuring technical capacity is maintained and hopefully improved.

Colleen Funkhouser, the managing director of BHL, then presented giving more detail on the financial challenges required to be overcome in order to sustain BHL. She led a discussion on the drafting of the 2027-2030 strategic plan for BHL and the strategic goals for BHL.

Further discussions at the annual meeting focused on the funding challenge to obtain financial stability for BHL, the challenges of envisioning a new website/platform for BHL as well as ideas for new and improved infrastructure, and encouraging deeper and broader engagement with both institutions and the general public.

Unfortunately the current capacity of the administrative staff of BHL is not yet at a level that empowers BHL to actively engage with the BHL-Wiki working group. As a result, upon her return from London, Ambrosia10 is now planning to atleast invigorate the Wiki side of the BHL-Wiki working group by reestablishing regular meetings. Given her Wikimedian in Residence commitments she is proposing that these meetings recommence in either late June or early July. Previous participants of the BHL-Wiki working can expect Ambrosia10 to contact them with a time and date for the proposed next meeting in the near future.

BHL Day 2026

Siobhan Leachman (Ambrosia10) with Sabine von Mering (S.v.Mering) jointly presented at the BHL Day 2026, a public symposium of presentations held at the Natural History Museum, London about BHL related research and projects.

The presentation given was a summary of two papers published by the research group to which Ambrosia10 and S.v.Mering contributed. The presentation slides and script can be found at this link.

The two papers this presentation summarised were:

von Mering S, Gardiner LM, Knapp S, Lindon H, Leachman S, Ulloa Ulloa C, Vincent S, Vorontsova MS (2023) Creating a multi-linked dynamic dataset: a case study of plant genera named for women. Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e114408. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e114408 and
von Mering, S., Knapp, S., Leachman, S., Lindon, H. L., Gu, Q., Vincent, S., & Ulloa Ulloa, C. (2025). The women honoured in flowering plant genera: From myth to reality. Plants, People, Planet, 7(6), 1845–1857. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.70050

Eight new articles on MoW inscriptions

By MartinPoulter

This is the eighteenth monthly report of the ongoing work to improve the representation of the UNESCO Memory of the World international register on Wikimedia projects. This is supported and fully funded by the Khalili Foundation, with the involvement of UNESCO and Wikimedia UK.

Data set paper

I have had feedback from the Memory of the World team on the draft paper about the open data set, and made progress on improving the draft in response.

Indigenous issues

As promised in the last monthly report, the new article on Docip (mentioning the "Declarations made by indigenous peoples to the United Nations from 1982 to 2015") was linked from the front page of English Wikipedia on 15 April, in a Did You Know fact that also linked the article on indigenous peoples. On a day with 7.05 million visits to the front page, just under five thousand readers followed the link to read about Docip, and about one thousand followed the link to Indigenous peoples.

New articles about Memory of the World International Register inscriptions

German: The Vienna City Library Schubert Collection (First article about this topic in any Wikipedia!)
Urdu: Aleppo Codex
Urdu: The Wizard of Oz
Slovene: The Cabinet of Folksongs
Kazakh: The Wizard of Oz
Lezgian: Phoenician script
Pashto: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
Mongolian: A Doll's House

View statistics

The Massviews tool reports 3,525,124 page views in April for English Wikipedia articles that link to the Memory of the World International Register.

The Wikimedia Foundation are in the process of enabling image view data collection for the Memory of the World International Register; we do not have numbers this month.

May's GLAM events

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