GLAM/Newsletter/August 2024/Contents/Brazil report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue VIII, August 2024

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Brazil report

Technology and biodiversity: “Amazonian Knowledge on Wiki”

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By Sandra Soster, Juliana Cunha & Maely Oliveira

"Amazonian Knowledge on Wiki" is a project organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) with funding from Creative Commons and Wikimedia Switzerland. It aims to disseminate information about the biodiversity of the Pará Amazon. The collections, especially those related to biodiversity, emphasize the crucial role of open knowledge in preparation for COP-30, which will be held in Belém in 2025.

The first activity of the project took place on August 22, 23, and 24, in an innovative event that brought together 20 geoscience professionals for the Open Mapping and Documentation of the Zoobotanical Park of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi.

The goal was to enhance the georeferencing of the park’s buildings and major trees. This includes marking the park’s entry points, locations where animals live, identifying the largest trees (those over 200 years old and predating the museum), and, most importantly, detailing which buildings are within the park, their locations, and the services they offer. To achieve this, WMB enlisted the participation of the research group “Meninas da Geo” from the Instituto Federal do Pará (IFPA), under the coordination of Professor Tatiana Pará, with support from the Museu Emílio Goeldi itself.

The first two days of the event took place at IFPA, focusing on developing the activity strategy and enhancing participants' knowledge with a practical laboratory class on open mapping and documentation. The third and final day (August 24) was the major field day for validating the data obtained from the preliminary survey and for forest mapping at MPEG.

To ensure the success of the fieldwork, participants were divided into groups responsible for mapping: (1) animal habitat areas; (2) building areas; and (3) areas with large-canopied trees. The mapping employed forest inventory techniques, measuring tree diameter, height, and other characteristics.

As observed in the preliminary analysis of existing MPEG mapping on OpenStreetMap, large trees were either not properly identified or not registered at all. Consequently, the mapping team adopted a range of combined mapping strategies to provide a comprehensive and detailed view of the large trees.

One of the largest tree species is the Samaúma or Samaumeira, which is one of the main attractions of the Zoobotanical Park. This specimen continues to thrive and impress with its exuberance at over 120 years old, being part of the group of trees referred to as “ancients of the Park,” according to Pedro Oliva.

Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi

The Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG), located in the center of Belém, was chosen for this project for being Brazil’s largest Natural History Museum and the most important research institution in the state of Pará. It is considered a “classroom for the Amazon” due to its pioneering scientific studies and educational activities on the natural and sociocultural systems of the Amazon. The 5.4-acre Zoobotanical Park is the first of its kind in Brazil, founded in 1866, and includes a living collection of fauna and flora as well as permanent ethnographic and archaeological exhibitions.

MPEG is the legacy of the Swiss naturalist Émil August Goeldi, who ran and reorganized the institution during his mandate between 1894 and 1905. Goeldi was responsible for structuring comprehensive and rigorous studies of the Amazon region and for organizing the first collections of the institution during this period marked by the europeans naturalists influence in Brazil. Today, the institution holds 19 main scientific collections with more than 4,5 million items and it is recognized worldwide as one of the most important research institutions on the Brazilian Amazon. The collections are broadly divided into: botany and zoology, ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, soil collection, palynology and rare works (these include drawings by European naturalists in Brazil in the 19th century). Part of the collection is already digitized, but not available on Wikimedia yet.

MPEG is located in the heart of the city that will host the United Nations Climate Change conference in 2025 (COP-30). The event is promised to center the Amazon rainforest in the discussion around climate change and the city of Belém is already going through infrastructural changes to receive the event. But the open knowledge ecosystem still lacks quality information about the Amazon’ social and natural ecosystems.

In 2023, Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB), invested in partnerships in the state of Pará through the Wiki Loves Pará project, in order to consistently engage local communities on Wikimedia projects to cover quality information about the region. The diagnosis is that the Pará state, a region twice the size of France that comprehends a significant portion of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, is an information desert on the Wikimedia projects. By consequence, the Amazonian natural, historical and sociocultural diversity is invisible in the open knowledge ecosystem.

Meninas da Geo

“Meninas da Geo” is part of the “Meninas Digitais” Program, which aims to empower girls and women in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), aligned with the United Nations’ actions to achieve Sustainable Development Goals 5: Gender Equality. Practically, the group operates on three fronts: education, research, and outreach, to train women, young people, farmers, and riverine communities to use geotechnological tools and enhance their territorial management.

See the Meninas da Geo's Wikiversity page

Editathon Women in Science and the Arts by Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz

Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz is a technical-scientific unit of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation created in 1986 for valuing institutional memory and disseminating the history of science and public health policies in Brazil. The COC's GLAM project aims to expand free access to its archival, bibliographic and museological collections, and to promote activities for disseminating good information about history, science and health in Brazil.

This year, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz focused its efforts on promoting knowledge about women scientists in Brazil. As part of this initiative, 1,828 images from six collections featuring scientists at the institution were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. These collections are from Alda Falcão, Dyrce Lacombe, Elizabeth Leeds, Hortênsia de Hollanda, Maria Cristina Fernandes de Mello, and Virgínia Portocarrero.

To further disseminate this collection, on August 26th, we organized the Editathon Women in Science and the Arts, an event by Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz in partnership with Wiki Movimento Brasil and the Art + Feminism project. Through this initiative, we invited Wikimedians and newcomers to collaborate in improving and creating articles about notable Brazilian women in the fields of science and the arts on Wikipedia. You can see the contributions on the outreach dashboard.

Alda Falcão
Dyrce Lacombe
Elizabeth Leeds
Hortênsia de Hollanda
Maria Cristina Fernandes de Mello's collection
Virgínia Portocarrero

See the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz's GLAM page and the uploaded media.

Egypt-a-thon at Casa Museu Eva Klabin

Casa Museu Eva Klabin is a museum located in the Lagoa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The museum houses a classical art collection with over 2,000 pieces, including artifacts from Ancient Egypt. This month, as part of our GLAM partnership and inspired by the museum's temporary exhibition Eternal Egypt: Immortality in the Viscountess de Cavalcanti and Eva Klabin Collections, we have uploaded 48 works from the museum's Egyptian collection to Wikimedia Commons, and also 11 3D models of some of these pieces of art. Additionally, on September 5th, we will support an editathon at the museum, aimed at improving Portuguese-language content about Egyptian art on the internet and highlighting the historical significance of Brazilian collections on Wikipedia.

See the Casa Museu Eva Klabin's GLAM page; the uploaded media; and the 3D models.

Criola's Edit-a-thon

Criola is a civil society organization based in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that has been working for 30 years to combat racism and advocate for Black women's rights. Criola received funding from the Wikimedia Foundation to implement the project “CRIOLA – Projeto de Aprimoramento nas Habilidades no Uso de Novas Tecnologias para a Construção de Meios para a Equidade Racial" (CRIOLA – Project for Improving Skills in the Use of New Technologies for the Construction of Means for Racial Equity) through which it developed a series of activities.

The project supports 140 cis and trans Black women (including leaders, scholars, researchers, nano-influencers, among others) in the production and dissemination of free and anti-racist knowledge. This project also helped them improve their skills in using new technologies, with the objective of reducing the racial gap in this type of knowledge.

“

Reaffirming the power of Black girls and women in the production of social technologies as responses to inequalities and inequity. Challenging narratives and amplifying the voices of Black women, especially in the public sphere. - Criola

”

Furthermore, the specific objectives of the project were:

To produce collaborative information and content about the impacts of cisheteronormative patriarchal racism, as well as the thoughts, art, literature, and innovations produced by Black women;
To hold seminars and training sessions for 30 cis and trans Black girls and women on new technologies to combat racial inequalities in the information field;
To create and disseminate a virtual space to document the thoughts and knowledge of cis and trans Black women, capturing material under Creative Commons licenses; and,
To partner with organizations to expand the dissemination of the aforementioned materials.

WMB have supported the NGO in some of its wiki-related activities, including uploading 40 videos and 74 transcriptions to date, as well as organizing an editathon aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of content about Black women on Portuguese Wikipedia.