GLAM/Newsletter/August 2025/Contents/Memory of the World report
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A pivotal month
This is the eleventh 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.
Wiki challenge
The Memory of the World challenge is running this month, and has already started attracting contributions. Participants can win points for improving Wikipedia or Wikidata representation of the Memory of the World International Register. The Khalili Collections and UNESCO are providing some beautiful books on the subject of cultural diversity as prizes.
The volunteer community has already been hugely helpful, translating the instructions. Special thanks to Susanna Ånäs of AvoinGLAM who helped set up the translatable page and who did the Finnish translations. Clara did the German translation and has also been coordinating prizes for the winners of the challenge from the UNESCO side, such as books on documentary heritage and the Memory of the World Programme, as well as printed tote bags. Susanna has already put a lot of data about intangible cultural heritage into Wikidata and we have started talking about how we can combine these two data sets to make educational introductions to the culture of every country.
Publicity
Clara also worked on improving the UNESCO project hub, explaining how Wikimedia volunteers can use the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) International Register as a valuable resource to enrich and expand Wikipedia content. She linked the Beginner’s Guide to the UNESCO MoW International Register as an introduction for new contributors. In addition, she is learning to edit the online register and is working on enhancing its usability.
Clara published an article for the International Day for People of African Descent, highlighting several items from the MoW Register that preserve the histories and experiences of African peoples and their diasporas and mentioning the Khalili Foundation/UNESCO project.
Wiki work
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Martin has added 773 location properties to the Wikidata data set, based on the spreadsheet constructed by Hannah. A "location property" is a statement in database code that says that, for example, The Slave Trade and Slavery Records in Mauritius (1721-1892) are located in the National Archives of Mauritius. As an example of what this makes possible, if we look at Reasonator (a Wikidata-driven application) profiles of the National Library of Thailand or National Archive and Library of Bolivia, and scroll down, it shows the MoW inscriptions that are located (at least partly) at those institutions. We can ask Wikidata for the institutions that host the most inscriptions and get this image gallery. Martin has also continued to add locations to the International Register list articles on English Wikipedia. Now all inscriptions (up to 2023) have locations.
Some locations could not be added to the database because there was no representation of the cultural institution in Wikipedia or Wikidata, such as the Cape Town Archives. This list is itself a valuable resource for the Wikimedia community address under-represented cultures, so will be published separately.
Wikimedia UK ran a campaign to encourage people to fix broken links to the MoW international register. 22 high-traffic Wikipedia articles have had their links updated, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Parliamentary system, and Mass production. Some other high-traffic English Wikipedia articles have had MoW links added where they did not mention the register before, including Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto.
On Commons, Martin made hundreds of edits categorising images: the category Memory of the World Register, which was ambiguous, is now Category:Memory of the World International Register. Some mis-categorised images have been added or removed as appropriate.
Martin, Clara and Yahia (of the UNESCO MoW team) had an online meeting so that Martin could show how the International Register is represented on Wikidata. Clara demonstrated her new skill by improving information about the Nebra Sky Disk. Yahia explored how Wikidata is being used to conserve endangered languages.
New articles on Wikipedia
- Chuvash: Memory of the World
- Italian: Laurentian Codex
- Czech: The Wizard of Oz
- Latvian: Warsaw Confederation
- Latvian: Hereford Mappa Mundi
Page and image views
The GLAMorgan stats tools says that images related to the MoW International Register had 72.2 million views this month.
List articles about the MoW international register had 18,314 views this month: a similar number to last month.
