GLAM/Newsletter/August 2026/Contents/UK report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue VIII, August 2026

UK report

Wikimedia gets Gazetted + Islamic Calligraphy on English Wikipedia

The Gazette

Andy Mabbett has been appointed Wikimedian in Residence at The Gazette, the UK's official journal of record. This incudes the publications The London Gazette (first published in 1665!), The Belfast Gazette and The Edinburgh Gazette.

The project is scheduled to run until November. An online editathon will be announced soon. See the project page at en:Wikipedia:GLAM/The Gazette.

Khalili Foundation

30th Did You Know, 28th (and 29th?) Featured Image award, and 110th new article

Featured images

In a unanimous decision, the Composite Imaginary View of Japan has been given a Featured Image award by Hebrew Wikipedia, who included it on the front page on 30 July. This is our 28th Featured Image award in total and the first from Hebrew Wikipedia. That brings us to six different wiki platforms (Arabic, English, Hebrew, Indonesian, Persian, Wikimedia Commons) that have given Featured Image awards to the Khalili Collections.

An image of Firuzabadi's al-Qamus al-Muhit is currently being reviewed for Featured Image status on Arabic Wikipedia. The review has until 15th September to run, and if the image passes it will be on the front page of Arabic Wikipedia on 16th September.

Article improvements

The article on Amanat Khan Shirazi appeared as a "Did You Know?" on the English Wikipedia home page on 12 August. This was the 30th DYK related to the Khalili Collections. That article has now been submitted for Good Article review.

Dave Palfrey, a wiki volunteer based in Cambridge who does a lot of diversity work (and who I got to know at Wikimania), was inspired to create a new Wikipedia biography for the art historian Catherine B. Asher who wrote a paper about Amanat Khan. There's a Khalili connection because Asher reviewed the Leach "Paintings from India" catalogue.

I created a new article on Hilya on Simple English Wikipedia, by "translating" the English Wikipedia article. In the course of the translation, I discovered and fixed a number of minor errors in the English Wikipedia article. I then reused text from the new article in the Simple English Wikipedia article on Muhammad and the English Wikipedia article on Muhammad. Hilya is the 4th new article added to Simple English Wikipedia and the 110th new Wikipedia article related to the Khalili Collections.

On English Wikipedia, I expanded the Islamic calligraphy article by adding a section on calligraphy objects: muraqqa, tughra, and hilya, illustrated with images from the Khalili Collections. I also expanded the Talismanic shirt article.

Here are some new articles, created by volunteers, that use images from the Khalili Collections. It's hard to track all uses, so this is likely incomplete.

Korean: Qajar art
Armenian: Islamic calligraphy (second image)
Indonesian: Amir al-Hajj

I also created a new English Wikipedia article for the Ghana Memory of the World Register. That is discussed in the Memory of the World report.

Khalili Foundation on MEOW

MEOW, created by Wikimedia Sweden, is an overview of activities to improve Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms. It points to articles (including monthly reports like the one you're reading), blog posts, slide decks, videos, and other resources. So it is not mainly for the general public, but for Wikimedia contributors, partner organisations, and potential partners. The site gives lots of different ways to summarise the underlying database, and everything can be tagged with keywords. It's great for identifying the major projects and seeing what they have done.

A month ago, there were just two items tagged with "Khalili Foundation"; now there are 107. I have been adding tags to existing items as well as adding videos, blog posts, and project pages that were not yet known to the database. I have been corresponding with Alicia at Wikimedia Sweden to get project pages (such as Khalili-Wikimedia UK partnership and UNESCO Memory of the World project) added and visible in the interface.

Metrics

The Impact Visualizer is a tool that shows overview statistics about a group of Wikipedia articles. I've created a view of 37 articles on English Wikipedia relating to the Khalili Collections. It shows that these articles together get 1,230 visits each day (around 450,000 visits per year), they have 55,000 words in total, and most are at Good Article quality.

The stats server reports 3,412,471 image views for August. These numbers usually increase as school and university courses start again after the summer holiday.

In this issue

August 2026

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