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Cultural Partnerships co-ordinator for the US, fine art editathon and QRpedia case study

US Cultural Partnerships Co-ordinator Announced

Phillips with former global Cultural Partnerships fellow Liam Wyatt (Wittylama).

It has been announced that Wikimedian Lori Phillips (HstryQT/LoriLee) will be the US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator, a role that will support the growth of GLAM in the United States throughout 2012 with the aim of making programs there self-sustainable by 2013. This will involve leading in building the infrastructure needed to accommodate growing interest in cultural Wikimedia partnerships in the US. Phillips has served as the first Wikipedian in Residence in the US (and the longest-serving, to date) at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, a role she will maintain alongside her position with the Wikimedia Foundation. Upcoming events associated with the position include GLAMcamp DC, which will serve as a kick off for US GLAM-Wikimedia coordination in February, and a dedicated Wikipedia panel discussion at the American Association of Museums annual conference and Museum Expo in May.

QRpedia case study

As a result of increasing interest from both cultural professionals and Wikipedians, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis completed an extensive case study on the implementation of QRpedia codes over the past six months. The case study was also inspired by a visit from Roger Bamkin, Chairman of the Board of Wikimedia UK, in early December. During this visit to the museum, a number of suggestions, ideas, and analysis came out of a shared discussion with Roger Bamkin, Lori Phillips, the museum's CTO, and the exhibit developer responsible for implementing the codes. Details on this analysis, in addition to the museum's process, implications, outcomes, and challenges, are provided.

Recently Peter Weis noted the importance of tracking the percentage of total page views that result from scans. This statistic was indeed surprising for the Children's Museum, which found that a significant number of page views originate from QRpedia code scans. In one month, 67% of the page views of Captain Kidd's Cannon came from QRpedia scans alone. This illustrates that adding QRpedia codes to exhibits can greatly increase page views, in particular on specific topics that may not typically be found when browsing the web.

First ever Fine Art Edit-a-Thon brings over 20 new & expanded articles to English Wikipedia

Wikipedians diligently working at the Fine Art Edit-a-Thon; really, it was more fun than it looks!

This December, former Archives of American Art Wikpiedian in Residence, Sarah Stierch, planned the first Fine Art Edit-a-Thon in Washington, D.C. This event was inspired by the recent 250+ image contribution that the Archives gave to Wikimedia Commons, featuring photographs related to artists who participated in the Federal Art Project. Over 15 Wikimedians from the region, and as far away as New Jersey, attended the event at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, a venue on the National Register of Historic Places.

A "to-do list" was developed by Stierch, which was based on the artists included in the FAP photograph collection. This provided a guide for Wikipedians to work with, as did various online resources and a a collection of books pulled by Stierch for the Wikipedians to use as sources. For four hours, Wikipedians worked diligently to create and expand 20 articles on the to-do list or related to fine art. Online participants also helped, working on articles from as far away as the United Kingdom. Eight articles were also successfully nominated to Wikipedia's Do You Know...? front page section. After the edit-a-thon, Wikipedians joined others from the area at a local pub for drinks and conversation.

Articles created and expanded include contemporary American sculptor Rachel Feinstein, printmaker Kyra Markham, illustrator and sculpture Alexander Finta, and painter William C. Palmer.

News in brief

  • GLAM outreach volunteer named new Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow: GLAM Wikimedian, SarahStierch, was named the first Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow for 2012. Stierch will be focusing on projects, online and offline, that will focus on "minding the gap" - the gender gap, in Wikimedia projects.
  • GLAMcamp DC will take place in February: In February, the National Archives and Records Administration, in Washington, D.C., will serve as the venue for a GLAMcamp event focused around strengthening relationships internally between US Wikimedians and developing programming and best practices for GLAMWIKI US. GLAMcamp DC will bring together Wikimedians from across the country to help plan the future of the United States GLAMWIKI outreach practices, which have been severely lacking due to lack of organization nationwide.
  • GLAM US represents at DISH 2011: GLAM outreach Wikimedian, Sarah Stierch, attended DISH 2011, a museum and cultural heritage conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Stierch was awarded a Wikimedia Foundation Participation Grant to attend, where she met with museum and heritage professionals from around the world and attended workshops and discussions related to digital heritage preservation.


View from first floor into Grand Hall, with Robert Burns' statue from the Calton Hill Monument.

December 1st saw Edinburgh's Scottish National Portrait Gallery reopen following a two-and-a-half-year, £17.6m (US$27.4m) refurbishment. Conversion of office and storage areas sees 60% more space available for displays, and the world's first purpose-built portrait space is redefining what a portrait gallery should contain; amongst the displays are photographs of the Scottish landscape—portraits of the country itself.

First opened in 1889, Sir Robert Rowand Anderson's red sandstone building was gifted to the nation by John Ritchie Findlay, then-owner of The Scotsman newspaper and, a well-known philanthropist. The original cost of construction between 1885 and 1890 is estimated at over 70,000 pounds sterling. Up until 1954, the building also housed the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland who moved to the National Museum of Scotland buildings on Chambers Street. The society's original meeting table now sits in the public part of the portrait gallery's library, stared down on by an array of busts and phrenological artefacts.

Image of the newly-installed glass elevator, significantly improving access to upper floors of the gallery.

Wikinews contributor Brian McNeil, with other members of the press, received a guided tour of the gallery the Monday prior to the reopening from Deputy Director Nicola Kalinsky. What Kalinsky described as an introduction to the gallery that previously took around 40 minutes, now takes in excess of an hour-and-a-half; with little in the way of questions asked, a more inquisitive tour group could readily take well over two hours to be guided round the seventeen exhibitions currently housed in the gallery.

A substantial amount of the 60% additional exhibition space is readily apparent on the ground floor. For example, on the left as you enter the gallery is the newly-fitted giant glass elevator, and the "Hot Scots" photographic portrait gallery. This exhibit is intended to show well-known Scottish faces, and will change over time as people fall out of favour, and others take their place. A substantial number of the people now being highlighted are current, and recent, cast members from the BBC's Doctor Who series.

Andy Mabbett's German Visit

Martina Fritz of the Hamburgmuseum scans the first QRpedia code in Germany

Whilst in Amsterdam for GLAMcamp, Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) gave a presentation on QRpedia. As a result of this, he was asked to repeat the presentation at a meeting between Wikimedia Germany (WM-DE) and a consortium of museums in Hamburg: five days later! After prompt action by WM-DE, who quickly arranged to cover his travel and accommodation costs, Andy was able to book tickets and rearrange his diary commitments.

WM-DE's Peter Weis, who arranged the meeting in Hamburg, also kindly acted as Andy's host, pulling together a programme of cultural and social activities during Andy's brief stay.

During the meeting, at Hamburgmuseum, Hamburg's local history museum (with which there is already a partnership), Andy and Peter spoke to senior representatives of several museums about Wikimedia's GLAM activities, including QRpedia. Andy highlighted the success of both at Derby Museum and Art Gallery and the The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in particular, proposing that they should be replicated in Hamburg. The proposals were well received, and after the meeting the first QRpedia code in Germany (we think, at least) was deployed at the museum's reception desk.

You can read more in Andy's blog post about both events.

Training for West Midlands GLAMs

Soon after he returned from Germany (see above), Andy Mabbett ran training event for staff from museums and other GLAMs in the West Midlands. Held at the Black Country Living Museum, the event (following on from a workshop Andy gave in September) was attended by a number of curators, plus librarians and staff from two botanical gardens (a type of organisation often overlooked in our GLAM work). Articles started or improved during the session (which was a prelude to a forthcoming Backstage Pass event at BCLM) included:


Creative Commons conference

During the Creative Commons Italia 2011 session of the 2011 NEXA Conference for Internet & Society in Turin, three presentations were given by Wikimedians. Ioldana Pensa (iopensa) spoke on the "Share Your Knowledge" project, Patrica Frias talked about the experience of the Cariplo Foundation within the "Share Your Knowledge" project and Andrea Zanni introduced people to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects.

The presentations highlighted the links between Creative Commons, Wikimedia projects and the involvement of cultural institutions in adopting a Creative Commons attribution share-alike license on their documentation to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource and the other Wikimedia projects. The synergy between Creative Commons, Wikimedia projects and cultural institutions are at the centre of the "Share Your Knowledge" project.

Share Your Knowledge: The experience of Cariplo Foundation

The experience of Cariplo Foundation within Share Your Knowledge was presented during Creative Commons Italia 2011 conference by Patricia Frias, in charge of the Foundation international relationships. Fondazione Cariplo is the major Italian private grant-maker liked to other Italian and international foundations. In 2010 Cariplo foundation supported the project Share Your Knowledge; in March 2011 it participated in it by adopting the Creative Commons attribution share-alike license on their art collection catalogue (around 800 images and artworks descriptions in Italian and English); in November 2011 Cariplo foundation started actively collaborating in the project by co-curating the first press conference (November 30th), by involving its staff from all departments (November 23rd) and by presenting the project to its Art and Culture Commission (December 21st). Cariplo Foundation included Share Your Knowledge within its institutional strategy and it linked it to its development and quality programs.


GLAMcamp in Amsterdam, Wiki Loves Monuments in the National Museum of Middle Ages

By Serein

GLAMcamp in Amsterdam

Private visit of the Museum.

A small group of five from Wikimédia France was in Amsterdam for GLAMcamp. Jean-Fred (Jean-Frédéric) and Sylvain (Ash Crow) also attended the debriefing of Wiki Loves Monuments, later joined by Benoît Evellin (Trizek), Adrienne Alix (Serein) and Rémi Mathis (Remi Mathis).

They discussed GLAM projects in France and beyond and met many Wikimedians of many different nationalities.

Awards ceremony for Wiki Loves Monuments in the National Museum of Middle Ages

"Hôtel de Cluny": the French National Museum of the Middle Ages.

On December 9, Wikimedia France organized the Wiki Loves Monuments award ceremony in the National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris.

The ceremony began with a private tour of the museum, led by two curators, after the opening hours. The visit was enjoyed by all participants.

Rémi's speech

After that, Rémi Mathis opened the awards ceremony in a speech recalling the importance of the contest and the interest for Wiki Loves Monuments and heritage in the Wikimedia movement. He also recalled the very important work done by the contributors in all Europe. The winners then received their prizes. Each winner explained their part in the contest. Jean-Fred announced the results of the European competition by sharing the comments of the jury.

The evening finished with cocktails.

The evening brought together around forty people: Wikimedians and others, including several people from the Ministry of Culture (including the manager of the Mérimée database - a database of historical monuments in France) and officials from heritage preservation associations.

The day before and the morning of the ceremony, the competition has been mentioned on France Info, the public French radio station of continuous information, with two short stories; one about free licenses and the other about the organization of the contest and about one of the castles represented in one of the winning photos.

See also


GLAM-Wiki conference in Girona; Catalonian painting donation

GLAM-Wiki conference in Girona

Attendees during a session at the GLAM-Wiki conference.

On December 19 more than 40 museum professionals from the province of Girona attended their first ever GLAM event. Amical Viquipèdia arranged a presentation on all of the Wikimedia Projects and introduced attendees to several ongoing GLAM projects around the world, with a particular focus on the Barcelona area. After lunch, a Wikipedia editing workshop was helped the museums professionals who attended event to learn more about how Wikipedia works.

Victor Balaguer Museum uploads his collection of paintings to Wikipedia

Thanks to a collaboration between the Vilanova museum and Amical Viquipèdia Mireia Rosich, museum director, approved the content donation as part of a mid-term collaboration project. The Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer is a museum founded in 1884 by Víctor Balaguer, a Catalan politician and writer. It is one of Catalonia's oldest and most singular museums. The building keeps almost all the original decoration and collections, so the visitor is able to know what the museum was like in the 19th century. This is now also possible through Wikimedia!. Paintings are uploaded and ready to use here.


GLAMcamp Amsterdam

Attendees in the Amsterdam Museum during a guided tour on Saturday.

There was a lot of food eaten during GLAMcamp Amsterdam, held December 2-4 at MediaMatic Lab, Amsterdam. Piles of stroopwafels and copious amounts of Tim Tams were consumed, although that's not to say attendees weren't productive from a GLAM perspective.

Coming from 21 different countries, the Wikimedians submitted almost 30 proposals for lightning talks, to share innovations behind their own projects and/ or ask for review and support. The weekend also offered 20 sessions where attendees worked on topics of interest to them. Feedback was offered, tools were hacked and new ideas were innovated.

There was time for fun, too, though. On Saturday evening, attendees went on a backstage tour of the newly-renovated Amsterdam Museum and on Sunday, they were treated to a tour of the Philips wing of the Rijksmuseum.

Friday

First keynote speaker Dr. Margriet Schavemaker during her presentation.

The first day of the conference, Friday December 2 began with Jessica Tangelder, the project manager for the event, welcomed Wikimedians and described what was to come over the weekend. The attendees then introduced themselves before the team who had been working on the GLAM toolset project explained the essence of the project.

After a lunch prepared by MediaMatic staff, cultural sector professionals began to arrive for the public workshop. Following a welcome from founder of the MediaMatic Lab Willem Velthoven and an announcement of a free content search interface from developer Thijs de Boer there were three keynotes.

Any attendee could submit an application for a lightning talk.

The first was from Dr. Margriet Schavemaker, Head of Collections and Research at the Stedelijk Museum on "Tricks and traps of sharing modern collections online". Next, David Haskiya, a product developer for Europeana discussed how the Europeana strategic plan was compatible with Wikimedia. He suggested that First World War-related content could be used during the centenary of the war, in 2014. Slides from his talk can be found on Commons. Frank Meijer, Project manager of Museum digitization at the Tropenmuseum gave the final presentation: "What is working with Wikimedia really like?".

Networking was an important part of the event and museum professionals then chatted with the Wikimedians over drinks at the MediaMatic Lab bar. The evening ended with dinner at the De Balie Grand Cafe.

Saturday

The second day, Saturday, began with a set of lightning talks on topics ranging from this newsletter to Freedom of panorama (or lack thereof) in France and archaeology and its compatibility with Wikimedia.

Parallel sessions during the day included how to begin a GLAM program in a country where one does not already exist, how to improve out internal communication (including a shoutout to TMIG), drafting a "freedom declaration". There were also sessions on QRpedia (during which what we believe to be the first QRpedia code in a Netherlands GLAM was deployed), building glamwiki.org as a separate website and Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in 2012.

There was also a surprise visit from Saturday's surprise keynote presenter: Sinter Klaas. He distributed gifts (out of a cloth Wikimania bag), handed out sweets and left almost as quickly as he had arrived.

Amsterdam Museum tour

Looking at an old archival card in the museum library.

On Saturday evening Wikimedians were given a backstage tour of the Amsterdam Museum. The "Amsterdam DNA codes" (QR codes on guide booklets which, when scanned, would play a short film in the language of the booklet) were presented by one of the developers of the tool, in addition to an introduction to the archives and an insight into the museum's painting collection.

The Wikimedians and museum staff then walked to a nearby restaurant where they had dinner together and continued networking.

Sunday

During the weekend, the first QRpedia code in the Netherlands was deployed, with permission, in MediaMatic Lab.

The final day of the event, Sunday, saw the last few lightning talk submissions before breaking out for the penultimate parallel sessions. Among other things, Wikimedians worked on improving documentation, especially best practices, and improving statistics and metrics. After a short break for coffee, the attendees split up again to discuss outreach to diverse groups, improving documentation especially if related to Wikipedians in Residence and continuing work on statistics.

Further reading

  • Etherpads:


Australian Paralympic Committee and other Australian and New Zealand GLAM efforts

By Wikimedia Australia members, New Zealand Wikimedians and LauraHale

Wikimedians to the Games

The Australian Paralympic Committee and Wikimedia Australia will be formally announcing a program being launched on 10 January 2012 to improve content related to the history of Paralympic Movement in Australia. This program will provide an opportunity for two Wikimedians to travel from Australia to London to cover the 2012 Summer Parlaympics for Wikinews and Wikipedia with a behind the scenes perspective courtesy of a pair press passes provided by the Australian Paralympic Committee. Their airfare and accommodation will be covered Australian Paralympic Committee and Wikimedia Australia . Selection will be based on a two round process. The first round will run from 10 January 2012 to 20 April 2012. The second round will run from 21 April 2012 to 30 June 2012. Participants will be required to write one Good Article related to Australia and the Paralympic Movement, and to publish one article about disability sport in Australia on Wikinews. Beyond that, there will be a point system and the top four point earning participants at the end of the first round will get press passes to attend the Games. Points will then be reset and the top two point earners in the second round will earn paid accommodation and transport in order to report on the Games. Details about this incentive program can be found at HOPAU: Wikimedians to the Games.

Australian Paralympic Committee

Marayke Jonkers with her silver medal from the SM4 150m individual medley at the 2002 IPC World Swimming Championships in Mar del Plata, Argentina

Pictures donated by the Australian Paralympic Committee are being used across other language wikis, with an article about Marayke Jonkers being created in French and using a picture featuring her.

Paralympians continued to appear as Did You Knows (DYK) on Wikipedia's main page. Articles that appeared in December included Angie Ballard which had 750 article views, Hamish MacDonald, Karni Liddell and Branka Pupovac which had over 5,000 views between them. The project's Wikimedian in Residence, Laura Hale created 11 spoken word articles in December. Combined with the spoken word article by Chris Nunn for the Chris Nunn article, this brings the total number of Australian Paralympic articles up to twelve. These twelve articles represent 13% of all Sport Spoken Word articles and 1.2% of all Spoken Word articles on English Wikipedia . Thirteen articles about Australian Paralympians were added to Simple Wikipedia. These were the first articles about Australian Paralympians to be created on the wiki. They also represent most of the articles on Simple Wikipedia about Paralympians, with only two articles existing before.

On 18 December, Australian basketballer Jeremy Doyle, who was supposed to be on the men's wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, passed away as a result of cancer. The community is sorry for his loss, and at least ten different editors made edits to the article about him since the news became public. The day the news broke, there 4,500 views of his article and 3,500 views a day later. On 21 December, a Spoken Word version of his article was created. A Finnish language article was also created after news of his death broke.

Priya Cooper, the subject of the first Australian Paralympic article to become a Good Article.
On 22 December, the Priya Cooper article became the first Australian Paralympic article to earn Good Article status. Improving our article quality has been a major push for this project.

The History of Paralympic Movement in Australia project was again mentioned in an e-mail circulated to staff at the Australian Paralympic Committee. This e-mail highlighted some of the many accomplishments for the project since it has launched, and helped to boost project visibility amongst staff.

The involvement of the Australian Paralympic Committee in encouraging people to document the history of the movement on Wikipedia led to an increase in the number of articles about Australian Paralympic movement during 2011. At the beginning of 2011, there were only 56 articles with an average rating of 1.3 on English Wikipedia about Australian Paralympians. As of 30 December 2011, there were 373 with an average rating of 1.6. [1] At the beginning of 2011, there were 15 articles about Australia at the Paralympics with an average rating of 1.3 and at the end, there were 33 articles and a rating of 1.5.[2] During the year, over forty Australian Paralympic related articles appeared on the main page of Wikipedia as Did You Knows, including several that featured pictures. One of these articles had over 10,000 views. The GLAM participation has helped to improve important Wikipedia content related to disability sport. The table below gives an idea of to the level of activity involved by showing information about the top 30 most edited articles in the past year.

Article Edits in last year Total edits Total contributors Last updated
Australia_at_the_1996_Summer_Paralympics 203 203 15 08 November 2011, 03:37:53
Priya_Cooper 151 176 36 23 December 2011, 22:39:52
Louise_Sauvage 100 156 65 16 December 2011, 00:41:02
Elizabeth_Edmondson 92 92 18 26 November 2011, 03:50:34
Jeremy_Doyle 72 72 17 24 December 2011, 06:54:52
Frank_Ponta 71 71 16 01 October 2011, 19:42:01
Jessica_Gallagher 59 59 10 02 December 2011, 00:37:27
Daniela_Di_Toro 52 52 18 09 December 2011, 12:19:50
Amanda_Fraser 47 47 15 11 December 2011, 02:05:11
Daniel_Fitzgibbon 47 47 9 30 November 2011, 16:02:29
Casey_Redford 44 44 13 04 December 2011, 09:07:46
Troy_Sachs 43 43 8 19 November 2011, 10:40:27
Tristan_Knowles 41 41 10 18 December 2011, 10:09:30
Evan_O'Hanlon 40 47 16 28 December 2011, 14:54:28
Fabian_Blattman 39 39 12 22 December 2011, 09:00:39
George_Bedbrook 37 37 5 21 December 2011, 07:38:23
Brad_Ness 35 42 16 25 December 2011, 22:58:16
Steve_Graham 34 34 3 13 November 2011, 06:38:47
Catherine_Huggett 32 32 7 26 November 2011, 19:55:44
Matthew_Cowdrey 32 106 44 28 November 2011, 10:48:32
Justin_Eveson 31 31 8 29 December 2011, 13:15:44
Kerrie_Engel 31 31 6 08 November 2011, 13:40:17
Shaun_Norris 31 31 7 26 November 2011, 18:40:27
Marayke_Jonkers 30 47 18 13 December 2011, 23:27:14
Alicia_Aberley 29 29 11 15 December 2011, 09:36:53
Brendan_Dowler 29 29 8 29 December 2011, 12:59:11
Angie_Ballard 28 28 11 22 December 2011, 08:51:14
Elizabeth_Wright_(swimmer) 27 27 11 03 December 2011, 05:11:16
Liesl_Tesch 27 27 14 13 December 2011, 20:59:30
Brett_Stibners 26 26 7 26 November 2011, 18:44:54

GLAMcamp Amsterdam

At GLAMcamp Amsterdam, LauraHale talked to several people about the the Australian Paralympic Committee efforts to do Spoken Word articles and showed them the Chris Nunn article. She also spoke about the content collaboration program which the APC and Wikimedia Australia are co-developing. The project has the potential to offer one of the largest incentives to help encourage Wikipedians to edit of any GLAM partnership type incentives run to date. Beyond that, she talked to people about the process of GLAM partnerships as part of the tender process, and dealing with geographic challenges related to Australia and Oceania at large. She also learned about Wiki Loves Monuments, implementation issues related to the event and invited European organisers to come to Australia to talk to local Australians about organising it in Australia.

State Library of Queensland

On 9 December, a workshop was held at the State Library of Queensland. It was attended by over ten people. Participants worked on creating articles around several topics including Reading in Queensland B-24D Liberator Crash on 26 February 1945, Ipswich to Grandchester Railway, 1865, Kilcoy District Historical Society, Queensland children's book illustrators, Brisbane suburbs with Aboriginal names, Public Library Service Queensland, Lieutenant George Edwards, and Raymond McCosker. The Australian community was asked to help improve these articles on Wikimedia Australia's mailing list and on the Australian Wikipedia Noticeboard.

Russian Pictures

Russavia is a member of Wikimedia Australia. Through out 2011, he has been working with Russian organisations to try to make photographic content related to Russia available on Commons. Resources he has assisted in making available include:

Government
  • Kremlin - www.kremlin.ru - all materials from the Kremlin website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|Kremlin.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Kremlin.ru as well.
Diplomatic missions
Embassies
  • Embassy of Russia in Astana - www.rfembassy.kz - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Astana website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|rfembassy.kz}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Rfembassy.kz as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Bujumbura - www.burundi.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Bujumbura website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|burundi.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Burundi.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Kabul - www.afghanistan.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Kabul website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|afghanistan.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Afghanistan.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Libreville - www.gabon.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Libreville website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|gabon.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Gabon.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Lusaka - www.zambia.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Lusaka website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|zambia.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Zambia.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Minsk - www.belarus.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Minsk website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|belarus.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Belarus.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in New Delhi - www.rusembassy.in - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in New Delhi website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|rusembassy.in}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Rusembassy.in as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Tirana - www.albania.mid.ru - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Tirana website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|albania.mid.ru}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Albania.mid.ru as well.
  • Embassy of Russia in Vienna - www.rusemb.at - all materials from the Embassy of Russia in Vienna website have been licenced under {{tl|CC-BY-3.0}}. Please use {{tl|rusemb.at}} for the permission, and this will place the file in commons:Category:Rusemb.at as well.
Consulates

RecentChangesCamp 2012

The University of Canberra, several Wikimedians and members of the wider Australian wiki community are busy planning RecentChangesCamp 2012 to be held in Canberra from 20 - 22 January 2012. At the last RecentChangesCamp, there were a handful of GLAM participants who talked about struggles using Wikipedia and related projects, and how these projects were used inside their organisations. All GLAM people are invited to Canberra to attend the event to learn more about wikis, both from a Wikimedia Foundation perspective and from a deployment inside their internal organisation perspective.

Wikimedia Lontar's Project

Wikimedia Indonesia's token of appreciation to Chris Woodrich as English Wikipedia Volunteer

In late November and early December, Indonesia wrote up Wikimedia Lontar's Project results, success measures and thanked participants including Wikimedians from Australia and Canada. The three major successes for the project included: Increased reach for the Indonesian language Wikipedia, increased article quality and credibility of articles on the Indonesian language Wikipedia, and diversified participation on Wikipedia.

Wikimedians involved included John Vandenberg (Wikimedia Australia), Chris Woodrich (English Wikipedia Volunteer, trainer and project monitoring), Kartika Sari Henry (Trainer and project monitoring), Mulwardi Tjitra (Trainer, project monitoring and central administration) and Creative Commons Indonesia: Ivan Lanin & Alifia Qonita Sudharto Lontar Foundation employees involved with this effort included Tanya Torres , Joy Wearne, Hani Siti, Wikan Satriati and Shaily.

New Zealand

New Zealand is not in Australia, but as there isn't a New Zealand chapter and Wikimedia Australia is trying to do greater outreach in the region we're happy to include them in Australia. Stuartyeates is a New Zealander active in the GLAM sector. He did a demonstration at the National Digital Forum sponsored by the National Library of New Zealand, Archives New Zealand and Te Papa Tongarewa (the national Museum of New Zealand) at Te Papa. The demonstration was mainly a series of one-on-one conversations with a range of librarians and archivists about wikipedia and how some of the quality control, authority control and Wikipedia:GLAM activities. Wikipedia:GLAM and Wikipedia:Help_desk were frequently mentioned as good places to start.

The following day Stuartyeates attended LODLAM-NZ, the latest in the series of Linked Open Data in Libraries Archives and Museums, in which he co-chaired a session with * (a Phd Student from Australia) on metadata vocabularies LODLAM NZ cares about. The session focused on the nature of mapping between metadata schema, particularly subject headings. Ngā Ūpoko Tukutuku, for example, is a set of subject headings with the same universal scope as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, but there is no mapping between the two and this lack of mapping is an explicit design goal of Ngā Ūpoko Tukutuku. Stuartyeates has recently leveraged Ngā Ūpoko Tukutuku to populate Category:Redirects from Māori language terms and is in discussion with the National Library of New Zealand to get copyright clearance to create an automatically-generated experimental portal from the MARC file.


Wiki Loves Monuments in Russia

Read this report in English or Russian.

Wiki Loves Monuments in Russia / Wiki Loves Monuments в России

Winners’ certificates
more photos from the ceremony >>
Дипломы победителей
больше фотографий с награждения >>

"Wiki loves Petersburg" finally ended in December. The prize-giving ceremony was held on December 14 in Saint-Petersburg. All winners had been new to Wikimedia and created accounts just to upload their photos. The winning images can all be seen here.

В декабре окончательно завершился конкурс «Википедия любит Петербург». 14 декабря состоялось закрытие выставки «Википедия любит Петербург» и торжественное награждение победителей российской части соревнования; все они зарегистрировались в проектах Фонда Викимедиа специально для участия в конкурсе. С фотографиями-победителями можно ознакомиться по ссылке.

Wrapping up 2011

Intro

The past two months in Israel have been very eventful and GLAM has progressed quite a lot. Below is a review of the different collaborations and events we have had during November & December 2011, as well as some plans for 2012.

GLAM:IMJ Project

Edit-a-thon at the IMJ

On November 8th, we had the first Edit-a-thon at the Israel Museum. Around 20 wikipedians, aged 12 to 70, came to the Information Center for Israeli Art at the museum, and worked together on expending articles about Israeli artists that are part of the IMJ GLAM project.

The Marathon was hosted by Dr. Allison Kupietzky, head of the Information Center, and her staff, who gave wikipedians access to the artist files at the Information Center. The files hold archival info such as catalogues, newspaper clippings, photos, videos and other such finds.

Since one of the project's goals was to welcome new wikipedians, the evening began at 17:00 with a one hour one-on-one tutoring about editing in wikipedia. By 18:00, the Information Center was buzzing with wikipedians, volunteers and staff. Experienced editors were working hand in hand with new wikipedians, going through the endless sea of information, sharing their findings and documenting them in the articles. Time flew very quickly, and the evening ended at 21:00, with a "taste for more" and an open invitation to the wiki community to come resume the work whenever we want.

The 8th Digital Heritage Conference at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem

On November 16th, we had the privilege of attending the 8th annual conference on the digitization of cultural heritage. The conference is probably the most professional & important one in Israel on the subject, so we were fortunate to have a two-hour session to present our projects.

The session, which was called "Wikipedia and GLAM Projects - How galleries, libraries, archives and museums work with Wikipedia & Wikimedia to share knowledge", was chaired by Dr. Allison Kupietzky, Collections Database Manager and Head of the Information Center for Israeli Art at the IMJ, and had 5 parts -

  1. "How to change the world while still in your slippers - Wikipedia, Wikimedia and the free content movement" - A presentation by Tomer Ashur, Chairman of Wikimedia Israel. This presentation offered an intro to how wikipedia works, and presented the structure of Wikimedia as a free content movement and its synergy with various projects such as Wikipedia.
  2. "Wikimedia's Outreach Projects - from Africa to GLAM" - A presentation by Shani Evenstine, GLAM Projects Coordinator, Wikimedia Israel. The lecture offered a general review of various outreach projects, focusing on GLAM projects around the world and presenting GLAM projects in Israel.
  3. "Israeli Art on Wikipedia as part of the GLAM IMJ Project" - A presentation by Dr. Allison Kupietzky, Head of the Information Center for Israeli Art, IMJ & Yair Talmor, Wikipedian-in-Residence, IMJ Project. The lecture elaborated on how the joint project between Wikipedia and the museum has created a new interactive environment and resource for information on Israeli art.
  4. "Working Together - The National Library and Wikipedia" - A presentation by Ido Ivri, Manager of Digital Programs, the National Library of Israel. The lecture described the National Library of Israel's initiative for providing access to a historic collection of 3,000 photographs, by making it accessible on Wikipedia, the benefits of the process to the general public, what the National Library gains and possible implications on the digitization and licensing processes.
  5. A Q&A panel with the audience.
  • Tomer Ashur
    Tomer Ashur
  • Dr. Allison Kupietzky
    Dr. Allison Kupietzky
  • Dr. Allison Kupietzky and Tomer Ashur
    Dr. Allison Kupietzky and Tomer Ashur
  • Ido Ivri
    Ido Ivri

The sessions was a huge success. It seemed that the audience, which included representatives from a variety of GLAMs in Israel, could not remained indifferent and reported that it was one of the most interesting sessions in the conference. Personally, the most exciting & moving part was when reps. from top GLAMs in Israel approached us after the session, not only to say that it was intriguing and inspiring, but also to express their wish to have similar collaborations with WM-IL.

I'm very happy to report that as a result of this conference and the IMJ project, we have had contact with "The Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design", "Beit Hatfutsot - The Museum of the Jewish People", "The Library of Haifa University" and "Yad Vashem." We are exploring the possibility of joint projects with these GLAMs, as well as a few more who have approached us. No doubt, it will be an exciting 2012!

End of Residency and Achievements

As reported before, part of the GLAM:IMJ project included a Wikipedian-in-Residence program. The first WIR, Yair Talmor, began his work at the Museum on Sep. 18th, and his residency ended on Nov. 30th.

Throughout his two months at the IMJ, Talmor worked in order to promote the goals set at the beginning of the project. This was no easy task - although an effort was made to have realistic and reachable milestones, the project was very ambitious and much energy was invested in it. Many challenges were faced as the first GLAM project in Israel.

As part of his residency, Talmor led editing sessions with Museum staff, promoted the relations between museum staff, volunteers of the Information Center and the Hebrew Wikipedia community, worked with the museum in order to release media files to Wiki Commons and cultivated a personal relationship with artists [and their families], who eventually donated info and media to the project.

Here are some of the milestones achieved throughout this short pilot -

Articles

  • 58 Articles about Israeli Artists in Hebrew and English were started and edited. The basic info came from the artist files at the Information Center. Articles were then expended by volunteers and Wikipedians, with info from the Information center and the museum, as well as info that was received from artists themselves. Since the beginning of the project some articles have been translated into Chinese, Polish, Dutch, Russian, German, Spanish and lately - Swahili!
  • 25 art pieces from the permanent collection at the museum now have an article as well.
  • Some articles have been proofed and edited by the main curator of the IMJ, as well as two other curators, who have learned to edit in Wikipedia.

Media

  • The Copyright department at the museum has agreed to release media files owned by the museum to Wiki Commons. So far, 126 files of pieces from the collection have been uploaded, as well as 12 pieces from the Info Center, including the Tsafrir Collection and the Debel Gallery Collection.
  • The museum has consented to releasing the two collections mentioned above to Commons, and some of the material has already been used to research and edit articles.
  • As of today, there are more than 300 files in the project's category in Commons.
  • The Museum gave its permission to release audio files and clips from films about Israeli Art & Artists. Those files are in the process of begin digitized and loaded to commons.

Personal Relations

  • A personal connection was made with a large portion of the artists participating in the pilot. A lot of formal and current information was received and artists were mostly happy for the opportunity to collaborate with Wikipedia and the Information Center and expose their work officially to a wider audience. The work with Artists is still in process.
  • Two events were held at the Museum: a "Behind the scenes tour" and an "Edit-a-thon". The project also participated in a conference and as a result of which new collaborations are now emerging.
  • A new Facebook group was opened in order to expose a wider audience to the project and its events.
  • Exposing the project in Wikipedia has resulted in 30 new editors and new volunteers world wide, including the 16 already involved when the project began.
  • Traffic to the Information Center and the Museum has grown. Statistics from October reveal that about 600 hits to the Museum's website came from Wikipedia, compared with 289 hits from Europeana and 72 from google.
  • Israel has become an active participant in the worldwide growing GLAM movement.

What's Next with the IMJ

Though the residency is over, the pilot is yet to be finished. We are still working on articles, on receiving info and permissions from artists and releasing more media files from the museum into Commons.

We are also in the process of producing a final event with the museum - a conference on "Israeli Art and digitized Information." This event will hopefully take place at the museum and will target gallery owners, artists, curators, art lecturers, art students, art lovers and of course -- wikipedians. The conference aims to expose the public to the results of the IMJ project, and encourage experts to contribute, share information and collaborate on promoting Israeli Art & Artists on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

We hope that by the end of January, we will be able to finish the pilot and have more accurate statistics; but even now, the project has grown to be a success. The positive contact and collaboration with the IMJ will continue and we are hoping it will expend to other projects and other departments at the museum.

More details in the coming months.

Other Activities

GLAM:NLI Project

It is with great pleasure that we announce the beginning of the second big GLAM project in Israel - a collaboration with the National Library of Israel. This project also hosts a Wikipedian-in-Residence, Daniel Tzvi Framowitz, who will work at the NLI once-twice a week, in the coming six months. The project was initiated by Ido Ivri, Manager of Digital Programs at the NLI, and a new wikipedian.

We wish them success and will report further on that project next month!

GLAMcamp Amsterdam - A Personal Report

At the beginning of December two Israelis participated in GLAMcamp Amsterdam - Deror Lin and myself. As the new coordinator of all GLAM projects and initiatives in Israel, I came to Amsterdam with an agenda - first, it was really important for me to get to know the people who are doing GLAM worldwide. I wanted to learn about what else is going on around the world, get inspiration and new ideas. I also wanted to share with other GLAMers the work that has been done in Israel, not only to get feedback, but also to inspire back [as I do think that as a small country that has recently joined GLAM efforts, we've been doing great, in a relatively short time]. And finally - it was an opportunity to work on some technical statistics tool that we really need for GLAM projects.

All in all, it was a very enriching experience. The event held multiple, simultaneous sessions, most of which I found very interesting - from learning about the collaboration with Europeana at the public session and Wiki Loves Monuments to QRpedia and more technical wiki-stuff. To me, one of the most practical and important sessions was the Statistics & Metrics session, as I believe the work started there will result in tools used in GLAM projects worldwide. It was all thought provoking, and I couldn't wait to get back to Israel, so that I can spread the word and start implementing some of the things I've learnt.

On the personal level, I simply enjoyed getting to know the people behind the names and despite the cold weather [and the botel ;)], I really enjoyed Amsterdam. I'll particularly remember the "behind the scene" tours we had at the museums, especially the Amsterdam Museum, which I found inspiring.

On that note, I'd like to thank again WM-NL for hosting all of us and making this an unforgettable experience!

New Year's Resolutions

On December 18th, WM-IL had its 'General Assembly'. The evening began with financial reports, went on to review existing projects in Israel and finally discussed the projects [and budget] for 2012. After giving the assembly a brief about GLAM activities, I'm happy to say that not only does GLAM has the support of the board, wikimedians and the Hebrew wikipedia community, but it was also decided that on 2012 -

  • Israel will join the international "Wiki Loves Monuments" contest
  • A new QR codes project will be initiated in Tel-Aviv.


No doubt, it's going to be an interesting & exciting year!


A Happy & Productive 2012, everyone!


Shani.

WikiAfrica: Cultural institutions contributing to African knowledge on Wikipedia

The WikiAfrica project aims to involve cultural institutions in 30,000 African contributions to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects by 2012. The project was launched in 2006 by lettera27 Foundation in collaboration with Wikimedia Italy; since 2011 WikiAfrica is developed with a partnership between lettera27 and the Africa Centre. The Africa Centre is a cultural platform based in Cape Town supporting and producing cultural projects and initiatives. In 2011 the Africa Centre adopted the CC BY-SA on its online documentation[1] and in November launched a call for a Wikipedian in Residence[2] in charge of contributing to WikiAfrica[3] and coordinating more GLAM outreach in Africa.

Since 2006 other cultural institutions based in Africa have been involved in contributing to Wikipedia:

  • doual'art: a cultural non profit organization focussed on contemporary art and urban research in Doula. Since 1991 doual'art produces public art and collects documentation about its city. doual'art provides all of its online documentation in CC BY-SA: project descriptions, artworks descriptions, biographies of artists and experts.
  • Chimurenga is based in Cape Town. The Chimurenga Library is a repertoire of magazines which influenced writing and thinking in Africa; the website is in CC BY-SA.
  • Kër Thiossane, an art centre, residency space and training facility based in Dakar. The centre provided training to intellectuals, artists and authors in Dakar on how to contribute to Wikipedia and wiki websites.

Other cultural institutions based in Africa have expressed interest in contributing to Wikipedia and collaborating with the Wikimedia projects.

Cultural institutions currently involved in WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia project with contents related to Africa[4].

References

  1. ↑ Please refer to the CC BY-SA metacode on http://www.africacentre.org.
  2. ↑ Call for a Wikipedian in residence at the Africa Centre http://www.africacentre.net/lib/downloads/Wikipedian_in_residency.pdf.
  3. ↑ The project WikiAfrica on the Africa Centre website http://www.africacentre.net/wikiafrica
  4. ↑ Case studies and translations in progress.


January's GLAM events

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