GLAM/Newsletter/December 2022/Single
Ongoing projects with open culture
Cartografías Abiertas: work in progress
The project that won Fundación Williams and Potenciar grant is on the move. At this point, we are working on the registration and digitization of different type of documents related to indigenous communities safeguarded by cultural and educational institutions from Chaco. At the same time, along with a team of developers, we are designing the platform were all these cultural expressions will be linked and shown in a collaborative map. This whole process means involving a big team of collaborators from Chacom which are encouraged to make decisions so that the platform is representative of their way of understanding and naming their culture.
From Wikimedia Argentina we are interested on making contact with chapters developing similar proposals as regards indigenous culture and wikimedia projects. Let us know via cultura@wikimedia.org.ar so we can keep in touch and share knowledge!
Código Cultura: videogames and open access
During mid September, October and November we developed a new training program aimed for groups of cultural practitioners that want to generate innovative digital ways to promote their opened collections. Several professionals teached about open licenses and intellectual properties, management, transmedia narratives and videogames, as well as two specialized tutors helped the groups walk through the program and finally present their ideas turned into real projects.
Two groups won the grant for financing their ideas during the first part of 2023: "Carmen, aventuras en el pasado. Saga 1" by two professionals from Plaza Huincul City Archive and "Ariel en Chascomús vs las fuerzas del olvido” by a group allied with the Chacomús Municipality. Meet these groups and their videogame projects on our social media post.
A YEAR in REarVIEW!
A YEAR in REarVIEW!
2022 was a kind of a first major milestone for (Open) GLAM wiki work in Croatia. With Clubture@20 being a first collective GLAM project of pioneering both research and education (OK - maybe we tried too much). Though work on Wikipedia in the Croatian language, Wikidata and Commons was not easy, after 6 months we have a group of people who have cultural background and basic Wikimedia knowledge*(also including amazing Italian intern) ... hence able to plan a more projects in the future.
We also have first regional visibility and networking experience thanks to CEE Meeting in Ohrid where we did (recorded) workshop-discussion noGLAMorɚ - WM and (non-institutional) cultural organizations, as a direction often not taken in Wikimedia.
Aside from this we also presented at online conference ADRINETBOOK (co-organized by Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and CONTACTS by Pixelache festival at Kiasma, but also again supported Wiki work on the Zagreb's glitch art and (20th!) human rights film festivals *(with focus on Wikidata and Wikispore).
In 2023, we hope to advance the partnerships both with cultural and art organizations in Croatia, as well as Wikimedia Affiliates in the region and beyond. The ongoing communication with WWH UG on Trogir, Wikimedia Germany for Wikibase as SaaSS, Wikimedia Czechia plans of ICOM Southeast Redlist work and hopefully others (like Wikimedia CEE Hub and Wikimedia Sweden with their Hub for institutional partnerships) should mark 2023.
If you're interested in our work, please contact or follow us at: GLAM@mi2.hr and HR/SH Wikipedia
or follow via #GLAMwikiCROATIA #GLAMwikiHR on: FB +Insta. +T and Mastodon.Social ! <3
Edit-a-thon on contemporary Danish artists from the former Yugoslavia
On Friday December 2nd 2022, Wiki Labs Kultur – the main Wikimedia-based GLAM initiative in Denmark – and the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) hosted an edit-a-thon with the theme of contemporary Danish artists from the former Yugoslavia. The edit-a-thon coincided with the SMK exhibition Connections – Danish artists from Ex-Yugoslavia with the same theme. The event was organized by the curator of the exhibition, Tijana Mišković, and Merete Sanderhoff, curator and senior advisor in the field of digital museum practice at SMK, who is also the main point of contact for Wiki Labs Kultur.
The event was held in a thematic setting – one of SMK’s art workshops – and was attended by roughly twenty people, including Wikimedians, interested laypeople, art professionals and some of the artists featured in the exhibition (though of course the latter could not edit articles about themselves). The goal of the edit-a-thon was to create articles on the Danish Wikipedia about the exhibited artists, but other content creation also took place such as taking portraits of some of the artists to be released under a Creative Commons license. Generally, two people would sit together and work on an article or something else, with experienced Wikipedians moving around the room to help with any issues. According to the Event Metrics tool, roughly half of the contributing accounts were new editors.
In total, seven new articles were created, spanning six of the seven exhibited artists and the exhibition designer. However, an article on one of the artists had already been created prior to the event and was improved during the edit-a-thon along with two other articles. As a result, all of the artists featured in the exhibit are now covered on the Danish Wikipedia.
The programme of the edit-a-thon was designed with the intent of giving only a very short introduction to the general principles of Wikipedia – such as editing from a neutral point of view, making sure statements are verifiable and the requirement of notability – as well as the very basics of editing – i.e. how to edit existing articles, create new ones, and insert a reference. This was based on prior experience that getting into the minutiae of policies, guidelines and editing from the beginning often slows things down and make things more confusing than neccessary. Instead, questions about things such as inserting pictures or more advanced formatting were answered ad hoc by the experienced Wikipedians throughout the workshop. This seemed to work well, especially since the Visual Editor is so similar to WYSIWYG-editors like WordPad or TextEdit that most people can intuitively begin work on an article.
CIS-A2K launches GLAM projects in Aurangabad, Maharashtra
Sayajirao Gaekwad Archive
CIS-A2K has built partnership with research organisation in Aurangabad to develop archive on Sayajirao Gaekwad and all works published by him between 1870-1939. The digitisation of old works at Baroda is being planned with this organisation. The first batch of 60 books was released in free license and uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.
Archive on Hyderabad Freedom Struggle
Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada Institute Of Socio-Economic Research & National Integration established in 1972, holds an archive on Hyderabad Freedom Struggle. It contains old documents, newspapers, books and manuscripts. The Wikimedia session was conducted for the trustees of the institute. The discussion on digitisation and relicensing was also done extensively. The action plan has been developed.
Relicensing
In December 2022, Marathi authors Sunilkumar Lawate, Tara Bhawalkar, N. M. Joshi, Vidyadhar Gokhale, Sayyad Amin have released their 46 reference value books into CC-By-SA 4.0. The books are being uploaded on Wikimedia Commons after the digitisation.
Digitalization in Deli Serdang and Yogyakarta; #1Lib1Ref Workshop; Structured Data Marathon
Digitalization in Deli Serdang and Yogyakarta
After we went to help digitize the books in West Sumatra at the end of November, at the beginning of December GLAM Indonesia team continued to North Sumatra to our other partner organization, Museum Daerah Deli Serdang (MDDS), to help with their digitization project. Their collections that are being digitized into Commons are the letters from Sauti (d. 1963), a local artist most famous for creating a dance called Serampang 12 dance, including the original music score and the description of the dance.
In addition to that, GLAM Indonesia is also digitizing the Museum Dewantara Kirti Griya (MDKG) in Yogyakarta. The digitization project was done by a volunteer who previously participated in Wikistories for GLAM competition, who lives in Yogyakarta. This is the first part of the digitization project in this institution. They also agreed to digitize their photo collection and their book collections. (See also our previous partnership with MDKG here, here, here, and here).
Structured Data Marathon: Indonesian Stamps Edition
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In our ISA Campaign this year-end, we chose a brand new collection that has not been described through structured data before. Wikimedia Commons has more than 5.400 stamps of all subjects from Indonesia, starting from 1945 (independence) till 2022.
The 8-day-long campaign was met with tremendous enthusiasm, with the first day alone seeing the number of contributions exceed that of the number of files. At the end of the campaign (and the year), the total number of contributions have reached 30 thousand contributions, second only to the 10-weeks long WikiLoves Africa 2022 Campaign in terms of total contributions during a single-campaign.
In terms of numbers: 17 contributors on average contributed 1784 contributions, with the daily average of 3792 contributions, and each stamp image gets an additional six new descriptions on average.
Feel free to browse through the thousands of fascinating pictures from this collection, and even add some descriptions yourselves here!
#1Lib1Ref Workshop
To increase awareness of the #1Lib1Ref campaign in January, we held an online workshop about how to add references to Indonesian Wikipedia on Zoom that 19 participants attended. GLAM Indonesia plan to organize the annual #1Lib1Ref campaign with the rest of the global Wikimedia movements in January and May 2023.
Updates on collaboration with the Egyptian Museum
Museo Egizio in Turin
In May, was signed the four-year agreement with the Egyptian Museum of Turin and Creative Commons Italy and from that point on, work began in more detail on the activity addendum. The Museo Egizio, the Egyptian Museum of Turin, is the oldest Nilotic museum in the world and it is one of the most important Italian GLAM institutions that made available under a free Creative Commons license the digital images of his collection, using CC BY 2.0 for almost 3,000 of the approximately 40,000 objects. In addition through this collaboration the museum will make available the content and digital reproductions of its collections with the most open tools and licenses possible, adopting the Creative Commons tools and licenses, compatible with open access, most suitable for the various types of content and materials shared.
In December, the museum shares the database related to the pieces of the collection displayed in the halls and 2383 folders with images, each containing several photographs in tif format for a total of 450 GB. The transfer is done directly from the museum site to Wikimedia Italia's Nextlcoud instance via the "RCLONE" tool. More details on the import can be found on Meta.
The images are very high definition and are scheduled to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2023; in the meantime, a specific property has been created on Wikidata for the Museum. The property P11414 Museo Egizio in Turin ID, in now the authority identification for an object in the collections of the Museo Egizio in Turin.
The Great Macron War, Critter of the Week, and West Coast Wikisource
The Great Macron War of 2018 features in a podcast
New Zealand media company Stuff produces a current affairs podcast True Story, presented by Adam Dunning and Eugene Bingham. Episodes have included stories of Uber drivers, a shady lawyer, and the addictiveness of sugar. For their last episode of 2022, Dunning interviewed New Zealand Wikipedians about their work, and produced an episode centred on 2018's RfC on allowing macrons to be used in articles on New Zealand placenames, colloquially known as the Great Macron War. To explain the working of an RfC and how Wikipedians reverse vandalism and deal with disputes, Dunning and Bingham interviewed User:Schwede66, User:Giantflightlessbirds, and User:Ambrosia10, corresponded with User:Gadfium (who preferred to stay anonymous), and attended an online Aotearoa New Zealand meetup. The resulting 48 minute podcast turned out to be a sympathetic portrayal of Wikipedians and a good introduction to the Movement for a general radio audience.
- Listen to True Story Episode 6: Secret agents, snarky battles and robots; Inside Wikipedia's great macron war
Three hundred episodes of Critter of the Week
Critter of the Week is a long-running and popular Radio New Zealand show in which Nicola Toki (originally of the Department of Conservation, now head of Forest & Bird) and the host Jesse Mulligan talk about New Zealand species both endangered and neglected. It has been running since 2015: on 9 December 2022, the pot-bellied seahorse Hippocampus abdominalis (right) was the subject of the 300th episode. Almost from the start Giantflightlessbirds and other volunteers have been creating or improving the corresponding Wikipedia article for each species to coincide with the Friday broadcast. This was initialy coordinated through Twitter; a project page was created in 2017 (and now contains a more accurate episode list than Radio New Zealand's own website). In 2022 Giantflightlessbirds set up a mailing list, and the 15 volunteers subscribed receive advance notice of the week's species. Online training was run this year for volunteers new to Wikipedia. The programme's illustrator, cartoonist Giselle Clarkson, was persuaded to release a selection of art under an open CC license, now being used for the project banner and Talk page awards. A new initiative for 2022 was awarding the year's most productive volunteer a small prize: a tea towel printed with Clarkson's artwork. Wikipedia volunteers are regularly acknowledged on-air as part of the team helping increase public awareness of New Zealand's endangered species.
- Listen to Critter of the Week 23 December 2022: Copper beard orchid, including a shout-out to the Wikipedians on Team Critter
A year of the West Coast Wikisource project
The poet and travel writer Blanche Baughan has just been the subject of a biography (Enough Horizon by Carol Markwell) but her work is entirely out of print; thanks to this project there are now five collections of her poems or short stories available for loan or in progress, and six more scheduled. The amateur historian Vonnie Alexander, now over 90, wrote a 2010 local history Gillespies Beach Beginnings that had a small print run and was almost completely unavailable; we were able to tell her that thanks to Wikisource her book was now being widely read.
A comment from the head of Westland District Library: "These titles have not been read in physical format from this library and are unlikely to be widely available. This project has definitely increased access to local history information. Gillespies Beach Beginnings has had significant readership across the South Island, using the e-book platform, but our Reference copy here in the library has not been out."
WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria:An initiative beyond 1Lib1Ref for Librarians in Nigeria
WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria
Wiki Loves Libraries Nigeria is an initiative led by Bukola James(WNUG) to bridge the content gap that exists on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons about Libraries and notable librarians in Nigeria. This campaign which is the first implementation brought together Librarians, and Library students, from different library schools and library organisations in Nigeria to create visibility across the 3 selected Wikimedia projects. According to research carried out by Bukola James(WNUG) there are inadequate contents about the various types of Libraries in Nigeria on Wikipedia and the existing list of Libraries in Nigeria does not reflect the actual statistics of public, academic, national, private, research libraries in Nigeria with reference to a research conducted in 2019, and the existing nominal list of libraries published by the National Library of Nigeria in 2019. It is also discovered that there is an incomplete categorization of libraries, library associations, Nigerian librarians, and librarianship professors. Moreso, out of the 170 academic libraries identified on Wikipedia only a few have an article on Wikipedia. This is not different from the available list of notable librarians in Nigeria. In a query carried out on Wikidata query builder for notable Librarians in Nigeria, the result indicated only 124 and 478 libraries with a lot of missing statements that can assist researchers and readers. Hence, the purpose of this campaign is to improve and correct this data and make Librarians and Library students become content creators on Wikimedia projects other than being retrievers, disseminators, and verifiers of information online.
Recorded Impacts
The campaign commenced on the 29th November 2022, is expected to end on the 31st of December 2022 having held series of two (2) online trainings with 18 to 22 participants in attendance and recruited 61 editors to contribute to the project as seen on the dashboard with 96 Wikipedia articles created, and 68 Wikidata items as at 21st of December 2022. The campaign held 2 day in-person event at the National library of Nigeria Kwara State Branch with 30 participants in attendance to further engage them in the art and act of contributing to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata to increase content relating to Libraries and notable Librarians in Nigeria. The training specifically exposed participants to the core content policies of Wikipedia, how to perform minor edits; add citations, info boxes, categories, and expand articles, how to upload media files on Wikimedia Commons, and editing on Wikidata. at the end of the trainings, the participants engaged in an hour edit-a-thon using the resource guide on the participants activities section to practice what they have learnt with one-on-one support from the project team. More pictures about the physical trainings can be found on Wikimedia Commons.
The first European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up; New articles on the collection of Wawel Royal Castle; Results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2022
The first European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up
On 13th of December the first online meet-up of European GLAM Coordinators took place. At 4th Biennial European GLAMwiki Coordinators Meeting in Prague in September 2022 there was indicated a clear need to find a new and more regular formula to exchange knowledge and experience between GLAM coordinators in Europe.
The first online meeting was initiated and facilitated by Michelle van Lanschot, Giovanna Fontenelle and Kamila Neuman. The purpose of the first meeting was to develop a formula for subsequent meetings, which are to help GLAM coordinators exchange knowledge and expierience on more regular basis.
New articles on the collection of Wawel Royal Castle
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We keep continue to develop our cooperation with Wawel Royal Castle State Art Collection. In December new articles on the artifacts from the Crown Treasury were published on Wikipedia. A series of articles that are developed by the museum professional is connected with the new opening of the Crown Treasury, the part of the Castle that was used from the 15th century for storing the Polish coronation insignia and Crown Jewels. The Wawel Royal Castle, where the museum is located, for centuries had been the residence of the kings of Poland and the symbol of Polish statehood.
More unique objects from Wawel’s collection were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and they illustrate the new articles connected with "the re-opening of the Crown Treasury”.
Results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2022
The winners of Wiki Loves Monuments were announced in December.
The first place went to Daniel.zolopa for the photo of the interior of the Main Building of the Warsaw University of Technology in Warsaw. The second place went to Aneta Pawska for the photo of Prochowa Tower at Książ Castle in Wałbrzych. The third place went to Kacper Jerzak for the photo of World War I Cemetery nr 123 in Łużna-Pustki.
Big congratulations to all the winners and honorable mentions and many thanks to all participants of the competition for their contribution.
Wikibase in social sciences and Public Domain Day celebrations
Using Wikibase for research in social sciences: the case of eViterbo
A new report about the usage of Wikibase in social sciences research is out. Zooming in on the experience of building eViterbo, the report explains most the advantages and setbacks of using Wikibase in this context, while detailing technical procedures and documenting the platform. You can find the document on Zenodo. Since March, this has been the main focus of the wikimedian residency taking place at NOVA FCSH, a leading faculty for humanities and social sciences in Portugal.
So, what is eViterbo?
eViterbo is the main research output of TechNetEMPIRE, an FCT-funded research project looking into the technical and scientific networks of the built environment (engineering, architecture, cartographers, carpenters, masons, etc.) in the Portuguese Colonial Empire. The project is led by researchers Alice Santiago Faria and Renata Malcher de Araújo, both affiliated to CHAM - Centro de Humanidades (a joint ressearch unit of NOVA FCSH and Universidade dos Açores), and also had the support of lab2pt at Universidade do Minho and IEETA of Universidade de Aveiro.
The platform was called eViterbo as a tribute to Francisco Viterbo, the author of one of the main 19th century sources in which the project is rooted. Like in the life work of Francisco Viterbo, which on top of his well-known Dictionary of Architects and Engineers studied other arts & crafts as well as Portuguese agents and aspects, eViterbo contains content from other art history-research projects from the “Art, History and Memory” research group within CHAM. The inclusion of several areas of knowledge from within the “Art, History and Memory” research group, makes the future of eViterbo possible in several areas and a prime tool for Art History and related fields in Portuguese.
eViterbo is a multifaceted platform that combines a MediaWiki-based encyclopedia with an open linked data structured database, built on a Wikibase suite. It is a pioneer platform combining these two parts into a single platform in a research setting, particularly in social sciences.
Public Domain Day 2023 celebrated at the Portuguese National Library
After a few years of remote celebrations, Public Domain Day 2023 was finally celebrated in-person at the Portuguese National Library (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, BNP) on January 6th. In the morning, the event welcomed presentations about the history of the day, how BNP makes use of open data, public domain in the Wikimedia landscape, and public domain and Creative Commons licences. In the afternoon, there was a Wikidata workshop for beginners, centred around Portuguese authors whose works are now in the public domain.
This was a joint venture of ANSOL (Portuguese association for free software), BNP and Wikimedia Portugal, with the help of Creative Commons Portugal.
Wikidata Birthday and ongoing projects
Wikidata Birthday
In the context of the celebration of Wikidata's Tenth Birthday, Wikimedia Spain held three online sessions in which Wikidata was the protagonist. On 5 October, Jaime Gómez-Obregón explained why it is important for public administrations to release and share data, what we can do with it and how it affects Wikimedia projects. On 26 October, Angel Obregón presented the different projects being carried out by the members of the chapter, and on 2 November Elena Sánchez Nogales presented the lines of work of BNElab aimed at promoting the reuse of the data generated by the National Library of Spain, with a new perspective that looks at the heritage collections as data and the library catalogue as a resource for information, research and knowledge.
Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico activities
GLAM WikiDashboard is a service set up by WMIL to provide a dashboard of the use of GLAM digital resources in Wikimedia projects. These resources are usually collections published by cultural institutions. There are currently 16 collections, including the first one from a Spanish institution, the Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico. Thanks to this application it is possible to visualise the use of the released resources. At present there are only 145 photographs but with great expectations of growth.
The GLAM WikiDashboard application is currently in the process of migration to Wikimedia Cloud Services. GLAM WikiDashboard is itself derived from the GLAM stat tool (Cassandra) created by WMCH.
On the other hand, in October took place the Photographic Safari through the Landscapes of Cultural Interest in the Province of Almería. It was an activity of the Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico (IAPH) for the European Heritage Days, within the framework of the PATRITUR project, and implemented in collaboration with the association LaOficina Producciones Culturales. The activity consisted of a virtual safari through the landscapes of cultural interest in the province of Almería, in which the participants upload representative photos of these landscapes, catalogued as such by the IAPH, to a group set up on Flickr. The photos had to meet a series of technical requirements, among them being published with free licenses compatible with Wikipedia (CC BY/CC BY-SA 2.0), as well as being accompanied by a reference to the accompanied by a reference to the landscape it depicts, the date it was taken, and a short description of the was taken, and a brief description of the location.
The photos will have a dual use: on the one hand, the IAPH will make a selection to incorporate them into its Digital Assets repository on the basis of their quality and their representation of the heritage values of the landscape; and on the other hand, the Wikimedia community will select photos to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The activity closes with a raffle carried out by LaOficina of 5 lots of books donated by the IAPH. In the end, the total number of photos with a compatible licence was 644. The total number of participants was 22, of which 3 did not have any photos with a compatible licence and were excluded from the draw, with 17 participants with valid photos.
Wikipedian in Residence at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Within the framework of an agreement between the Museo Reina Sofía's Public Activities Department and Wikimedia Spain, which includes the organisation of activities related to the production of content related to the museum's works and activities through Wikipedia, a project is being carried out by a Wikipedian in Residence, Carolina Espinoza Cartes, contracted by the museum. Between September and December, she has carried out three parallel processes:
- Training in the Wikipedia environment, during the months of September and October, with the help of Wikimedia Spain, putting her in contact with other similar experiences in Argentina and the United Kingdom and others of a similar nature in other Spanish museums.
- Study of the Wikipedia content production needs of each area of the museum. To this end, she has held interviews with the leaders of each area and some members of the team who are interested in setting up a Wikipedia Club in the museum.
- From October onwards, content has been edited in Wikipedia related to museum activities, as well as the names of the people who have participated in the activities carried out.
As a trial, a first public activity was carried out with Wikipedia, the editathon of the seminar "Mareas y Catástrofes" held on 19 November. It was a day dedicated to producing entries related to the leitmotiv of the seminar (critical ecologies), and was attended by 15 people, 7 women and 8 men, most of them with little or no knowledge of Wikipedia, who edited 10 of the 18 articles proposed.
Women Artists Editathon
On 17 December, the Museum of Romanticism (Madrid) hosted an editathon on women artists. We had already collaborated with this museum, in the framework of the GLAMing Madrid project in 2015, and since then we had not worked together again. On that day, first of all, the attendees learned about the details of El estudio de Abel de Pujol, a work by the French painter Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy belonging to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, which between 4 October 2022 and 15 January 2023 is the protagonist of the programme Obra Invitada (Invited Work). This programme has been run by the museum since 2012 and consists of the exhibition of a work from another cultural institution or collection, thus allowing the museum to expand the contents of its own permanent exhibition. In the case of El estudio de Abel de Pujol, this is the first guest work on loan from a foreign museum, and it also happens to have been produced two hundred years ago, in 1822.
Afterwards, in the Museum's workshop room, and following an introduction, the Wikipedia editing session took place, in which the 18 people edited 32 articles, 26 of which were new (created or translated). The contents of these articles were related to women artists (both European and Spanish, some of them present in the museum's collections), 19th century European and North American art academies that admitted female students, temporary exhibitions on the life and work of women artists and 19th century publications, such as El Artista, in which some of them participated.
In addition to helping to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia, we include a multilingual table as an indicator of what there is and what remains to be done, as a stimulus for people who know other languages to contribute with translations to increase the presence of women in their own wikipedias as well. In addition to Spanish, articles were published in Galician, Basque, Catalan and Portuguese.
Musikverket; Media literacy graphics; Reports for project and to project partners
Musikverket
As we wrote previously, December was a month of heavy activity at The Swedish Performing Arts Agency. Wikimedia Sverige's Wikimedian in Residence assisted the agency in uploading some of the highlights of their collections to Wikimedia Commons.
One particularly interesting collection consists of photographs from the archives of Jan Ling. Ling was a Swedish musicologist who did a lot of research on the nyckelharpa, leading to a doctoral thesis on the instrument. Ling's work contributed heavily to a revival of interest in Swedish folk music in general and the nyckelharpa in particular. In his photographs we can see some of the most prominent nyckelharpa players of his times, as well as the process of building the instrument. What's particularly interesting is that some of the photos are accompanied by Ling's handwritten notes, making the collection a true treasure trove for writers and researchers.
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Jan Ling's notes identify this musician as Otto Larsson, born 1898. -
This nyckelharpa is a work in progress. -
An instrument maker's workshop interior.
Media literacy graphics
Regionbibliotek Västerbotten, the regional library of Västerbotten county, has released a set of files illustrating the principles for media literacy in Sweden. The principles have been updated lately, hence the updated illustrations. They decided to release the graphic elements under a CC0 license, publishing them to Wikimedia Commons. Josefine from WMSE were invited to the launching event to talk about how Wikimedia Commons and open licenses, as well as the organization and our activities. It was a digital seminar for librarians all over Sweden.
Reports for project and to project partners
There are many tools to check and measure statistics on Wikimedia platforms. These can be useful when writing reports or adding results in the end-of-year greetings. The pageviews page is a great way to see how the traffic has gone during the year for different articles and in different languages.
We also used GLAMorgan which shows the number of views for files in a category. As an example, the category for the National Museum, Stockholm has over 170,000,000 views in 2022 if you add up the months and subcategories. Together with the history and transparent audits, we can find stories of how individual images are viewed very many times. A bot from the Nordic Museum uploaded an image by Norwegian photographer Solveig Lund to Wikimedia Commons on March 12, 2011. On 17 January 2016 a user posted the image to the English article Norway under the heading Independence. That heading is later changed, but the image remains and has an average of 9,243 views per day. That's over 3,200,000 views per year!
There is also a general page for global statistics which shows that we have a large global impact which is attractive to share with partners in the GLAM sector.
Swiss GLAM Programme: look back to 2022
Swiss GLAM Programme in 2022
The December newsletter is a unique occasion to look back on our GLAM Programme activities for 2022.
It was indeed an eventful year: Wikimedia CH welcomed a new GLAM team with Sandra Becker and Amandine Cabrio. We partnered with various GLAM institutions inside Switzerland, we worked with fellow chapters and improved access to cultural heritage. Through the year, we had many events and projects. We decided to highlight a few of them below.
2022: Year of Sound
In 2022, radio in Switzerland celebrated its 100th anniversary. Wikimedia CH took this as an opportunity to designate 2022 as the Year of Sound. The program encompassed activities organized by the community, Wikimedia CH or initiated by a GLAM institution or like-minded organization. This project was for the GLAM Program a unique occasion to reach new GLAM partners, to bring together the community and organise successful events.
The Wikimedia CH GLAM Programme engaged itself in this Year of Sound. We coached the City Library of La Chaux-de-Fonds to upload sound files on Wikimedia Commons the 27th of October (World Day for Audiovisual Heritage). And we gave a workshop at the SBB Historic on uploading sound files the 5th of November.
Awareness campaigns: International Museum Day and International Archive Week
In 2022, we led activities for the International Museum Day 2022 to improve the presence of museums in all the Wikimedia projects, in collaboration with ICOM and various chapters.
We also engaged in the International Archive Week 2022 in partnership with the Swiss Archivist Association, focusing on the theme #ArchivesAreYou, given by the International Council of Archive (ICA), and encouraging volunteer to create Wikipedia articles about and around Swiss Archives institutions.
GLAMs-On-Tours
In 2022, we offered three GLAM-On-Tour:
- at the Neues Museum Biel, from the 23rd to the 26th June;
- at the Zentralbibliothek Zurich, from the 15th to the 18th September;
- and in Montreux, from the 23rd to the 27th November, with the Cultural Heritage and Innovation Center (EPFL).
These events allowed us to collaborate with GLAM institutions and reach out to the Community. It also allowed participants to have privileged access to GLAM institutions and professionals, to interact with various documents and art and to work together thus allowing the improvement of Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. During the three GLAM-On-Tour, a fair amount of Wikipedia articles were created or improved and beautiful photos were uploaded on Commons.
GLAM Digital
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GLAM digital is a series of video conferences with selected GLAM institutions. Each usually two-hour individual event consists of a specialist lecture by the institution on a specific topic. In a subsequent dialogue part, the Wikipedia community and the institutions enter into direct exchange. The event series is jointly coordinated and supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Österreich and Wikimedia CH.
In 2022, Wikimedia CH held a GLAM Digital the 5th of December with the Tinguely Museum, Basel. This GLAM Digital event focused on the process of digital archiving. It was held in cooperation with Who writes his_tory? and Guter Grund.
GLAM Meet-ups
Wikimedia CH has continued organizing information and knowledge exchanges for or by GLAM professionals that edit Wikimedia projects.
At a national level, we have continued to organize our WikiGLAM meetings, which were held again in presence for the first time since early 2020.
More locally, the WikiNeocomensia meetups, dedicated to professionals working on the heritage of Canton Neuchâtel, gathered media interest - both from the press in March and the radio in June. Finally, WikiRomandie, a new online meet-up for French-language GLAM professionals trained in the previous yearts was launched in March, with regular attendance and leading to strategic discussions.
GLAM in Uganda 2022
February : 1Lib1Ref Cycle 1
As with previous years, we participated in the annual #1Lib1Ref campaign this time concentrating on English Wikipedia and Wikidata. The 44 participants were mainly librarians that had attended user group activities before in addition to other volunteers who were interested in making Wikipedia a more reliable resource.
Outcome
At the end of the campaign, the results were encouraging - collectively, we managed to make Wikipedia a more reliable resource 622 times more!!! The rest of the results can be accessed through this link.
Through feedback, participants expressed the need for the usergroup to engage in more thorough training in relation to evaluating local resources as they felt that their impact would be more with local content.
May : African Librarians Week
The African Librarians Week is an annual event in which African library and information professionals concertedly provide reliable and factual information to the world through Wikipedia as part of the global #1Lib1Ref campaign which run from 15th May - 5th June 2022. Under the theme “Strengthening Africa's Narratives on Wikipedia & sister projects“ the user group was able to support librarians from Ugandan to participate in the week-long virtual campaign thus enabling them to help fill key gaps in African content on Wikipedia by adding missing references to articles about Africa on the online encyclopedia.
May : International Museum Day 2022
Between 4th - 18 May, we supported local editors and activities in commemoration of International Museum Day 2022 to improve the presence of Ugandan museums on Wikidata, in collaboration with ICOM and various chapters.
Outcome
With emphasis on Wikidata, participants attended a series of trainings conducted by Wikimedia Austria who also provided excellent learning resources and as a result, 30 new Wikidata items were created.
Prizes were sponsored by Wikimedia Deutschland and if you follow this link, you will be able to see all the other winners too!
June - August : WikiUganda EduGLAM
This was a joint offering of the GLAM and Education departments of the usergroup. It was structured and delivered as a 6 week hybrid course for both secondary school teachers from Emmanuel College, Kazo and librarians from Uganda Christian University, Mukono and the East African School of Library Science (EASLIS). The emphasis was on basics of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Coomons, editing and how to incorporate Wikipedia into teaching as well as library work.
Outcome
At the end of 6 weeks, 10 individuals had been trained with each submitting a plan of action for a project that they can undertake with the community they serve. The user group hopes to sponsor these projects in the year 2023.
December : WikiSource in Uganda 2022
December was an exciting month for us as we finally got to interact with Wikisource. It was an introduction to many things such as the Wikisource Contest Tool and the wealth of content that is available on the site. We engaged students from the Literature Department of Makerere University in addition to interested volunteers.
With the guidance of Satdeep Gill, we were able to add 3 Luganda language books to Wikimedia Commons. In addition, one of the attendees offered us 5 source texts in the Luganda language and our only challenge is that we have no access to a scanner that can digitise the work.
Next steps
The event will end on 10th January and we will share the results then. In the next phase, we will use the momentum gained to delve deeper into various editing techniques on WikiSource and adding local language source texts to the project so that volunteers can contribute in a local language. We are also looking at mobilising resources that will enable us to digitise the available content that has been offered to us. The project has encouraged volunteers who gave feedback that it was a good opportunity to interact with other Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Khalili project year in review
Khalili Foundation
The Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article went live, becoming the 35th new article from this project. It passed Did You Know review, becoming the 22nd article from this project to do so, and appeared on English Wikipedia's main page on 31 December. The hook and image were shown to 4.46 million readers, 4,400 of whom clicked through to the article. The hook also generated 2,000 additional clicks through to Sitara (textile), another article from this project. There was also a bump in views for the Kaaba article.
I now have books that will allow me to finish off some draft articles relating to Islamic art. Three new images and a video clip were uploaded this month. Some of this month has been spent on organising two cultural diversity editathons in London and in Oxford and in January I will be mostly focused on final preparations and delivering those events.
The year in review
- Ordinary image views (excluding views on the front page) have increased to 36.5 million for the year, reaching 4 million per month at the end of the year. Adding in image views from DYK and Featured Pictures (see below) gives roughly 47 million image views total.
- This year we had one Featured Picture of the Day on English Wikipedia, four on Arabic Wikipedia, and one on Persian Wikipedia.
- There were three new articles, one of which passed Good Article review.
- We had three DYKs on the front page of English Wikipedia.
- Khalili Collections images are now used in 81 Wikimedia sites, up from 71 last year.
- The images appear in 331 pages on English Wikipedia, up from 261 last year.
- Images have been added to 302 additional categories on Commons.
- The Wikidata representation of the Khalili Collections has become more complete and complex, describing literary works of which the Collections have exemplars, and historical people connected to the objects (see this query for objects in collections related to Shah Jahan). There are now 10,503 statements on Wikidata compared to 9,603 at the end of last year. The recent acquisition of printed books will help with progress on this.
- Views on articles about the Collections: 40,010 in English, 21,774 in other languages
This year's work was more focused on the cultural diversity work of the Khalili Foundation in addition to the objects of the Khalili Collections. This included a six-fold expansion of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity article and a lot of work on a global visual arts task force (analogous to Women In Red, for visual arts outside the Western canon).
The year ahead
- Edit-a-thon events for the World Festival of Cultural Diversity: we will see how the first two go and there are other possible locations.
- Building a network of academics and lay people interested in improving under-represented visual art on Wikipedia
- Contacting GLAM institutions from under-represented cultures and helping them share content in a way that can be used by Wikimedia.
- Raising awareness of cultural diversity within the Wikipedia contributor community in the wake of the publication (any day now) of the Ahmed and Poulter visual arts paper
- There are four draft articles relating to Islamic art in various stages of completion. I'll be using book sources to finish them off and publish them.
- We have done very little exploration so far of creating Wikipedia articles about individual art works. The newly published catalogues cites past publications and show that a number of art works are notable in their own right. These articles will be shorter than most of the articles previously created but there can be more of them.
- Improving the article about the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, which is incomplete because there is so much to say about this particular collection.
- There is more to write about enamels and Meiji era art, using images and catalogues from the relevant Khalili Collections.
- Adding more paintings from the Khalili Collections to the Sum of All Paintings project
- Adding Wikidata-based interactive visualisations to the Khalili Collections web site. I have already used Wikidata to generate a geographical data set which can be visualised as a map or globe. I will also be working further on embedding interactive timelines like this one.
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: International Volunteer Day; ICP x Art + Feminism
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: International Volunteer Day
San Diego Central Library and San Diego Wikimedians User Group held a meetup, San Diego/December 2022.
ICP x Art + Feminism
International Center of Photography and Art + Feminism held a meetup, ICP x Art and Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon.
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Introducing Wiki Loves Living Heritage
Wiki Loves Living Heritage
Wiki Loves Living Heritage celebrates living heritage on the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage throughout 2023. It brings together heritage practitioners and communities, Wikimedia volunteers, NGOs and other safeguarding organizations around the world to create activities together.
Living Heritage embraces practices, knowledge and skills that have been passed on through generations and are still valuable and in use today. It includes for example oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills related to crafts. Living heritage is also a source of time-tested knowledge about how to live on our planet sustainably and peacefully.
Heritage elements are inventoried in more than 180 countries across the globe. Each year a number of them are inscribed on the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Heritage.
Join designing the project formats in regular open planning meetings starting in January
Wiki Loves Living Heritage is an open-ended, year-long global campaign platform that invites UNESCO focal points, safeguarding organizations and heritage communities to work together with Wikimedia affiliates and communities to jointly create documentation activities. It uses social media, blog posts and videos to highlight the activities, and all the documentation is brought together and contributed to the Wikimedia projects.
Locally arranged projects can include photo walks, documentation drives, local seminars, blog posts, media uploads and more. Global attention on the media channels is given to one region or theme at a time for a short period.
Data about the heritage elements
The campaign gives an opportunity to import living heritage data from the UNESCO lists, inventories in the states parties and living heritage outside these into Wikidata, where it can serve current and future upload campaigns. The corresponding articles and categories can be aligned with the data. The new and existing materials with contributions from contests are brought together to jubilate living culture.
Ethical sharing
Documenting and sharing community-owned heritage requires careful consideration. An important part of the project is to understand and explore the practices of ethical documentation and sharing in the open environment. A webinar is planned for March in collaboration with the Ethics of Open Sharing working group at Creative Commons. The goal is to start a discussion on ethical guidelines for documentation activities on Wikimedia projects.
The project is initiated jointly between the European network of focal points for the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ENFP) and AvoinGLAM. It is supported by European Heritage Days Network, Workshop intangible heritage & Flemish Commission for UNESCO in Belgium and Conseil québécois du patrimoine vivant. More information about the partners will follow as they are confirmed.
Web publication on Meta
- Wiki Loves Living Heritage on Meta will be the main publication for the campaign
- Browse the living heritage elements
Join!
- General information
- Presentation slides
- View the page about the different ways of joining
- Volunteer working groups for Data imports, Editorial, and Ethical sharing
- Join volunteer working groups on-wiki or by sharing your contact information
- Create or join local activities
- Wiki Loves Living Heritage for affiliates (memo)
- Share your contact information with organizations to make contact
- Subscribe to the planning meetings calendar
- Share your ideas for activities
- Ideas for activities
- We are still setting up the channels for global conversations
Communications designer
The project seeks a communications designer to create a communications plan between February and March for both visual design and communications design. See the call at Open positions and apply before January 20, 2023.
Contact
Contact susanna.anas@gmail.com for more information.
Helpdesk; IGO/INGO
Helpdesk
The Helpdesk received a few new requests, and had two meetings two discuss them in depth. Almost 600 images were uploaded from Smart Servier, and another batch will be uploaded in the upcoming weeks.
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Calcium-sensing receptor (CaR) -
Mitosis -
Karyotype -
DNA and RNA
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IGO/INGO
We continued to talk with several IGOs, most notably FAO, EIB and IEA, on new projects. We held a presentation at the IEA Staff Academy, as they are aiming to increase their work with Wikimedia platforms. We are at the same time developing a Wikimedia in Residence-program for WiRs at IGOs.
View it!: New FULL version is ready to launch
View it! has been re-envisioned with a FULL version
Install The FULL View it! experience today!
Two versions of View it! are available for installation. The FULL version displays an image carousel across the top of articles. The carousel can be expanded in the article, while clicking the tab opens a dedicated, full gallery page.
The lite version (what most users have installed now) will continue to function the same - when clicking the View tab will have the number of result (if any) in parenthesis and clicking the button will take users to Toolforge in a new window. Both versions will still ultimately lead to the View it! Toolforge page, where more advanced search features can be accessed. Users will also notice that the "View" button has moved to right between the "Read" and "Edit" buttons.
View it! is now in use by over a hundred users and we continue to work on language localization efforts. Please consider installing the Full version of View it!
Upcoming Launch
Please join the development team on Thursday, January 12 at 1700 UTC/1200 EST for a full version demo and community discussion around editor-focused features such as clicking to insert an image while editing.
We hope to see you there!
GLAM-Wiki Con 2023, DPLA's new Sloan Foundation funding, and more
GLAM-Wiki gatherings around the world
GLAM-Wiki Con 2023
Wikimedistas de Uruguay is planning to host the next GLAM-Wiki Global Conference in late 2023. The user group is already organizing the funding proposal, which will probably be presented in February. In order to have an assessment of what to expect in terms of the number of participants, scholarships offered, and regions of the world represented, as well as topics and themes to be chosen for the conference, the group already launched a first survey, available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
- Fill in the GLAM-Wiki 2023 ENGLISH survey here.
- Conteste la encuesta para GLAM-Wiki 2023 en ESPAÑOL aquí.
- Responda a pesquisa para GLAM-Wiki 2023 em PORTUGUÊS aqui.
The survey will be open until January 15th. Please, don’t forget to fill it up, and don’t hesitate to share it with your peers – there's a crafted message in the three languages for those who want to spread the word.
The last GLAM-Wiki conference happened in September 2018, in Tel Aviv, organized by Wikimedia Israel.
GLAM-Wiki EU monthly meet-ups
After the 2022 European GLAM Coordinators meeting in Prague that happened last September, some GLAM-Wiki professionals from the region who attended the event wanted to keep in touch in a more regular way. As a result, the idea for a GLAM-Wiki EU monthly meet-up surfaced!
In December, a first meeting was held to decide the overall details about the scope, objectives, themes, cadence, facilitators, and other organizational particularities. It was determined that the meetings would happen every second Tuesday of the month for about an hour. Appropriate documentation will follow not only about the general meet-ups but also covering every single meeting.
In January, the actual first official meeting is being held on January 10th, at 14:00 CET / 13:00 UTC, and will cover the Wiki Loves Living Heritage initiative, which is being organized by Susanna Ånäs (AvoinGLAM) and the European network of focal points for the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ENFP).
Soon, an appropriate page for the event will be available, but for now, if this meet-up is of interest, please, reach out to vanlanschot
wikimedia.nl, kamila.neumanwikimedia.pl, or gfontenellewikimedia.org.
DPLA to expand its Wikimedia work
The year started with great news for the GLAM-Wiki ecosystem. The Digital Public Library of America, one of the biggest contributors to Wikimedia, announced that it is once again making cultural items freely available on Wikimedia projects with a new Sloan Foundation funding. The project aims to raise the number of participating organizations involved in the initiative and to increase even more the number of open license content connected to DPLA available on the projects, especially on Wikimedia Commons.
The goal is to accomplish a multi-year project that will connect even more of America’s cultural heritage institutions with Wikipedia: “This grant will offer an opportunity to make millions of cultural treasures from hundreds of American libraries, archives, and museums freely available online.” The full announcement is available on the DPLA's website.
Editing for Effie
In December, the Culture and Heritage team was deeply saddened by the loss of Effie Kapsalis, who was our friend and ally. Effie was responsible for leading the Smithsonian’s Open Access Initiative, which made available millions of files online as public domain, in an unprecedented project. She was also unparallel in her work with gender, developing the digital strategy for the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Initiative.
On January 8 and 9, Smithsonian friends organized an edit-a-thon in honor of Effie, #EditingforEffie, and several Wikimedians joined to edit about women connected to the institution's collections. If you'd like to share your memories of Effie, please do so here or here.
January's GLAM events
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