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The Patrolling Edit-a-thon in Albania and Kosovo, 2024

A continuing campaign in Albania and Kosovo

On December 7, 2024, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group organized the Patrolling Edit-a-thon bringing together contributors and patrollers from Tirana and Prishtina, both virtually and physically, to improve Wikipedia in the Albanian language.

With the goal of verifying unreviewed articles, patrollers reviewed roughly 200 articles on different topics for 4 hours. The edit-a-thon emphasized the importance of group work and the role of patrollers in maintaining the reliability of Wikipedia. By collaborating across two cities, participants demonstrated the impact of joint efforts in strengthening the Albanian language Wikipedia community and making sure the content is reliable and resourceful.

This project did not stop with this edit-a-thon. It is still ongoing.

Social media

If you want to see more about our activities, you can:



Last activities of 2024

Librarian activities

During the past months, the Culture and Open knowledge program developed a series of activities specially meant for librarians. A group of Wikimedians from Córdoba province carried out a series of workshops that resulted on 25 people uploading more than 50 pictures and documents related to their popular libraries. In November, due to the Open Access Week and the Public University's Night, a volunteer from the Universidad Nacional de Lanús proposed an online session to add information about libraries to Universities articles in Wikipedia. 48 professionals joined the meeting, and improved at least 15 articles with updated information and images of the libraries.

These two experiences were very powerful for promoting friendly spaces for people interested in editing, as they were lead by volunteers with different levels of experience that could help make better edits and uploads. We would like to give special thanks to eneroenlaciudad, Monarufino, Jmmuguerza, Aguzado and Noked for giving support to each other and to other volunteers, advocating for open knowledge.

Huaraz Conference

We were invited to participate in "Weaving Networks of Knowledge in Latin America: Conference on Climate Justice, Indigenous Voices, and Wikimedia Platforms" held in Huaraz, Peru, during November 8-10, 2024. Angie Cervellera and Tibisay Zamora Aray proposed "Chujwen. Debates around open access and indigenous knowledge". This session presented a framework to understand open access and decolonization from an indigenous perspective, exploring the consequences of freely sharing traditional or ancestral knowledge. Problematic aspects of open access were discussed with attendees, such as the representation of communities, their bodies and their memories as well as the concept of intellectual property vs. collective property; but we also explored its potential, such as the use of technologies -in this case, Wikimedia projects- to promote the indigenous voice in environmental activism. Finally, considering “Cartografías Abiertas: Qom, Wichí, Moqoit” project as a success story, we thought together good practices related to working with indigenous peoples and respectfully access and share their knowledge.

On the other hand, Angie and Giovanna Fontenelle planned a two-moment session. Firstly, a more conceptual moment, with the presentation of the publication “Actions and exhibitions to decolonize museum narratives”, prepared by TyPA Foundation and Wikimedia Argentina, where the Medellín Museum of Art (Colombia), the Casa Museum Ricardo Rojas (Argentina) and the Textile Museum of Oaxaca (Mexico) share experiencies on how museological narratives are redefined through work along with indigenous communities. In the second moment of this session, participants are invited to write down succesful and challenging experiencies so as to co-create a map of good decolonizing practices. At this point, we asked participants to carry out this exercise considering Wikimedia projects and how they could be considered as tools for indigenous communities to generate and re share their own knowledge.

Sharing and reusing Archivos en Vigilia

Angie Cervellera from the Culture and Open Knowledge program was invited, along with Laura Casareto (Archivo Histórico UNLP), to talk about the Archivos en Vigilia virtual activity that takes place every March since 2021. This was the last session of Martes de Open Glam, organized by Wikimedistas de la UNLP. Archivists and other professionals -some of them had participated from the virtual activity of March- joined in person and learnt how to add images and documents that were uploaded within the Archivos en Vigilia campaign. This resulted on 17 articles with new images and 64 structured data added to documents. It was a very meaningful activity, because participants had to do research and explore the documents to add the correct data, as well as choosing the best article to place the archive.

Digitization project: second semester updates

The final report for 2024 will be available by the end of january. First semester report can be see here.

Academia Argentina de Letras

This year we uploaded 66 books from authors like: Cisneros, de Estrada, de Vedia, Hidalgo de Cisneros, Holmberg, Payró, Rawson, Oronio, Fontanella, Meyer Arana, de Moxo y de Francoli, Ceppi, Mitre, Funes, and others. Reaching 1500 digitized books so far.

The MassViews Tool shows us 57.777 pageviews for 2024 in Commons. Find more statistics at: https://glamwikidashboard.wmcloud.org/AARLT

Find more at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uploaded_via_Campaign:AAL

Academia Nacional de la Historia

We uploaded 23 books (50 ready for it) and 961 historical documents (all uploads were made with OpenRefine).

The MassViews Tool shows us 23.120 pageviews for 2024 in commons. Find more statistic at: https://glamwikidashboard.wmcloud.org/ANHRA

Find more at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Files_from_Academia_Nacional_de_la_Historia_de_la_Rep%C3%BAblica_Argentina

Archivo General de la Nación

We finally started uploading batches from the digitization work done at the Archivo General de la Nación, accounting for 2 of 20 boxes which means around 800 photographs. This is a collection of photographs belonging to the editorial dossiers of the "Caras y Caretas" magazine published in Argentina between 1898 y 1939. We expect to finish the rest of the batches around February.

Find more at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dosieres_de_redacci%C3%B3n_(AR-AGN-CYC01-dr)


Catrapilha in action: Uploading the Porto Alegre image feed

By DarwIn

Over the past few weeks, the Catrapilha tool has been harnessed to import a remarkable collection of images from the Porto Alegre city administration’s official media feed. This repository, shared under an attribution-only free licence (Template:Agência Porto Alegre), now fills a gap in Commons coverage by documenting key events and everyday life in Porto Alegre, the capital of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The sheer volume of the initiative is impressive—more than 5,000 images have already been uploaded of the ever expanding pool of almost 150.000 images by now - only counting one of its two feeds - with more than 2,000 depicting the dramatic May 2024 floods in the region.

  • Our Lady of the Navigator procession, 2017
    Our Lady of the Navigator procession, 2017
  • "Whatever happened to Baby Jane" theater at Porto Verão Alegre 2017
    "Whatever happened to Baby Jane" theater at Porto Verão Alegre 2017
  • Street Carnival, 2017
    Street Carnival, 2017
  • Street Carnival, 2017
    Street Carnival, 2017
  • Companhia Jovem de Dança performing at the Mostra de Dança Verão 2017
    Companhia Jovem de Dança performing at the Mostra de Dança Verão 2017
  • Saint George & Ogum procession
    Saint George & Ogum procession
  • Way of the cross, 2017
    Way of the cross, 2017

Leveraging the same React-based approach detailed in the previous article, plus an extensive refactoring of the code to allow multiple projects, Catrapilha enables smooth and semi-automated/automated file uploads to Commons. Each image’s metadata, such as description, date, and tags, is sourced directly from the Porto Alegre image feed. A custom data dictionary then translates the hundreds of source tags into the most fitting Commons categories, ensuring that the images can be effortlessly discovered and reused across Wikimedia projects. This feature proves especially valuable in large-scale endeavours, minimising manual curation while preserving essential descriptive elements—an approach aimed at streamlining the process for volunteers and GLAM professionals alike.

The specific coverage of the May 2024 floods stands out as particularly important. Photographs documenting the event range from aerial shots of flooded streets to on-the-ground imagery illustrating the city’s response teams in action. For historians, urban planners, and environmental researchers, these images are a goldmine of real-time evidence. They capture infrastructure stress points, emergency measures, and the human stories behind large-scale natural disasters. Making them available under a free licence not only broadens public access to critical material but also aids investigators in gleaning insights for improved disaster management and mitigation strategies.

  • The moment the floodgates were closed
    The moment the floodgates were closed
  • Mauá water pump station gets overwhelmed and starts pumping back the river water flooding the city
    Mauá water pump station gets overwhelmed and starts pumping back the river water flooding the city
  • Historical Center of Porto Alegre
    Historical Center of Porto Alegre
  • People fleeing from the flooded areas with their pets
    People fleeing from the flooded areas with their pets
  • Displaced people at the CETE sports venue
    Displaced people at the CETE sports venue
  • Porto Alegre gari task force cleaning the streets after the flood
    Porto Alegre gari task force cleaning the streets after the flood

By employing Catrapilha to coordinate this import, the usually laborious process of sorting, tagging, and aligning images with Commons standards becomes far more approachable. Operators need only to review the automatically generated file descriptions and categories before finalising the upload, which helps maintain accuracy and consistency. The newly created Category:Files by Agência Porto Alegre ensures that all these materials are neatly indexed under a single Commons hub, while the project itself continues to grow, offering a dynamic view of Porto Alegre’s evolving landscape and cultural heritage.

Ultimately, these images serve an invaluable function in preserving visual records of municipal life and critical historical moments, enriching the Wikimedia ecosystem. Building upon the successes and lessons learned from Arquipelagos, Catrapilha remains flexible and ever-adaptable, connecting a wealth of photographic content from one of the most important cities of Brazil to the broader, global audience of Wikimedia Commons users and re-users.


Living GLAM project on Santali culture continues in West Bengal

A team of videographers and photographers, assigned by the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, visited the villages of Ghoshaldanga and Bishunbati situated in the district of Birbhum in West Bengal, India in the month of December, 2024 as part of the living GLAM project which focuses on documenting the rich cultural tradition of Santal people of the area. The project has been planned in collaboration with the Ghosaldanga Bishnubati Adibasi Trust, a trustee-run organization operating in these two villages which act as an umbrella organization to support two community based non-profit grass-root organizations namely Ghosaldanga Adibasi Seva Sangha and Bishnubati Adibasi Marshal Sangha, which aims for development of the tribal population of these villages. A variety of Santal foods, right from collection of their ingredients and preparation, were meticulously documented. Some of such delicacies were Hao Rit, a chutney made from red weaver ants and their eggs; Matkam paoro, an indigenous alcoholic beverage prepared from flowers of Madhuca longifolia; Gudu Lat, rat meat wrapped and roasted in leaves; etc. The photographs and videos are being gradually uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, which can be found here.

The trust celebrated its 11th Museum Day at the premises of Musuem of Santal Culture and Rolf Schoembs Vidyashram located in these two villages on 8th and 9th December, 2025. This museum day focused on 'Traditional Santal Food' was organised in collaboration with CIS-A2K. On the first day, The program started with a panel discussion on Santal cuisine, but the main attraction of the day was the Traditional Santal Food Mela, featuring delicacies prepared using authentic cooking methods, some of which has been mentioned above. Inaugurated by Dr. Dukhia Murmu, Head of the Department of Santali at Viva-Bharati, the mela continued from evening to midnight, attracting large crowds who enjoyed the cuisine and adorned traditional attire. Adivasi community dances added to the cultural grandeur, reflecting the spirit of the Santal people. The second day of the event was highlighted by a variety of cultural programs showcasing Santal plays, songs, and readings, reflecting the rich heritage of the community. A special moment of the event was the felicitation of Dr. Martin Kämpchen, who has been a steadfast supporter of these villages for the past 40 years.

  • Hunting rats by Santals were documented
    Hunting rats by Santals were documented
  • Interview of Martin Kämpchen
    Interview of Martin Kämpchen
  • A glass of Matkam Paoro
    A glass of Matkam Paoro
  • A Santal hut at Bishnubati
    A Santal hut at Bishnubati
  • Grinding of red weaver ants and their eggs for the preparation of Hao Rit
    Grinding of red weaver ants and their eggs for the preparation of Hao Rit


From SlideShare to Zenodo & How Dutch Wikipedia uses the Digital Library for Dutch Literature

By OlafJanssen (KB, national library of the Netherlands)
In Dutch: Why the KB decided to migrate all its Wikimedia-related publications of the last 13 years from SlideShare to Zenodo, while retaining copies of them on Wikimedia Commons.

In the August 2024 Netherlands report I mentioned an article on Diff in which I explain why I decided to migrate all of KB's Wikimedia related publications of the last 13 years from SlideShare to Zenodo, while keeping copies on Wikimedia Commons.

In December I translated this article into Dutch and partnered up with the Public Spaces initiative to get it published on their site. The result is the Dutch article 10 redenen waarom de KB publicaties van SlideShare naar Zenodo verhuisde...en ze ook op Wikimedia Commons plaatst.

To stay in line with the intentions of the article itself, the text is also available on Wikimedia Commons and Zenodo.

How Dutch Wikipedia uses the Digital Library for Dutch Literature

About how information on authors, titles, and texts from the DBNL serves as important sources for Wikipedia. From slide 38 onwards.

The Digital Library for Dutch Literature (Dutch & short: DBNL) is a website about Dutch language and Dutch literature containing thousands of literary texts, secondary literature and additional information, such as author biographies.

Information about authors, titles, and texts from the DBNL serve as sources for thousands of Dutch Wikipedia articles. In November and December 2024 the KB made a detailed analysis of

  • The number of DBNL links (URLs) contained in Dutch Wikipedia articles.
  • Dutch Wikipedia articles with the most links to DBNL.
  • DBNL pages that are most often referenced from Dutch Wikipedia articles.
  • Dutch Wikipedia articles that are largely based on ('own their existance to') information from DBNL exclusively.

You can see and read the detailed analysis in

Wikdata module, Auckland Museum student progress, and the Wikipedian at Large

Wikidata module for the Hidden Figures CURE

The Wikidata module Integrating Wikidata with Data Sleuthing Techniques for Enhanced Knowledge Discovery of Hidden Figures, co-authored by Ambrosia10 for the Hidden Figures Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), has recently been published. This is the fourth and final module for this course, designed with the intention of teaching undergraduates to highlight the work of hidden figures in natural history collections such as women, people of colour, Indigenous peoples etc.

These Open Education resources, licensed under a Creative Commons attribution license, are now available on the QUBES website for university educators and others to reuse as they wish. For the Wikidata module see this link.

Other modules in this CURE are An Introduction to Revealing Hidden Figures through Data Sleuthing, The Importance of an ORCID and Introduction to Bionomia.

Wikipedia Students at Auckland Museum

Our Wikipedia Summer Students at Auckland Museum are well underway with their projects to provide local histories content to support teachers and students in the New Zealand histories curriculum. Auckland Museum Wikimedian in Residence, Winnieswikiworld has been documenting the student's progress as they learn from local and international Wikimedians and museum professionals.

Students had a chat with historian and education specialist Mark Sheehan. Mark shared insightful context about the shift in the Aotearoa New Zealand history curriculum and the importance of memory and personal perspectives when sharing history. He helped the students gain direction around their articles and what topics and approaches may be helpful.

UK based Wikimedian and curator Lucy Moore joined the students virtually, to share her contributions to the Women in Red movement and her experiences as Wikimedian in Residence working with various cultural institutions.

Lucy Mackintosh and the Wikipedia summer students sharing cake and chatting about local history

Students met with curator and historian Lucy Mackintosh and disscussed the importance of local histories, moving away from national and transnational histories. Our students were excited to share with Lucy that her book Shifting Grounds: History, Memory and Materiality in Auckland Landscapes c.1350–2018, was part of their Anthropology and History classes required reading!

As the students prepare to host their very own edit-a-thon in January, they were joined by curator and Wikipedian, Susan Tolich. Susan shared some valuable insight into organising and hosting an edit-a-thon.

The student edit-a-thon, Stub It Out: Developing Tāmaki's Wiki Stub Articles Wikipedia, will teach attendees how to edit Wikipedia articles with the theme of expanding stub articles related to Auckland content.

Alberton in Mount Albert, Auckland, view from the right side of the house

The pages created by students in December: Onehunga Blockhouse, O'Neill's Point Cemetery, Chris Winitana, Ōwairaka, Statue of a Cloaked Woman, Alberton, Auckland and Dingle Dell (St Heliers).

The students are enjoying a well deserved break for the holidays and will be back in January to continue contributing knowledge to Wikipedia and enriching Tāmaki Makaurau's local histories content!

Wikipedian at Large projects

Giantflightlessbirds was confirmed as the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large for 2025, based in Ōtautahi Christchurch and operating on nearby Banks Peninsula from January to December. The Peninsula , in Māori Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū, is a notable geological feature and tourist destination close to Christchurch, but has quite poor Wikipedia coverage. The Wikipedian at Large's role, funded by a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, will be to work with partner organisations such as museums, libraries, and community groups to release images and better-quality information to Commons, and encourage new editors to help improve articles through training and community events. Focus areas will be the Māori settlement of Rāpaki, forest remnants on the Peninsula, endemic species of plants and animals, the colonial history of the French settlement of Akaroa, and the reforestation project Hinewai Reserve. The project has had some press coverage already ("Wikipedians to shine a light on Banks Peninsula"), and half a dozen new editors have been recruited.

banner for Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large showing five Banks Peninsula images


A second project taking place during January, February, and March is a collaboration with the District Council of nearby Ashburton, a rural service town with a population of 21,000. As well as improving Wikipedia coverage of the town and the nearby conservation park Ashburton Lakes, the Wikipedian will be working with Ashburton Art Gallery and Heritage Centre to release approximately 1,000 historic images into Commons, and develop a new copyright and open licensing policy for the institution that will make future such releases easier.


Digitization of Heritage Archives in Nigeria

Digitization

In an effort to encourage GLAM activities in Nigerian, a discourse on how to get archives from custodians, curate it, and digitize the archives started. The process of getting the archives up on Wikimedia Commons under a free license was a tedious yet revealing and educating process, Some archives from Nigeria's first generation architects have been uploaded on Wikimedia Commons to enhance research and bridge knowledge gap in the area of Nigerian Architectural history and the built environment. The year 2024 recorded the uploads of over 500 archives, this led to training workshops and virtual webinars events on archive preservation and Digitization. The framework used to get this done is being replicated for other digitization projects in Nigeria. So far about 1500 Large scale, hand drawn architectural blueprints have been digitized with over 900 freely accessible under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0, the other Archives without a free license Creative common attribution were largely based on ethical considerations and local laws in the country. Some of the archives had sensitive information and data that could be a breach to National security and safety of users of the buildings whose floor plans were digitized and preserved leveraging Wikimedia Commons.

Archival Material Preservation Work Process

The process of preservation of Archives involves a conceptual framework, a step by step approach, starting from stakeholder meetings and engagement, inclusion of relevant stakeholders from Local institutions to global partnerships. Understanding the role of custodial relationships and engagement in making accessibility to archival material easy, making the custodians a major part of the work process and preservation journey and also getting them involved in various decision processes of the archival material Digitization and preservation, lastly the involvement of the local Wikimedia Community in Nigeria, the digitization of Archives made room for trainings on the use of PattyPan, Wikidata, Commons and Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Heritage User Group Nigeria (currently awaiting recognition from Affcom) were greatly involved in the process, with some members volunteering as curators, others writers, moderators, speakers and trainers to see the archives preserved on Wikimedia.

Future of Nigerian Archives

Collaborations on different levels have been established to ensure continued digitization and preservation of Archives in Nigeria. The Heritage archives in Nigeria requires an intervention and what can be done is to secure necessary collaboration and partnership till when they can be preserved sustainably and are prevented from further decay and deterioration based on their brittleness, age and poor maintenance culture and storage conditions as seen in many archiving institutions. The Future of Archives in Nigeria is an emerging discuss in the Wiki Verse and discussions on how to properly preserve and share these valuable information with the world are underway.


Conference for GLAM employees in Skopje

The GLAM program of Wikimedia MKD implies cooperation, action and implementation of activities in close partnership with GLAM institutions. Such cooperation implies activities of various kinds, such as workshops on a given topic, training the staff from institutions on the use of Wikipedia, editing sessions to enrich the contents of Wikipedia and its related projects, sending a native Wikipedian who would be a link between the institution and the association and who will actively improve the content of Wikipedia and its related projects.

Motivated by these goals, on 6 December 6 2024, at the amphitheater of the city library "Braka Miladinovci", members of Wikimedia MKD held a conference with the working title "Advanced Editing of Wikipedia" intended for employees of museums, libraries, galleries and archives. This is the first of its kind held in Macedonia, and also the first dedicated conference of this type organized by Wikimedia MKD members, this time, in close cooperation with Public Libary "Braka Miladinovci" - Skopje. The conference, in addition to the theoretical part and lectures, also included training of staff from these institutions on using Wikipedia and making their contribution to the growth of the encyclopedia. The conference was attended by 30 participants from different institutions.

After the introductory speech by the president of Wikimedia MKD, Nikolče Stojanoski, and his emphasis on the importance of cooperation with these institutions for obtaining solid and reliable free content, the executive director of Wikimedia MKD, Snezana Štrkovska, also addressed the attendees. Her remarks focused on what Wikipedia is and what a solid, well-verified encyclopedic-style article should look like. After the practical one-hour training provided for the 30 participants, a representative of Wikimedia Serbia also gave a presentation, who also emphasized the importance of these institutions for the creation free knowledge. The final part was reserved for Ana Vishinova, GLAM coordinator, who reflected on her experience and the historical development and significance of the GLAM program of Wikimedia MKD.

The importance of creating free content and digitizing materials, documents, and cultural and historical heritage was recognized by all participants at the conference. The diverse profile of participants, who actually represented institutions of this type, only confirmed the unity of some of the cultural workers in cooperating with Wikimedia MKD and implementing projects of this type.

  • Nikolche Stojanoski giving a lecture
    Nikolche Stojanoski giving a lecture
  • The participants
    The participants
  • Snezana Strkovska giving a lecture
    Snezana Strkovska giving a lecture
  • Editing articles
    Editing articles
  • The participants editing articles
    The participants editing articles


What's up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland

Polish Creators in Public Domain 2025

  • Bolesław Biegas w pracowni
    Bolesław Biegas w pracowni
  • Zofia Nałkowska
    Zofia Nałkowska
  • Tadeusz Styka Portret damy w futrze
    Tadeusz Styka Portret damy w futrze

Public Domain Day 2025 is a special celebration for the open knowledge community, marking the expiration of copyright protection for creators who passed away 70 years ago. Among internationally renowned figures like Frida Kahlo, Henri Matisse, and Robert Capa, we also recommend exploring works by Polish creators such as:

  • Wanda Bibrowicz (1878–1954) – a Polish artist and educator, known for her textile works and promoting craftsmanship.
  • Bolesław Biegas (1877–1954) – a Polish sculptor and painter, associated with symbolism and known for his unique sculptures and portraits.
  • Wacław Borowski (1885–1954) – a Polish painter and graphic artist, recognized for his neoclassical style and book illustrations.
  • Tadeusz Styka (1889–1954) – a Polish painter, best known for his portraits and allegorical paintings.
  • Leon Schiller (1887–1954) – a prominent Polish theater director and composer, a key figure in Polish theater history.
  • Jan Adam Maklakiewicz (1899–1954) – a Polish composer, conductor, and music critic, known for his work in developing modern Polish music.
  • Zofia Nałkowska (1884–1954) – a Polish writer and publicist, famous for her novel Medallions, which addresses the atrocities of World War II.
  • Władysław Umiński (1865–1954) – known as the "Polish Jules Verne," he was a prolific writer of adventure and science fiction literature for young readers.
  • Ludomir Michał Rogowski (1881–1954) – a Polish composer and conductor, known for his symphonic works and contributions to Polish classical music.

Their contributions now belong to the public domain, fostering creative reuse and cultural enrichment worldwide.


Wikimedia Portugal and Wiki Editoras Lx Collaborate on a Wiki GLAM, Culture, and Heritage Conference for 2025

view of Lisbon, Portugal, from Graça Miradouro


Wikimedia Portugal and Wiki Editoras Lx are thrilled to announce their collaboration on a proposal for a Wiki GLAM, Culture, and Heritage Conference in Portugal in 2025. With support of GLAM Wiki community members this initiative seeks to address gaps in the global representation of diverse language communities and build on the growing momentum of Global GLAM Wiki activities. The conference hopes to build upon the successes of past events, such as the 2024 GLAM meeting in Katowice at Wikimania 2024, which showcased strategies for cultural engagement and global collaboration, and from the GLAMWiki conference in 2023 in Montevideo. Additionally, it aims to align with the recently launched GLAM Global Calls initiative to foster global collaboration, interaction, and exchange.


Vision for 2025 - Three focuses.

  1. A global in-person gathering offers the GLAM Wiki community a vital platform for exchanging ideas, developing strategies, and fostering collaboration. The GLAM, culture, and heritage sector is fundamental to the sustainability of the Wikimedia and open knowledge movement—not only as providers of primary data and resources but also as stewards and interpreters of global cultural diversity and expression. Despite deep involvement across all Wikimedia projects, this dedicated group of passionate and creative Wikimedians operates without a formal user-group, hub, or affiliate structure within the broader community.
  2. Hosting the event in Portugal offers a unique opportunity to strengthen collaboration with Portuguese-speaking institutions and collections while engaging cultural and heritage practitioners from across the Lusophone world. By uniting these communities, the event seeks to empower the contributions of Portuguese-speaking countries within the global open knowledge movement. Despite being the sixth most widely spoken native language worldwide, Portuguese remains underrepresented in wiki project contributions, edits, and the number of open collections or contributing GLAM institutions.
  3. Open access in cultural heritage varies significantly across Europe, shaped not only by national strategies and contemporary politics but also by cultural traditions and available resources. These differences present an opportunity to spotlight successful examples from Southern European countries, demonstrating the tangible benefits of open access in GLAM, culture, and heritage. By highlighting these successes, we aim to showcase the impactful role of the Wikimedia movement—through affiliates, user groups, and other collaborations —in advancing the open movement and fostering innovation in these fields.

These three focus areas will shape the programming strategy for this global event. Wikimedia Portugal and Wiki Editoras Lx are combining their expertise and shared interests in these domains, while drawing on their established networks and regional and global partnerships.


How to Get Involved

There are plenty of ways to get involved even now!

  • Community Engagement Survey: Share your thoughts in Portuguese, Spanish, French, or English.
  • Join a Committee: Let us know if you're interested in joining the Program Committee or the Scholarship Committee. If the grant is approved, these committees will begin their work in April 2025!
  • Spread the word: If you have collaborators or partners you'd like to involve—such as a museum or archive you've been working with—be sure to inform them about the upcoming conference so they can plan to participate.

We’d love to hear from you—reach out and be part of shaping this exciting event!

seehbe [at] gmail.com (please use subject line: I’m excited for a GLAM Wiki Conference)



Swiss GLAM Programme

GLAM Biel/Bienne

Teotihuacán - mask and form
Teotihuacán - mask and form

The last meeting was dedicated to faces and masks. Curator Ila Wingen presented the exhibition "Faces" that was realised in Berlin. 48 artists worked on the topic. Ila plans to continue the work and to open it up to intercultural dialogues and exchanges. The regular GLAM-Meetings in the Art Centre Biel/Bienne will continue for 2025.



Decolonization

Wikimania 2018 - Decolonizing the Internet Conference 080
Wikimania 2018 - Decolonizing the Internet Conference 080

In December the decolonizing project started. Although Switzerland had no colonies it was still exploiting the global south economicly. In Zurich there are several exhibitions on the subject. The guided tour and edit-a-thons are starting in January. It is also possible to contribute online.


Mind the Gap

Mind the gap
Mind the gap

In order to increase inclusivity and knowledge equity all the knowledge gaps need to be addressed. In the canon there are still lots of perspectives missing, especially the female knowledge canon. With the project on Archives Metapage the goal is to create awareness and access. The first film is the starting point of a series of short films.


2024 in review

Khalili Foundation monthly report

The Gulshan-i 'Ishq, now described on Punjabi Wikipedia

Most of the work this month has been on the UNESCO Memory of the World project, which has a separate report.

A volunteer created a new article on the Gulshan-i 'Ishq in Punjabi Wikipedia, translating part of the English article. This is the 66th new article created by this project, and the first in Punjabi. This means there are now sixteen language versions of Wikipedia in which this project has created new articles.

The official collection sizes of four of the Khalili Collections have changed, and I have made the appropriate changes in various Wikipedia articles and on Wikidata.

GLAMorgan reports 4,459,093 image views in December, from 105 different wikis. There are no new image uploads this month.

Khalili Foundation 2024 in review

15new articles:

  • 1 in English
  • 4 in Persian
  • 2 in Indonesian
  • 1 each in Uzbek, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Western Punjabi, Igbo, Punjabi, and Urdu. Eleven languages in total!
This Mughal emerald-set box spent time on the front page of English Wikipedia

4images on the front page of English Wikipedia:

  • These calligraphed tiles were part of a Did You Know about the Empire of the Sultans exhibition on 18 January.
  • The emerald-set box was part of a Did You Know about the Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands exhibition in 19 May.
  • The Chinese pilgrimage scroll was Featured Picture of the Day on 14 June, the first day of the 2004 Hajj.
  • The Iznik flask was on the home page when Empire of the Sultans was "Today's Featured Article" on 24 July.

83 million image views (19 million for images on the front page of English Wikipedia, the rest from summing the monthly views provided by GLAMorgan)

118 thousand page views of English articles about the Khalili Collections (the overview article, the eight articles about individual collections, Musa va 'Uj, Empire of the Sultans, and Khalili Imperial Garniture)

26 thousand page views of English Wikipedia articles about Sir David Khalili and the Khalili Foundation

Meiji textile art of a blossoming tree

7 image uploads of Japanese artworks (plus some cropped versions of other images), as well as 3 images from the Commonwealth Faith Festival launch event.

140 pages of new content added to the Interfaith Explorers site (while updating many other pages).

104 categories on Wikimedia Commons to which Khalili Collections images have been added (1,447 now as opposed to 1,343 a year ago)

38 English Wikipedia articles now use the Peace navigation template, created during a peacebuilding event hosted by Cambridge University and supported by the Khalili Foundation.

For the previous year's statistics, see the 2023 year in review.


December meetings

Black Lunch Table/Antenna 2024

Antenna's Drawn to the Beat, New Orleans, and BLT held a meetup, w:Wikipedia:Meetup/Black Lunch Table/Antenna 2024

  • Ahnari St. Julen at Antenna Photo Booth
    Ahnari St. Julen at Antenna Photo Booth

Haitian Creole Wikipedia Drip BK

Drip Beverage Lounge, Wikimedia New York City, AfroCrowd, and the Wikimedians of the Caribbean held a meetup, HaitianCreoleWikipediaDripBK

Chicago

Chicago Wikimedians held a meetup, Chicago/14 December 2024

  • Chi Wikipedian Meetup
    Chi Wikipedian Meetup

San Diego

San Diego Public Library and San Diego wikimedians held a meetup, San Diego/December 2024.

Seattle Meetup

Cascadia Wikimedians User Group, held a meetup, Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle

FAIRly Obscure Anthropology Edit-a-thon

University of Maryland Center for Archival Futures, the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; The Bentley Historical Library and University of Michigan School of Information; the University of Missouri’s College of Information Studies; and the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR), and Wikimedia DC held a workshop, FAIRly Obscure Anthropology Edit-a-thon.


Public Domain Day 2025

Random selection of images

See for all restored and newly uploaded files the gallery at: c:Commons:Public Domain Day/2025

  • Circe by Adolf Frey-Moock
    Circe by Adolf Frey-Moock
  • All Wet (1927)
    All Wet (1927)
  • Tour Perret in Amiens
    Tour Perret in Amiens
  • Schäfer by Albert Holz
    Schäfer by Albert Holz
  • Riding with the stars by Elizabeth Mary Watt
    Riding with the stars by Elizabeth Mary Watt
  • Église Saint-Joseph by Auguste Perret
    Église Saint-Joseph by Auguste Perret
  • Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial
    Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial
  • Circe by Adolf Frey-Moock
    Circe by Adolf Frey-Moock
  • Opera singer (soprano) Elsa Alsen
    Opera singer (soprano) Elsa Alsen
  • Woman of Tehuantepec
    Woman of Tehuantepec
  • Der Leichenbitter (Laternenmann)
    Der Leichenbitter (Laternenmann)
  • Chambre de commerce in Cambrai
    Chambre de commerce in Cambrai
  • Pinocchio
    Pinocchio
  • Tour Perret, Grenoble
    Tour Perret, Grenoble
  • Drilling in ice
    Drilling in ice
  • Neville Chamberlain by William Orpen
    Neville Chamberlain by William Orpen
  • Popeye the Sailor
    Popeye the Sailor
  • Literatur und Lüge by Karl Kraus
    Literatur und Lüge by Karl Kraus
  • The tongue and sublingua of a ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta)
    The tongue and sublingua of a ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta)
  • Church from Luxembourg-Limpertsberg
    Church from Luxembourg-Limpertsberg
  • Harvard Stadium
    Harvard Stadium
  • Teatro griego, Parque Guell in Barcelona
    Teatro griego, Parque Guell in Barcelona
  • Madame Jourdain
    Madame Jourdain
  • HMS Salisbury
    HMS Salisbury
  • Compositie van verhoudingen by Theo van Doesburg
    Compositie van verhoudingen by Theo van Doesburg
  • Motacilla citreola
    Motacilla citreola
  • Paul Howard, in "Leaping Love".
    Paul Howard, in "Leaping Love".
  • The Skeleton Dance
    The Skeleton Dance
  • Sfinks by Bolesław Biegas
    Sfinks by Bolesław Biegas
  • Tomb of Viktor Kosenko
    Tomb of Viktor Kosenko
  • Landschap met een molen langs een weg
    Landschap met een molen langs een weg
  • La danse by André Derain
    La danse by André Derain

See also

If you upload more files because they entered the public domain, please add them on Commons to c:Category:Media uploaded for Public Domain Day 2025.


BHL-Wiki Working Group December monthly highlights

Agenda & recording of the December 2024 meeting

The agenda for the meeting can be found at this link. The agenda document gives notes taken during the meeting, action items, as well as the dates of future online meetings and the zoom link to join. Links to the recordings of the previous meetings are also given.

Wikimedian in Residence

BHL's Wikimedian in Residence Tiago Lubiana has given updates on his progress which can be found here.

Some highlights from the past month include:

  • A new app for lightweight contributions was released on Toolforge, the BHL Arena. It enables users to compare images in the Commons tracking category and pick their favourites. It was made for users to explore the BHL images on Wikimedia Commons, find files needing extra metadata, and help prioritize candidates for reuse on Wikipedia and beyond. The source code, available on GitHub may be adapted to other Commons categories.
Main page of the BHL Arena Toolforge app comparing two images.


New relevant to BHL Wikidata property

The property reference illustration (P13162) was created on Wikidata.

BHL Meta Page

The BHL Meta page has gone live and there was a discussion at the monthly meeting about the progress being made to improve the page and other content to added. BHL's Wikimedian in Residence Tiago Lubiana has been working to enrich the meta page including adding more metric/impact information.

BHL Website FAQs

Members of the working group and the BHL community are working together to improve the BHL website FAQs that relate to engagement with the Wiki community. The aim is to update those BHL users interested in the Wiki work our community is undertaking and to encourage and guide any who wish to join in to contribute. These improvements are currently in draft but should be live on the BHL website in the near future.

WMF Q2 & Q3 hypothesis statements

The Q2 WMF hypothesis statement If the BHL-Wikimedia Working Group creates Commons categories and descriptive guidelines for the South American and/or African species depicted in publications, they will make 3,000 images more accessible to biodiversity communities has been achieved with over 9000 appropriate images placed in BHL's new categories, Files from the BHL in South America and Files from the BHL in Africa.

Work is still ongoing refining the BHL Structured Data on Commons model to be used to aid enriching BHL illustration data.

A discussion took place on practical issues raised when undertaking work to achieve the aims of the Q3 hypothesis statement which currently states: If 3,000 well-described images of South American and/or African species are released to the wider biodiversity community through 2-3 editing events and an on-wiki worklist, XX new images will be utilized on Spanish and French Wikimedia projects.

Decisions regarding duplicates of BHL images sourced from other institutions or the Internet Archive were made. See the agenda (link given above) for more detail.

Biodiversity User Group formation

A quick update was given on the feasibility of forming a Biodiversity User Group.

Outreach

The Chair of the BHL Wiki Working group, Ambrosia10, presented to the WOMNH Network group at the "Tell me where the women are": WOMNH Network Launching Event. Her presentation was on women scientific illustrators discovered through working with BHL sourced images in Flickr and Wikicommons. See this link for slides of that presentation. WOMNH is a recently formed international network promoting collaborations between researchers and museum professionals examining the roles women have played across the globe in the making of natural history collections and museums.


Ways forward

This is the third monthly report of the ongoing work to improve the representation of the UNESCO Memory of the World international register on Wikimedia projects. This is supported and fully funded by the Khalili Foundation, with the involvement of UNESCO and Wikimedia UK.

Improvements on Wikipedia and Wikidata

An African Song or Chant from Barbados

Welcome to the world the latest English Wikipedia article about a Memory of the World inscription, An African Song or Chant from Barbados. This is partly based on an existing German-language article, but I have re-written to improve on the automated translation, and with additional scholarly sources.

On 13 December, I met online with three of the UNESCO Memory of the World team - Dian, Yahia and Hannah - to deliver a training session on adding information to Wikidata. There is a lot of useful information in the MOW nomination forms that does not exist in any structured form: inception (when a collection started to exist), collection size, and copyright status are examples. We discussed creating properly sourced Wikidata statements using the nomination forms, then harvesting that structured data back into the UNESCO site. This could also be done in the other direction, created structured data in the UNESCO database and importing it into Wikidata; this is up to the UNESCO team how they want to proceed. With a structured data set, we could ask for UNESCO inscriptions from a given continent that are in the public domain, or create a timeline of when the inscriptions were created, or find inscriptions that consist of more than a thousand objects.

The English Wikipedia articles about the Memory of the World register all had grammatically odd introductory text, so I have improved this. They also have outdated links, and these can not be fixed by importing from Wikidata. I have completely updated the list of African inscriptions, replacing all broken links and adding in flag images to make it more colourful.

I have created a project page about the Khalili Foundation/ UNESCO/ Wikimedia UK Memory of the World project on the Meta wiki, which hosts project pages for similar collaborations. This tells Wikimedia contributors what they can do to help.

Data quality issues

The Memory of the World programme includes the international register (cultural heritage of global importance) as well as dozens of national or regional registers. One issue I discovered is that Wikimedia contributors sometimes mix up these registers. I found 12 items in Wikidata with statements “heritage designation ⇒ Memory of the World” but they were inscriptions on the New Zealand national register, not the international register. I also found 133 entries in an English Wikipedia article about the international register that were actually from Brazil’s national MOW register.

The focus of the current project is the Wikimedia representation of the international register, but having an accurate representation of that register means removing inscriptions that have been added by mistake. The actions I took as a result were to:

There is probably a need for more drastic changes on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons to prevent confusion between the international register and other registers.

I have also been replacing some broken links on English, French, and German Wikipedia with links to the current online MOW catalogue.

New articles

The Malay Annals now have articles in fifteen languages, the latest being Serbo-Croatian

I have a way of querying Wikidata to identify new articles across all versions of Wikipedia; this is an important part of the Khalili Collections work. When I tried to apply this to the Memory of the World, the reporting system broke, overwhelmed by the combination of nearly 500 topics and 300 languages. So I experimented with different ways to create a report, and settled on seven queries targeting different language groups, plus a separate query for Wikisource transcriptions, plus a separate query for new articles about the Memory of the World register (rather than the individual inscriptions). Below is a report about new articles about MOW inscriptions created in November and December 2024:

This report is probably incomplete because about a third of MOW inscriptions are presently unknown to Wikidata.

Page views on Wikipedia

This link shows the popularity (views by humans) of English Wikipedia articles about the Memory of the World programme and International Register (not articles about the individual inscriptions). By following the "All languages" links and summing the numbers, we get a total figure for views of the articles across all language versions of Wikipedia:

  • November 2024: 21,641 views
  • December 2024: 20,906 views


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