GLAM/Newsletter/February 2021/Single
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Recruiting two PMs; Budget Report 2020; Wikipedia 20th Bday
Recruiting two Project Managers in Albania and Kosovo
In seeking to increase the number of employees Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group recruited two Project Managers, one in Albania and Kosovo respectively. We are very happy to welcome aboard Vjollca Merdani acting as a Project manager in Albania and Rita Maliqi in Kosovo starting from January 2021.
Finalizing the report for 2020
Earlier this month we finalized the annual report 2020 where we described the outcomes in the Education, GLAM and Outreach programs in detail. Link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedians_of_Albanian_Language_User_Group/2020 (it is currently being under review).
Wikipedia 20th birthday
We started the online event on 5pm CET so we could all see the event organized by Wikimedia Foundation. We invited a large audience, volunteers and contributors to join the online meeting to talk about their experience with Wikipedia and celebrate the 20th birthday.
social media: SqWikimediansUG
Who do we think we are?
Who do we think we are?
In February 2021, researchers Heather Ford, Tamson Pietsch and Kelly Tall from UTS School of Communication published the results of a pilot study entitled: Producing distinction: Wikipedia and the Order of Australia. A visual essay. This project examines the relationship between Wikipedia and the Order of Australia to understand who is recognised.
The study was inspired by the work of Women in Red and the Australian Honour a Woman project, which was founded in 2017 to improve gender equity by supporting nominations of women for the Order of Australia awards, highlighting structural barriers to inclusion. The Order of Australia is notorious for not recognising women at the same rate as men, but the researchers discovered that on Wikipedia, awardees at the Companions or Officer level (the highest Order awards) are represented in slightly higher numbers than men.
Across all levels of the Honours, only 11% of recipients have a Wikipedia biography, but the Order announcement is an important signal for establishing notability on Wikipedia, and there is a discernible spike in page creation in the week the awards are announced.
However, keyword analysis showed that Wikipedia tends to notice women for contributions to sport and athletics, entertainment, media, and politics before they receive the Order but only after the award if their Honour is for work in nursing, community health, paediatrics, aged care and disability services. The researchers recommend that Wikipedia editors focus not only on *numbers* of women represented but the types of labour being recognised.
Wikimedia Australia contributors included Alex Lum, Toby Hudson, Pru Mitchell and Ann Reynolds.
The dataset and visualisations are available at: Data: Who do we think we are?.
New GLAM tutorials in Portuguese
New GLAM tutorials in Portuguese
We are glad to announce that Wiki Movimento Brasil has released new GLAM tutorials in Portuguese for institutions willing to join the Wikimedia community. The manual is composed by three units:
This module covers basic topics for begginers on Wikimedia, such as:
- What are Wikimedia platforms?
- What is a GLAM-Wiki?
- What is Wiki Movimento Brasil?
- How to join the Wikimedia ecosystem?
The second module provides guidance on how to insert information about the institution's GLAM on different Wikimedia projects:
- How to register your GLAM on Wikimedia Commons?
- How to improve your GLAM item on Wikidata?
- How to write on Wikipedia about a GLAM institution?
The last module is focused on the practical process to upload the collections on Wikimedia:
- How to donate a GLAM collection on Wikimedia platforms?
- What are the basic steps of a GLAM-Wiki upload?
The tutorial was created throughout the development of Wiki Loves Bahia, a WMB initiave that aims to enable cultural and educational institions from Bahia, Brazil, to contribute to Wikimedia projects, specially Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, and, as a consequence, increase the range of their collection, often considered a local knowledge, both on a national and international scale.
Find more data on Museu Paulista GLAM initiative
We're also glad to share with the community that Museu Paulista GLAM initiative joined the GLAM Wiki Dashboard platform! Developed by Wikimedia Israel, with support from Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia CH, Museu Paulista is the first Global South GLAM to join the project.
The platform, built upon open-source infrastructure, allows an easy to navigate interface with graphics on image views, user contributions and usage of files - information that usually is spread out through different projects. GLAM Wiki Dashboard will facilitate from now on the analysis of statistical data related to the Museu Paulista initiative, that have been going on since 2017 and is currently the largest one in Brazil with more than 26 thousand files systematically uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. Through the dashboard, it is possible to check out peaks on access to the museum's collection and better understand the community engagement with this particular GLAM.
GLAM Partnerships
Instituto Hercule Florence
Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) user group uploaded to Wikimedia Commons more than 70 files from Instituto Hercule Florence collection, including documents and illustrations of Brazilian fauna, flora and native people, made by Hercule Florence during the Langsdorff Expedition in the mid-19th century. This is the first batch uploaded from this GLAM partnership, with many more to come soon.
Some of the files from this batch belong to the book L’Ami des Arts or L’Ami des Arts livré à lui-même. Recherche et découvertes sur différents sujets nouveaux, written from 1837 to 1859, considered one of the most important manuscripts of the world photography history.
Part of the files were used to illustrate some Wikipedia entries, within the scope of the edit-a-thon Hercule Florence em Pintura (or Hercule Florence in Painting, in English). This was a dissemination activity with Instituto Hercule Florence and Museu Paulista, organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil, that happened on February, 26th, in which spcialists from the institutions gave a webinar on Florence's contributions to the iconographic collection of the museum. The practical activity had a total of 14 editors engaged that created nine new entries and improved other nineteen entries on Portuguese Wikipedia.
WikiMuseum
The time for virtual exhibitions has come
Wikipedia has a long history of working with museums. But what about being a museum?
Now let's be honest: Wikipedia is like a digital museum. It collects and exhibits all sorts of material. But could we push that just a little bit further?
During the pandemic, we assembled several virtual exhibitions in Estonia:
- "The nature of Estonian faces"
- "Karilatsi Parish 100"
- "Ears from Kalamaja"
- "Where Even Sunrays Will Not Reach"
Those weren't the first exhibitions of that kind in Estonia. This concept was already tested back in 2017 with the multi-language art exhibition "The decisive years prior to Independence: Moments from the Estonian art of 1914–18", and further with "The Secrets of Ancient Seas" and "Some Interesting Details in the History of Polish-Estonian Relationships". We already knew it works and we have felt the need to move in that direction for years.
In this time of lockdown, making some virtual visits to the museums might be the only way for people to get there. But this way of "visiting" could be used on more relaxed times as well.
For example, we might collect thousands of images on whatever topic (an example), but we don't really have that many ways to showcase them. Articles have limited space and if there already is one good quality image, then there is little need for another. As time passes, the more this will limit the possibility to discover great content.
When we would look at our own bookshelves, then there might not be that many encyclopedias there. This is just one way to share knowledge, but there are many more. So if we truly want to make the sum of all human knowledge freely accessible to everyone, then we must also keep extending the range of projects that prosper under Wikimedia.
Maybe the time is ripe to start a new Wikipedia sister projects – WikiMuseum? Something that is specifically designed to help tell the stories that an encyclopedia by itself cannot.
It isn't just the GLAM institutions that could work with it. There are plenty of media materials in Wikimedia Commons (an example) that could benefit from the possibility to get their own place to shine. There are great stories to tell and we are more than prepared to take this step. We already have a lot of great content. Why not find more ways to share it?
Focus on learning
Save the date! Hack4OpenGLAM will be arranged 20–24 September 2021. Take part in the survey to set the agenda!
Hack4OpenGLAM cultural hackathon took place for the first time last year at the Creative Commons Global Summit. AvoinGLAM (a joint GLAM working group with Wikimedia Finland, Open Knowledge Finland, and Creative Commons Finland) is seeking to arrange it again in 2021.
GLAM hackathons have been arranged as in-person events in countries around the world. Hack4OpenGLAM wishes to become a global online doathon, with a strong focus on Knowledge Equity. The goal is to bring together GLAM organizations, Wikimedia and other open knowledge volunteers, creators, educators, developers, students and researchers working with Open Access to cultural heritage to play and experiment together.
Let's create the event together! The first step is a survey we wish you could answer whether or not you attended the previous hackathon.
AvoinGLAM discussions & webinars
This month we have been partnering with other events and featuring in webinars in addition to arranging AvoinGLAM discussions.
The wiki museum of Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo
On 4 March Elpo ry and AvoinGLAM invited museum professionals, open culture activists and art lovers to discuss how actors outside the institutions could store cultural heritage in high quality and share it for open use, and whether the Wikimedia platforms can play a role in that.
Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo (1900–1997) was an exceptional and significant Finnish visual artist, designer, educational scientist and humanist, whose life’s work has remained largely unknown. Ahola-Valo participated extensively in the cultural life of the 1920's Soviet Union in the fields of visual arts, architecture, design and pedagogy, and knew personally both Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich.
The association Elpo ry, founded by Ahola-Valo in 1983, plans to digitize and publish his production and archives as a wiki museum on open platforms in cooperation with open culture actors. All material will be openly licensed by the virtual museum. Alexander Ahola-Valo himself believed in the free flow of information, like one of his role models, Leo Tolstoy, whose works are freely printable by anyone.
The invited speakers were Risto Suvanto, chaiman of the board at Elpo ry, Anne Pelin, exhibition manager at Gallen-Kallela Museum, Max Fritze, collections curator at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Anni Saisto, intendent at Pori Art Museum, Susanna Eklund, service designer at Finna services at the National Library of Finland, and Minna Joenniemi, culture journalist at Yle.
To summarize, many resources already exist to help organizations digitize and preserve collections. They may not be created from the point of view of non-professionals, and they may be complicated to understand. Other times they may need updating, and a collective effort to record best practices and links to resources would be useful. When we think about how we as GLAM-Wiki practitioners could help, we could help maintain a multilingual resource bank hosted in Wikimedia. Sharing the works online will follow after the collection has been charted and a digitization plan is in place.
Ajapaik 10 years: Crowdsourcing platforms for historic images, organized by Ajapaik
Crowdsourcing platform Ajapaik celebrated its 10 years on February 27. To mark this anniversary Ajapaik organized an online webinar about platforms that deal with enriching the metadata of historic images – geotagging pictures, identifying persons, rephotography of historic images and so on. The event featured the following platforms, their presenters, and session moderators:
- Topothek by Alexander Schatek (ICARUS). Moderator Sandra Fauconnier (ex Wikimedia Foundation) – session on Youtube
- Smapshot by Stéphane Lecorney (Media Engineering Institute - HEIG-VD). Moderator Susanna Ånäs (AvoinGLAM, Wikidocumentaries) – session on Youtube (Presentation slides)
- Civil War Photo Sleuth by Vikram Mohanty (Virginia Tech). Moderator Peter Krogh (The DAM book, The Tandem Vault) – session on Youtube
- Historypin by Jon Voss (Shift Collective). Moderator James Morley (A Street Near You, Postcodepast) – session on Youtube
- Ajapaik by Vahur Puik (Estonian Photographic Heritage Society – MTÜ Eesti Fotopärand). Moderator Mia Ridge, Digital Curator, (British Library) – session on Youtube
Links:
- Meeting memo
- Recording in YouTube, Facebook, and Periscope.
- Project page
HRI Loves Developers: Archival treasures in the Metropolitan area organized by Helsinki Region Infoshare
Helsinki Region Infoshare (HRI) is a service that provides access to open data sources between the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. In this event the city archives from Helsinki and Vantaa and the National Archives presented their open collections, such as maps, plans, documents, and registers. Antti Kekki presented Muinaismuistot.info, and Sami Liedes demoed document binarisation for easier text recognition. Genealogical Society of Finland and AvoinGLAM presented the data reusers' view. We explained the necessity of suitable licensing for data and images and presented initiatives taking advantage of Wikimedia projects:
The Hack4FI hackathon has always featured data from the city of Helsinki. A great example of a successful project is the 2017 hackathon winner Hobo Tram, based on the journals of Johan Harju, a self-taught writer and historian, but also a homeless alcoholic. The project was further developed as a VR experience and an exhibition at Helsinki City Museum and a spin-off VR animation Man Under Bridge by Hanna Västinsalo was premiered at the Venice VR Expanded at the Biennale di Venezia in 2020.
The Helsinki Rephotography project takes the historical images of the Helsinki City Museum and lets volunteers geotag them with the Ajapaik application. The project also featured an exhibition in the Oodi central library of Helsinki.
Lists of public artworks in Helsinki have been published by Helsinki Art Museum on their website, and they can also be read and downloaded from The City of Helsinki map service. The well-functioning services are a good starting point for data imports to Wikidata.
Helsinki City Archives is renewing their API to serve open materials better. Some historical maps have already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where they can be further rectified with the help of the Wikimaps Warper and used freely as image layers in any map-based application. Georeferenced resources are also available through the WMS API, such as the aerial imagery used in the Central Park Archives project.
Significant buildings and other features of urban structure like streets, parks, neighbourhoods, and city blocks have been added to Wikidata for the benefit of the the Wiki Loves Monuments competition, which focused on urban change in 2020. The recorded locations provide a great framework for locating historical images from the Helsinki City Museum in Wikimedia Commons, and for the use of the Helsinki Rephotography project. As a building gets more info in Wikidata, its page in Wikidocumentaries can present it more vividly.
The original recipe for the Runeberg’s torte
On the 5th of February, Finland celebrates Runeberg’s Day in honour of our National poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. As part of the celebrations, Finns eat Runeberg tortes. Popular legend says that Runeberg's wife, writer Fredrika Runeberg, created the dessert and that the poet enjoyed it regularly.
Projekt Fredrika uploaded the original recipe from Fredrika Runeberg’s book of recipes in collaboration with Porvoo Museum. The recipe is now available on Wikimedia Commons.
GLAM case studies
Part of our plan for this year is to formalize a process to work with GLAM case studies. We aim to focus on helping GLAMs and communities to contribute to Wikimedia projects themselves by providing examples, creating tutorials, and arranging how-to sessions (which we haven't done yet). The output channels are the AvoinGLAM blog and the Wikipedia:GLAM pages. If you are doing similar activities, let's work to create multilingual resources together!
Public artworks
The Finnish Wikipedia community has done extensive charting work over the years to collect information about public art in Finnish municipalities. The data will now be transferred to Wikidata in various initiatives. Most of the images recorded in this project can only be used in the Finnish Wikipedia based on a copyright exception.
The public artworks listed by the Helsinki Art Museum were added to Wikidata as a kick-off in collaboration with Projekt Fredrika in February. Robert Silén provided Swedish labels and descriptions to the artworks in Helsinki, and also to the linked places and personalities. More about this in Projekt Fredrikas blog Helsingfors statyer och minnesmärken (in Swedish).
Next, we will proceed to creating coherent documentation and tutorials. They should combine the work done in Wikipedia, local resources in other countries and work already done in Wikidata. Describing the copyright status of the artworks is one of the new things to learn and document.
Urban structure
The work with adding urban features gradually expands from Helsinki to other cities. Each municipality needs to be addressed individually, as all of them have their own systems and policies. The next step is to create materials that explain the benefit of CC0 and Wikidata, and provide step-by-step instructions for anyone who wishes to contribute.
Finnish personalities
We are starting to make a coordinated action to add Finnish historical personalities to Wikidata. We work together with HELDIG – Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities and the Semantic Computing Research Group SeCo to import and link the linked data collected and mined in the Sampo projects as widely as possible. We can extend the work to associating portraits and photographs from Finnish GLAM collections and images on Wikimedia Commons.
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PD Day 2021 in Indonesia, #1lib1ref, Wikisource workshop
PD Day 2021 in Indonesia
As a continuation of the 2020 Public Domain Day in Indonesia in January 2020, GLAM Indonesia held 2021 Public Domain Day in Indonesia in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Indonesien and Creative Commons Indonesia. A number of workshops and seminars were held over four days.
On January 22, we organized a public seminar to introduce the public domain and how to calculate the duration of copyright in Indonesia from a number of types of works. In this seminar, participants were given a quiz which aims to deepen their understanding of copyright and to be able to identify which works in the GLAM institution are already in the public domain. Watch recordings of these online seminars at YouTube.
In addition, we invited Aleksandra from Europeana to show the extent to which public domain works can be used. She gave an example that these works can be made into new works in the form of GIF images, which are quite popular for users of messaging applications today. If you want to watch the presentation, visit this YouTube video.
We also invited Chris, a contributor at Wikimedia Commons, to tell about his efforts in digitizing Indonesian film posters for his research. The posters, which now in the public domain, have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for use in related articles. In addition, Moki, an artist from Indonesia, got inspiration from old photographs and then reconstructs them into new, interesting works of art.
#1lib1ref
We started #lib1ref campaign this February and invited librarians in Indonesia to participate in adding references to Indonesian Wikipedia. To give some understanding on this campaign, we created some live videos on YouTube and talked about the campaign, Citation Hunt, tracking participants' contributions, and hearing what they say about this campaign. Find the videos on this Twitter thread.
On February 10, six librarians from Library of Universitas Medan Area joined a workshop.
Monthly Wikisource training session for local community
To raise public awareness on Wikisource, a sister project of Wikipedia, we organized monthly Wikisource workshops to local community in Indonesia, hoping they have a chance to try text proofreading and see if it suits their interest. GLAM Indonesia had done three Wikisource workshops to different local communities in Indonesia: workshop in December 2020 to Balinese community, workshop in January 2021 to Javanese community, and workshop in February to Padang community.
Historical Maps; Share your Data on colonial heritage; Knowledge platform for heritage institutions
Historical maps available on Wikimedia Commons - upload by Utrechts Archief
Thanks to the Utrecht Archive, more historical maps of the Netherlands are available to the world. The archive started in February with a bulk upload of the Utrecht Archive's map collection to Wikimedia Commons.
Share your Data on colonial heritage
Two years ago Wikimedia Nederland organized Share your Data for the first time, a series of master classes for staff of Dutch heritage institutions on all aspects of sharing knowledge and collections with the Wikimedia projects. We are going to do that again this year. With financial support from the GO-fund, we are organizing 'Shared history: on wiki': online Share your Data masterclasses focused on colonial history. The program is intended for employees of knowledge and heritage institutions with relevant collections in the European Netherlands, the Antilles and Suriname.
Knowledge platform for heritage institutions
Wikimedia Nederland will soon start developing an online knowledge platform. In recent years the number of heritage institutions that approach Wikimedia Nederland for support has been growing. However, our capacity for guidance and support is limited. That is why we want to set up a knowledge platform with documentation, manuals, tools and instructional videos that allow heritage organisations to work independently. The aim of the platform is to provide online guidance for employees of Dutch heritage organisations on Wikimedia. Staff members can learn at their own pace, with minimal help from Wikimedia Nederland - or completely independently - how to make their collections and knowledge available through the Wikimedia projects and how to collaborate optimally with the voluntary community. The platform can be developed thanks to financial support from the Digital Heritage Network.
Amazing results of the January #1Lib1Ref campaign
Serbian Wikipedia won the first place of the #1Lib1Ref campaign
Serbian Wikipedia convincingly achieved first place in the global for editing references with 17112 entered references by 31 participants. As many as five editors of Serbian Wikipedia were placed in the top 10 editors of the Campaign, and the title of the best editor of the Campaign was taken by the srWiki editor . With this campaign, 3853 articles on Serbian Wikipedia received new data sources, and the level of reliability was significantly increased.
Wikipedian in residence at Museum of African Art
A one-month was held at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade. During the project, 11 articles were written and complemented, while numerous articles on Serbian and English Wikipedia were illustrated. 303 files have been posted on Wikimedia Commons, including a rare video of an elephant hunt, photos of Josip Broz Tito from a visit to Africa, as well as photos of African tribes, political figures, and cultural monuments.
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A Village in Ghana in 1975. -
Egyptian Soldier in 1955 -
The Great Sphinx in 1955 -
Tito and Nasser meeting for the first time -
UNEF Soldier in Sinai Reading Yugoslavian newspaper "Borba" -
Cairo in 1950's
Wikipedian in residence at Belgrade city library
The fifth month of the Belgrade city Library has ended, during which 119 new articles have been written, 3 have been supplemented, and as many as 273 articles have been illustrated. 960 files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, including 4 books, 50 issues of Illustrated War Chronicles, and 20 issues of Zavičaj
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The Illustrated War Chronicle from 1912 -
The Illustrated War Chronicle from 1913 -
Imperial Family of Russia in 1899 -
Isabel Hutton -
Front page of the magazine Bosna -
Front page of the music magazine "Zvuk"
Medieval ballads; Project HBTQI
Medieval ballads – Sveriges Medeltida Ballader
Medieval ballads have been sung for hundreds of years and are still sung today. These ballads are long narrative songs with refrains and as a part of the project Free music on Wikipedia some of them are now available on Wikimedia Commons. According to that user Belteshassar is working with a list of the objects in Wikidata and categories on Commons. One issue is that there are similar songs in several countries and how can we work with questions around that?
Project HBTQI – so we do Wikipedia and the world better together!
At the beginning of February, we participated in the conference Folk och Kultur with a program on the background and implementation of the LGBTQI project. The project is a collaboration between Sörmland's museum, Biblioteksutveckling Sörmland and Wikimedia Sweden where we work together on a project site on Swedish Wikipedia. Similar projects are available in 26 language so the global connection works directly. The discussion in the program addresses the benefits of a common platform that is open to all.
50 Years Women's Suffrage in Switzerland & More
Celebrating 50 Years Swiss Women's Suffrage
In this historical year, Wikimedia CH has decided to celebrate the 50 years women's voting rights in Switzerland, by launching a dedicated program focussing on this important happening. We have created a project page summarizing all events and documenting the results.
Running such a program is only possible with the strong support of the voluntary community in Switzerland and across the boarders for everyone interested to contribute respective content on Wikimedia projects, as well as the close collaboration with GLAM Institutions and like-minded organizations for co-organizing events and donate digitized collections as well as research material tight to this event.
The aim of the program is to partially close the gap around women's biographies and women's political advancements in the last century. Read about some event highlights & stories in the next section or visit our project page.
Event Highlights & Stories
Besides this year's Wikipedia for Peace online-camp dedicated to the 50 years women's voting rights in Switzerland, which took place beginning of February 2021 and the two edit-a-thons in the French-speaking region of Switzerland, one at BCUF (Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg) in January and one at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) on "Women in Science" mid of February we would like to highlight the Filmfestival in Solothurn and the hybrid event at the Historical Museum Olten on "Women Pioneers".
- Link to the Events Page
- Link to the BCUF Workshop Project page
- Link to the EPFL Edit-a-thon
Edit-a-thon at Solothurner Filmfestival
The 56. Edition of the Solothurner Filmfestival was conducted in an online format. Therefore, we had the possibility to organize a virtual Wikipedia workshop and edit-a-thon offered in four break out sessions, one for each language (en, de, fr, it) and invite the Swiss-wide GLAM community to participate. This event was organized by the collective Who writes his_tory? In collaboration with the Solothurner Filmfestival, the Cinémathèque Suisse and Wikimedia CH. The preparation work was intense, thanks to a dedicated team, it was possible to set-up a project page including a detailed article list as well as an online drive with specific research material and exclusive usage for the writing work during and after the Wikipedia workshop. With approx. 50 participants it was a great occasion to work together on Swiss Women Filmmaker and their achievements as well as to get in contact with some Filmmakers such as Gertrud Pinkus and Lucienne Lanaz as well as Camerawomen Christine Munz. Please find below a little screen recording highlights video from this event.
Wikipedia Workshop at Historical Museum Olten
Presentation of GLAM Statistical Tool "Cassandra" @ WMF
After several years of work our GLAM Statistical Tool "Cassandra" is finally entering the final stage. As last step, we have integrated a statistical dashboard into Cassandra, with download functionality. Moreover we added some new functionalities in the section "Suggestions" and optimized the algorithm. In March we will perform final testing and bug fixing. In the coming months Wikimedia CH might add some additional information to it and perform minor changes. It has been a long pathway since we presented the first version of Cassandra at the GLAM Wiki Conference in Tel Aviv.
Wikimedia CH was invited to present the new version of the GLAM Statistical Tool at the WMF GLAM Office Hour conducted by Fiona Romeo, on February 22, 2021. Other Wikimedia Chapters have raised a major interest in adopting Cassandra in their country. We have had several separate discussions regarding local implementations with different Chapters already. Wikimedia CH is open to share the work and investment we made and make the GLAM Statistical Tool accessible and available for other Chapters and GLAM Institutions in the world. For this purpose Wikimedia CH is working on elaborating a Memorandum of Understanding to be signed with the Wikimedia Chapters interested in adopting Cassandra on a local and regional level. We are already sharing our knowledge with Wikimedia Israel and Wikimedia Sweden as both chapters are in the process of implementing the GLAM Statistical Tool Cassandra for their GLAM Institutions.
A global roll-out requires some strategic discussions and decisions. There are different possibilities on how to approach such a project. Due to a major interest from other Wikimedia Chapters in this direction, Wikimedia CH will enter a discussion and decision process on possible strategies for a global approach with the Wikimedia Foundation in the coming months. For any further information or interest in Cassandra, please contact Wikimedia CH directly.
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Cassandra Main UI -
Cassandra Statistical Dashboard -
Cassandra Views Screen -
Cassandra Detail File Views -
Cassandra Category Network -
Cassandra File Usage in Wikimedia Projects
Participating in 1Lib1Ref
- Link to German Project Page
- Link to French Project Page
Khalili Collections
Khalili Collections
The article on Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage went live and passed DYK review. A volunteer translated a summary of the Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World article into Persian. These bring the total number of new articles created by the project to 22, 11 of which have passed DYK review. Three more articles about aspects of the Hajj are still in draft. February was spent writing about Khalili's largest collection - the world's largest private collection of Islamic art - and making minor changes to related articles. There are still delays in the bulk upload of Islamic art images; there were no new uploads apart from a couple of cropped versions of previous images.
Black History Month and Smithsonian anniversary
Reflecting on the Smithsonian Open Access anniversary
This is a modified version of a blog post for the Smithsonian by Wikimedians Kelly Doyle and Andrew Lih.
One year ago, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced a bold new Open Access initiative, "to invite new audiences in the door to explore all of our offerings." By making more than 3 million images from the Smithsonian available under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, 175 years of Smithsonian content would be made available to "everyone for any purpose, for free."
But adopting an open access policy is not enough to meet the Smithsonian 2022 goal of reaching 1 billion people per year with its digital content. Wikipedia is an important strategic partner to achieving the exponential reach the Smithsonian envisions. Whether you're doing a Google search to research information, using a voice assistant to answer a question, or doing an image search on your mobile device, Wikimedia content is used throughout the Internet, across commercial and noncommercial entities alike. This is true to the long term strategic goal of the Wikimedia movement to be the "essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge."
The launch of the Smithsonian Open Access project also marked the start of an innovative plan for deep strategic engagement with the Wikimedia movement. This not only contributes content, but fosters collaboration and co-creation of new ways to access, visualize and interact with the resulting shared knowledge base.
- Kelly Doyle initiated this work, coming to the Smithsonian Institution as a Wikimedian in Residence in the role of Open Knowledge Coordinator, focusing on the American Women's History Initiative. AWHI focuses on restoring women’s contributions in the narrative of American history, and sharing new resources about women openly to address the gender imbalances found online. Through our Wikipedia efforts, we’re adding women from new curatorial research onto Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata to be shared and remixed by all.
- Andrew Lih joined the Smithsonian in the role of Wikimedian at Large, to set up the infrastructure to share and track the impact of Smithsonian Open Access collections in the Wikimedia ecosystem, to develop tools and workflow for sharing structured data about women at-scale, and to share the open access images and data with key wiki projects. The Wikimedia community has worked with museums and the cultural sector for more than a decade, and this marks the largest collaboration to date. He has previously worked with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on groundbreaking Wikimedia projects.
Projects
The work with the AWHI includes compiling lists of notable women whose stories need to be written back into history and shared with an open access policy on Wikimedia projects. The Funk List is a spreadsheet of data about women in science crowdsourced with staff and the Smithsonian’s historian. These women contributed significantly to science but were sometimes working alongside husbands on a volunteer basis, or weren’t given the job title they merited. Dr. Liz Harmon, digital curator at Smithsonian Archives and Libraries, has researched and filled in the information gaps in the list. The goal is to pilot sharing this list as a set to Wikidata to stubs, and investigate ways to connect people across the Smithsonian’s collections with the identifiers accumulated in Wikidata.
Wikidata serves as the core of most Smithsonian-Wikimedia projects. As a multilingual open data platform that is collaboratively edited in the same way as Wikipedia, it is gaining widespread popularity among libraries and museums around the world. Though not as widely known as Wikipedia, Wikidata is utilized by major search engines and online services to maintain knowledge graph databases.
Beyond Wikipedia with Wikidata
Why the focus on Wikidata? Wikidata is more inclusive and expansive than Wikipedia, as it employs a much lower "notability threshold" for the inclusion of topics. While the largest Wikipedia edition (English) is an impressive 6.2 million articles and growing, Wikidata contains more than 92 million items encompassing objects, documents, locations, people, or concepts known to humankind. For example, Wikipedia seeks articles written about the most famous painted artworks in the world, whereas Wikidata documents all of them and currently has more than 500,000 entries.
The larger range of concepts in Wikidata is a crucial link to establish the online presence of those missing from the historical record, unlocking ability to do powerful creative projects. Mapping of locations, examining a timeline of events or finding connections among people are all easily performed in Wikidata. We are already seeing the benefits of these capabilities, such as seeing patterns and connections for data from the Smithsonian contributions to Wikidata. What were the schools and colleges that were influential in producing leaders in the American women's suffrage movement? What scientific disciplines are well documented in Wikimedia projects and which ones need more Smithsonian content?
Wikidata provides ways to easily visualize the knowledge graphs within its structured database, and we are constantly working on interfaces to allow for any user to explore these and to find insights that go beyond our basic understanding of history.
Dashboards and reporting
Another initiative is to measure the impact of Smithsonian content as delivered through Wikimedia sites. We can reliably examine traffic to specific media files contributed by the Smithsonian and the Wikipedia articles that used them, even if we cannot completely measure all its downstream uses. We are regularly recording statistics about media file usage from the various Smithsonian units, with the goal of pinpointing areas ripe for improvement.
We are already seeing some interesting results. In Q4 2020, four out of the top seven images used from Smithsonian Institution Archives on English Wikipedia were of women:
- scientists Marie Curie, Pauline Gracia Beery Mack, and Barbara McClintock;
- African American academic Angela Davis; and
- author/advocate Chelsea Clinton
This underscores the impact and importance of Smithsonian, and the AWHI in particular, as a supplier of crucial historic information to populate Wikimedia projects. The multimedia assets and the metadata help complete the historic record, with repercussions down the line, to search engines, to voice assistants and to all manner of educational resources.
What's next and participation
The Smithsonian’s Open Access initiative and the AWHI’s Wikimedia commitment allow us to widely share our collections, across languages and cultures, and offers an opportunity to close the gender and diversity gaps on Wikipedia.
Only 18% of biographies on Wikipedia are about women. We are working to change that through the power of Wikidata and community events like Wikipedia meetups and edit-a-thons.
- If you’d like to learn more about Wikimedia and editing Wikipedia or Wikidata, join in one of our virtual AWHI edit-a-thons. Events are regularly updated on our calendar or through our email list, sign up here.
- You can also examine the work being done with Smithsonian Open Access content at the Wikidata GLAM WikiProject to see statistics reports and tools.
Black History Month
Blavk WikiHistory Month has been active since 2015, and this year's virtual events span the United States and beyond, many in cooperation with GLAM institutions.
Black Lunch Table/MiA
The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Black Lunch Table held a workshop, Black Lunch Table/MiA
Black Lunch Table/CAA
College Art Association Annual Conference, and Black Lunch Table held a workshop, CAA edit-a-thon 2021
Writing Black History of the Pacific Northwest into Wikipedia
Oregon State University and AfroCROWD held a workshop, Writing Black History of the Pacific Northwest into Wikipedia - Edit-a-thon 2021. There was a dashboard, [1]
African Americans in STEM
National Museum of African American History and Culture, and blackcomputeHER.org, and Wikimedia DC, held a workshop, African Americans in STEM Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon
Black Philly Artists 2021
The Philadelphia Museum of Art & Temple University co-hosted an edit-a-thon for adding information about Black Philly Artists to Wikidata.
NYC/AfroCROWD
The NY Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYU LA Online, and AfroCROWD, with Wikimedia NYC, held a edit-a-thon for the 7th year, this time virtually AfroCROWD/BlackWikiHistoryMonth21
Black Lunch Table/RutgersFeb2021
Rutgers' University and Black Lunch Table held a workshop, RutgersFeb2021
Philadelphia WikiSalon
The February meetup of the Philadelphia WikiSalon celebrated Valentine's Day by discussing how to find and add public domain images from newspapers and other sources to Wikimedia Commons, WikiSalon 2021-02-13.
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Codex Manesse Bernger von Horheim
PACSCL
The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) held a work session to add information from library finding aids to Wikidata, using the Philadelphia Area Archives Research Portal. The session focused on under-represented communities including African Americans and LGBTQIA folks.
San Diego/February 2021
Wikimedians in San Diego County held a meetup, San Diego/February 2021
New USDA National Agricultural Library Timeline Celebrates the House Agriculture Committee’s 200th Anniversary
NAL launched a new timeline this month documenting the history of the House Agriculture Committee. The timeline highlights images held within the Public Domain - including some from Wikimedia Commons.
Project Grants, Analytics for GLAMs, and Shared Citations
Project Grants
Last month, the Foundation’s GLAM & Culture team gave feedback on community organizing proposals through 1:1 meetings and on the projects’ discussion pages. These proposals are now under consideration by the Committee and grantees will be announced on April 22, 2021.
The research and software round of project grants is open for proposals until March 16, 2021. If you need advice on your proposal, there are weekly clinics with Program Officers and thematic experts. Everyone else is encouraged to review the proposals and leave feedback.
Analytics for GLAMs
In February, the GLAM team held two days of office hours about analytics. Wikimedia Switzerland presented their latest version of the Cassandra tool and Wikimedia Israel shared their work to localize and extend it. We were also joined by researchers Trilce Navarrete and Elena Villaespesa, who shared their analysis of the consumption of museum images on Wikipedia, Digital Heritage Consumption: The Case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Details of further meetings will be published to the GLAM team office hours page.
Links
- GLAM stat tool Cassandra v2.0 by Wikimedia Switzerland (on Github)
- GLAM Wiki Dashboard by Wikimedia Israel (on Github)
- Presentation by Trilce Navarrete and Elena Villaespesa, Museum Collections on Wikipedia
Highlights
- Cassandra offers a user-friendly way to add new GLAM institutions using the Commons category. Data going back to 2015 is available within 48 hours. The data is broken down by time periods and language versions.
- The main updates for Cassandra v2.0:
- Now includes Commons sub-categories
- A new feature suggests relevant Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items
- Free text search to find an individual file
- Wikimedia Israel worked on the localization of the Cassandra tool. It is now available in English and Hebrew, with Swedish and Portuguese language versions coming soon.
- Trilce and Elena found that paintings were used on Wikipedia as visual documentation and information sources, not only as art works.
- In their analysis of 8,000 paintings used in 10,000 articles in the English Wikipedia, they found that 33% of articles were art-related, receiving 12% of views, while 67% of articles containing a painting were non-art related and received 88% of views.
- Paintings often serve as portraits (of artists, of historical and political figures, of mythological and religious characters) and to illustrate places. Images that have a title like portrait or location are used most often.
- Twenty-six paintings were used in more than one article. One image was used in 76 articles. The Scream can be found illustrating an article about itself, the artist Edvard Munch, but also the page for anxiety disorder, Krakatoa, and existential angst.
Shared Citations
If you’re a Wikimedian who also enjoys libraries, likes structured data, or wants an integrated citation system, you’ll be interested in learning more about the Shared Citations proposal. Conceived by Liam Wyatt as the successor to the WikiCite program, its objective is to build a modern reference management system that spans and supports all Wikimedia projects, including Wikidata, to make citations:
- easier for the editor,
- more useful for the reader,
- and more efficient for our architecture.
The proposal is out for consultation and would benefit from your feedback and ideas.
March's GLAM events
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