GLAM/Newsletter/January 2016/Single

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#OpenAfrica15

Participants, Trainers and Organizers at #OpenAfrica15

The English journalist Daniel Metcalfe wrote about his travels in Angola: “Like most museums in Luanda, this one wasn’t open…”[1] Lack of funds, unskilled coverage and handling of cultural artifacts and disinterest may cause that parts of the cultural heritage are destroyed or even forgotten. But how can the heritage be preserved, how can everyone learn about the rich art and history of a region when it is not accessible? How can we create access for everyone without big funds, even better, without any funds?

A solution for this problem might be found in the Wikimedia projects: Wikipedia for articles, Wikimedia Commons for photographies, videos and sound files, Wiktionaries for small African languages, Wikisource for documents, GLAM activities for creating the contacts between institutions and active Wikimedians and finally Wikimedians in Residence to help the institutions on site.

#OpenAfrica15 Delegates at the Origins Centre Museum of the University of the Witwatersrand in Braamfontein

It is essential that more Women editors share the knowledge of the World from a female perspective. And it is imperative that Africans tell the story of Africa from an African perspective. One way of finding African Wikimedians in Residence is to invite interested African Wikimedians and invite them to a workshop.

WikiAfrica, a project to increase the quality and quantity of African content on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, conceptualised a workshop in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg and supported by Creative Commons South Africa.

From 30th of November to 4th of December 2015 the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg offered space, technology and funding in their spacious rooms in Johannesburgs leafy suburb Parkwood. The project was coordinated and managed by Isla Haddow-Flood, Project Manager at WikiAfrica and Brigitte Doellgast, Head of Library & Information Services sub Saharan Africa of the Goethe-Institut. An experienced Wikipedian was recruited as trainer: Gereon Kalkuhl from Germany. Participants came from Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa.

The pre-course-tasks that were given to delegates were to write at least one article on Wikipedia relevant to an African country, to research the state of the Open Movement in their country, to research possible content partners and to upload photos to Commons.

It is no easy task to make Wikipedians fit for being Wikimedians in Residence in only five days. Many topics have to be addressed. The programme looked like this:

See: #OpenAfrica15

Monday, 30th of November 2015

Introductions, Open Africa and Playing Field

Time Subject Who Format Specifics
09:00–10:30 Introductions Isla, Gereon, Delegates Presentation Why WikiAfrica – danger of a single story

What WIRs are. What to expect. Introductions.

10:30–11:00 Coffee break
11:00–12:30 Wikimedia and Wikipedia Gereon Presentation Wikipedia: what it is, what it is not; consensus, community, registration. Discussion among delegates of experience on Wikipedia. Run down of the Wikimedia projects - and their relevance to WIRs (to include case studies of usage). The Foundation and Chapters • Wikipedia (Five Pillars) • Wiktionary (Accuracy) • Wikibooks and Wikijunior • Wikinews (newsagent, interviews) • Wikiquote • Wikisource (Digital library, sources, translations) • Wikiversity (tutorial and courses) • Wikivoyage (travel guide) • Wikimedia Commons (pictures, videos, sound files) • Incubator (new language versions) • Meta-Wiki • Wikispecies • Wikidata • Wikimania • outreach.wikimedia.org
12:30–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–15:00 Wikimedia and Wikipedia Gereon Presentation Part II of 11:00–12:30
15:00–15:15 Coffee break
15:15–16:00 Open Africa – Introduction Isla, Delegates Workshop /
participatory 		Presentations by each delegate of the open movement in their country.

Tuesday, 1st of December 2015

Working on Wikimedia projects and going GLAM

Time Subject Who Format Specifics
09:00–10:30 Editing Gereon Workshop /
participatory 		Review of Wikipedia articles created by delegates. Look at editorial oversight and control, control systems, namespaces • Structure and Format of an article • Templates • Info Boxes • References • External links • Where to find help.
10:30–11:00 Coffee break
11:30–12:30 Citations and research Gereon, Delegates Workshop /
participatory 		Weblinks, sources, citations. How to quote, how to format citations. Overview of citation tools. Demonstration of Zotero.
12:30–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–16:30 Outing to Origins Centre All Participatory Tour and visit of a museum. Discussing possible collaborations with the museum. Taking pictures for further uploading on Commons.

Wednesday, 2nd of December 2015

Content Contribution and Collabortion with Partners

Time Subject Who Format Specifics
09:00–10:00 Editing Gereon Workshop /
participatory 		Review of Wikipedia articles created by delegates.
10:00–10:30 Wikimedians/-pedians in Residence Tim Moritz Hector (User:Bücherwürmlein) via Skype from Münster, Germany Tim was a Wikimedian in Residence with Germany’s biggest TV station. He shares his experience of being a Wikimedian in Residence.
10:30–11:00 Wikimedians/-pedians in Residence Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama) via Skype from Bologna, Italy Liam was the very first Wikipedian in Residence. He shares his experience of being a Wikipedian in Residence.
11:00–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–13:00 Wikimedians/-pedians in Residence Gereon Presentation Introduction of the Wikimedian in Residence programme with examples of successful collaborations (Consumer Reports, Swiss Federal Archives). History since Liam Wyatt. Duties. Compensation. Outreach. Impact and Influence. Reception. Core Characteristics of a Wikipedian in Residence.
13:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:00 Community Building Mignon via Skype from Cape Town presentation via Skype from Cape Town
 A short intro to community engagement based on FunDza strategies with their communities two sets of writers. Then an interactive exercise for the workshop participants - 1. What were their main motivators for becoming involved with Wikipedia; 2. What keeps them involved with Wikipedia; 3. Why would others want to be contributors to Wikipedia; 4. What strategies could they put in place to keep people involved.
15:00–15:15 Coffee break
15:15–16:00 Wikimedia communities +
GLAM communities 		Mignon, Isla, Gereon Discussion Application of Mignon's workshop to GLAM partners and build local Wikimedia communities - analysing motivations, barriers and ways of overcoming the barriers.
16:00–18:00 Review of photographs Delegates, Gereon Discussion Reviewing photographs that have been uploaded by the delegates to Commons.

Thursday, 3d of December 2015

Open Licenses and Creative Commons in Action

Time Subject Who Format Specifics
09:00–10:30 GLAM partners Delegates Workshop Present possible GLAM partners and map out the possibilites. Mapping potential WIR activity in Africa.
10:30–11:00 Coffee break
11:00–12:30 GLAM tools, resources and Wiki Metrics Gereon Presentation How to use tracking tools, how to track success, how to report findings. http://stats.grok.se/ for page views. Baglama2 for categories of WiR projects. How to contact Magnus Manske through bitbucket.
12:30–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–14:15 Intro to Open Licenses Kelsey Wiens Presentation
14:15–15:00 CC Licenses in Action Adam Oxford,
HTXT Magazine 		Presentation Open licenses in business. How open licenses help to keep business afloat in a challenging and competitive environment.
15:00–15:15 Coffee break
15:15–16:00 CC Licenses in Action Tessa Welch Presentation The African Storybook project. Discussion of how the open licence was essential to the growth of the project, especially with regards to translation and distribution.
16:00–16:45 CC Licenses in Action Tarryn-Anne Anderson Presentation bookdash. Discussion of how the open licence was integral to Bookdash’s model, allowing creatives to donate their talent and helping in the wider distribution of the books via other channels.
18:00–20:00 Dinner All Lucky Bean Restaurant, Melville

Friday, 4th of December 2015

Consolidation and Action Plan

Time Subject Who Format Specifics
09:00–11:00 Open Business Model Planning Kelsey Wiens Workshop Participatory workshop. Attendants are working on their action plan.
11:00–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–12:30 Open Data Gereon Presentation Showing the increasing importance of Wikidata. History of Wikidata. First steps. The example of the showcase item Douglas Adams (Q42). The Reasonator. Creating new items. Tools for data access and statistics. Interactive Wikidata Tour.
12:30–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–14:00 Wikimedians/-pedians in Residence John Cummings (User:John Cummings) via Skype from Paris, France Sharing his current experience of being a Wikpedian in Residence at UNESCO.
14:00–15:00 Wikipedians in Residence Engagement All Discussion / Document Creation Present action plan for the next six months. Feedback.
15:00–15:15 Coffee break
15:15–16:00 Wikipedians in Residence Engagement All Discussion / Document Creation Present action plan for the next six months. Mapping potential WIR activity in Africa.

Outcome

The training component of the #OpenAfrica15 project was an overwhelming success. It achieved the overarching aims of the project, which was to provide skills, and outline the possibilities and potentialities, to Wikipedians from across Africa in order to create effective and supported partnerships with content partners in their own countries. Additionally, the Wikipedians were able to acknowledge core challenges which helped to overcome the barriers to contribution and community building that they face in their home countries.

The course was designed to provide the skills required to transfer content about Africa from existing content owners onto Wikipedia. It was also designed to help activate, energise, support and build local Wikimedia groups around a focal point.

The 6 participants in the #OpenAfrica course all had the opportunity to deepen their skills. With each having a background or strength in different areas, the participants were given the tools and skills to effectively communicate the different aspects of the Open community to others, to work effectively with a content partner to release their knowledge onto Wikipedia.

References

  1. ↑ Daniel Metcalfe: ‘’Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey into Angola”. Huthinson, London 2013, p. 57.


New Editing Challenges and Design the guidelines for cultural institutions

Editing Challenges

Wikimedia Argentina launched a new challenge to put editing skills in Spanish Wikipedia community into practice. This time we chose the task of wikify sporting goods.

Guidelines for cultural institutions

January is one of the months with fewer activities GLAM program as many cultural institutions are closed for vacation and renewal of authorities; That's why we took advantage of this time of year for working guidelines for cultural institutions.

We are currently putting together three guides for promotion projects and cultural institution :

  • A manual on Wikimedia Commons .
  • Organizing an awareness workshop .
  • How to organize a edit-a-thon .

During the month of February will be posted on Wikimedia Commons for the whole community can use .



WiR at State Library of Queensland

By Kerry

From start of February to mid April, I will be a Wikipedian in Residence at the State Library of Queensland for 1 day per week. This is paid employment and the subject matter will be Queensland in World War I as part of the State Library's commemoration of the centenary of World War I. My role will be to:

  1. advise and assist staff and volunteers at the State Library of Queensland and their affiliated GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) and heritage organisations to contribute content to Wikipedia relating to Queensland in WW1 drawing on the material in their collections as sources
  2. personally contribute content to Wikipedia in relation to Queensland in WW1 drawing on those same collections as sources

The role has been designed to align with the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic plan to "improve quality ... via partnerships with universities, cultural institutions and other groups who align with our mission".

The State Library of Queensland understand the concerns about paid editing and conflict of interest on Wikipedia. I will not be expected to edit content relating to the State Library of Queensland or any topic that I believe would constitute a conflict of interest. The State Library of Queensland has a long history of being a supporter of Wikipedia, having contributed tens of thousands of out-of-copyright images to Commons and collaborated with Wikimedia Australia on providing Wikipedia edit training throughout Queensland. I will be the first Wikipedian in Residence at the State Library of Queensland with others to follow later in 2016.

as posted by Kerry to Australia Wikipedians Notice board
participants helping each other at the NoongarPedia WikiBomb

Noongar language WikiBomb

On the 28th of January, the NoongarPedia project held a WikiBomb which was hosted by the Storylines project of the State Library of Western Australia. Storylines is project created by the State Library of Western Australia to identify, explore and return to the community Indigenous materials within the State Libraries collections, where acceptable to share that with everyone,(Storylines link). NoongarPedia came about through the simple question of asking "why is there no Noongar Wikipedia" by researchers at University of Western Australia and Curtin University, they contacted Wikimedia Australia for help. We have now progressed to the developmental stages of a nys.wikipedia.org with an Incubator project and supporting this the first Indigenous Australia language dictionary in the Wikitionary Incubator. The aim of both projects coincided with each others aims of sharing Indigenous knowledge, after a trial Wikibomb late last year we are combining to hold one Wikibomb at the Library every month this year. The State Library of Western Australia is a supporter of the WikiData Down Under Tour as well as the NoongarPedia project.

Perth event flyer

Upcoming - WikiData Down Under Tour

By Andy Mabbett & Gnangarra

By the time you read this, Andy Mabbett will have started a Series of Wikidata/ GLAM talks in Australia and Indonesia, continuing throughout February. He will also be attending social meetups, with events scheduled for Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth. Do join him, and tell your contacts in those countries.

Highlights:

  • Melbourne - 11th February
    • at the VALA conference Andy will be hosting a Bootcamp on WikiData details & bookings
    • Andy will also be hosting along Wikimedia Australia Vice President Pru Mitchell a GLAM WikiBomb
  • Perth - 19th February
    • mini conference hosted by Wikimedia Australia and the State Library of Western Australia in the SLWA Theatre from 09:30 until 14:00
    • 20th February in the SLWA - Geographe room the monthly Noongarpedia WikiBomb followed by a WikiData - workshop
    • contact president at wikimedia.org.au for registration for Perth and any inquiries about the Tour


Heroines Wikipedia workshop addressing the Gender Bias; Public Domain Day Celebration; Wikidata meeting & workshop; FOSDEM: MediaWiki, Wikidata and more

Just for the Record: Heroines Wikipedia workshop addressing the Gender Bias

Just For The Record Heroines Wikipedia session

At 15 January 2016, the first project day of the project Just For The Record was organised.

Quote open Just For The Record is a project addressing how gender is represented in new media and writing/publishing tools like Wikipedia, and what influence this has on the way history is recorded. With the importance that such platforms as Wikipedia have gained in our society, and the new writing and publishing tools they propose, it is becoming clear that history is being written down once again. Therefore it is of great concern when studies reveal that only 8.5 to 22.7% of Wikipedia’s contributors are women. This problem was identified by the community itself as Gender Bias. Despite their efforts to come up with solutions to live up to their motto “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, Wikipedia’s contributors are still predominantly male. Moreover, the contents published also show partial gender representations. As a symbolic example, the article “Heroines” is automatically redirected to the article “hero”, and its emblematic figures are mostly male. Next to the issues of authorship and subject matters, the writing style and structure can often be problematic. A classic example of this is the amount of articles about women that starts with “this woman was the sister/wife of this famous man” in their first or second sentence.
— source
 Quote close

To address these issues Just for the record organises a series of events in Brussels starting in January 2016. The topic of the first event was Heroines. During Heroines, these observations were taken as the point of departure for lectures and discussions, and intervention—the day includes a crash course in Wikipedia editing. The event included a presentation by Catherine Lenoble on ‘Heroines (disambiguation)’ and an intervention by Clara Thomine.

The next event will be organised on 27 February 2016.

  • Welcome!
    Welcome!
  • Temporary library
    Temporary library
  • Lunch
    Lunch
  • Working together
    Working together

Links:

Public Domain Day Celebration

Julia Reda during the Public Domain Day Celebration

On 25 January 2016 the Public Domain Day Celebration lunch was organised by COMMUNIA, hosted by MEP Julia Reda in the European Parliament in Brussels. The event started with a talk by Julia Reda. After the host multiple people followed, who spoke about their experiences with copyright, afterwards followed by an opportunity to talk and discuss.

Links:

European Parliament in Brussels
The western face of European Parliament after the completion of its latest extension towards Luxembourg square.

Wikidata meeting & workshop

Adoration of the Magi (Q5861089) by Peter Paul Rubens (Q5599), collection Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) (Q1471477)

On 29 January 2016 a second meeting was organised about Linked Open Data via Wikidata, the Wikidata project organised in collaboration with Flemish cultural institutions. (See previous report about the project)

During the first part of the day the project results were shared with the participating organisations. In the second part of the day a hands on Wikidata workshop was given to these institutions. The participants learned how they can edit Wikidata, how to add their own information, what information can be added, and more.

The project resulted in a white paper being written, see: wikidata:Wikidata:Flemish art collections, Wikidata and Linked Open Data/Whitepaper.

Links:

FOSDEM: MediaWiki, Wikidata and more

Explaining to people what Wikidata is

In the last weekend from January the annual conference for free and open-source software development, FOSDEM, was organised again in Brussels. Wikimedia had a stand at the conference, organised by Wikimedia Belgium, Wikimedia Deutschland and the Wikimedia Foundation. At the stand we had various materials from the Wikimedia movement and the focus of this year's stand was mainly on informing the public about Wikidata and its possibilities. The organising team was especially strengthened by some great WMDE staff that supplied information materials and more, as well as their great presence at the stand.

During the conference multiple presentations were given about certain topics in the Wikimedia movement, including about the Wikidata article placeholder, and about the Free Knowledge Game Jam.

From Wikipedia/Wikidata/Wikimedia/MediaWiki in total more than 15 people were present during the conference, coming from Albania, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US and all together we had a great conference with good talks.

FOSDEM shows that it is important for the Wikimedia movement to reach out to all kinds of parties and inform them about the many possibilities there are in the Wikimedia movement, with MediaWiki, Wikidata, Wikipedia and more. With this conference the app makers and other software developers.

With the conference, also the presence on Wikidata of FOSDEM itself has been expanded.

  • Poster about Wikidata
    Poster about Wikidata
  • Explaining what Wikidata is
    Explaining what Wikidata is
  • Slides about the Wikidata article placeholder
    Slides about the Wikidata article placeholder
  • Slides about the Free Knowledge Game Jam
    Slides about the Free Knowledge Game Jam
  • FOSDEM podcast about Wikidata
    FOSDEM podcast about Wikidata

Go for more photos to c:Category:FOSDEM 2016.


New year, new start

By Sophie Roset & Anne-Laure Prévost on behalf of our tremendous French GLAM community

Languages of France seminar

Since June 2015, Wikimedia France, supported by the General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages ​​of France, launched a project to train regional language speakers of France (Alsatian, Breton, Occitan, Creole languages... ) on how to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The political context in 2015 saw the return of the debate surrounding the ratification of the European Charter of Languages. Wikimédia France conducted a survey around regional linguistic and digital practices, involving several partners such as Lo Congrès or the Office for the Alsatian language and culture, Lo Cirdoc Béziers as well as universities such as Strasbourg, Sarreguemines ... Following this survey, we held a first training seminar on Jan. 23rd at the "Maison de l'Europe" in Paris. The event gathered about 70 people.

Lingua Libre, a new tool for speakers
Alongside this first step, a second project is in partnership with linguists and contributors as Lyokoï, Psychoslave, Gratus, Vigneron and the APLLOD association. The development of an interface named "Lingua Libre" will record the words in regional languages ​​and allow to upload them on Wikimedia Commons. The objective is therefore to bring an additional tool to help speakers to promote their language. In November 2015, the first recordings with Xârâcùù female speaker ( Kanak language of Canala region ) took place in the House of New Caledonia !


UNESCO make content and data available on Wikimedia projects

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have made over 1000 files available on Wikimedia Commons on a range of subjects and include photographs, illustrations, graphs and videos with many more to come in the coming months. They are also making data on their inscription programmes available on Wikidata including World Heritage, Man and the Biosphere and Global Geoparks.

Open knowledge in education

John Cummings has been working as Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO funded by a Wikimedia Foundation grant. "I think that Wikimedia has a unique role to play in universal access to education which many organisations are working towards as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Wikimedia has a huge audience and receives over 15 billion page views per month as well as providing information in Google searches, Facebook and other sites. I hope that by working with UNESCO to explore how they can use and contribute to open knowledge projects including Wikimedia it will encourage other intergovernmental organisations to do the same."

Wikiproject UNESCO

Wikiproject UNESCO has been created to help people organise improving information on UNESCO programme inscriptions e.g World Heritage Sites and to help navigate and organise sharing of UNESCO media content on Wikimedia projects. It is designed to be accessible for people new to contributing to Wikimedia and covers several of the projects including Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikivoyage. It is structured around activities including writing, translation and sharing media and has clear and simple instructions for all tasks, it has several tools to help people in all languages.

Get involved

There are several ways to be involved in the project with more opportunities including in person events in the future. Many of the current tasks are essential for setting up further cooperation, currently the most important are:



GLAM on Tour at Technische Sammlungen & Verkehrsmuseum Dresden

GLAM in Dresden

Technische Sammlungen Dresden
Verkehrsmuseum Dresden

From march 4-7, the ninth event of the GLAM on Tour project will take place in Dresden. This time, two cultural institutions, Technische Sammlungen Dresden and Verkehrsmuseum Dresden, invite 25 Wikipedians to write new articles and take pictures for Commons.
Both of the institutions will open their doors for free tours for the volunteers, edit-a-thons and foto excursions to explore their numerous collections. A Wikipedia workshop for newbies and staff of the institutions will be part of the programme, too. See the project page for more information (in German).


BEIC Library Project goes on, and Wikipedia for Press and Media Freedom in Europe

BEIC digital library

Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia
De re anatomica libri 15, one of the many images widely used in Wikipedia that were provided by BEIC.

Since January 2016, a new Wikipedian in residence - Marco Chemello - has been active at BEIC Foundation. The Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura (BEIC) is a not for profit organisation based in Milan with a sizable digital library (BeicDL) consisting of semantic collections and virtual exhibitions.

The GLAM/BEIC project first agreement was signed 2 years ago, in January 2014. The project is one of the most lost-lasting and successful result of Wikimedia Italia GLAM-wiki projects' launching in the country, showing to Italian libraries what actually can be done using open and wiki tools to spread information about their own collections. BEIC library, moreover, is an expandig collection of digitalized materials from Lombardy and Italy, resulting in being the perfect case for an ongoing wiki project.

In December 2015, Wikipedia pageviews of BEIC objects were 6,4 million (more than 2 million in the English Wikipedia), and 45 million from October 2014 to February 1st 2016. The uploaded images are 1800 until now: 909 are in 6,603 articles in 207 different wikis. The first printed edition of the Divine Comedy is present in 71 different Wikipedia, with an overall access of 200.000 a month.

From February 2016 new books, images and data will be uploaded.

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso project

A historical journalist's press card, as illustrative of freedom of the press and freedom of information

Since October 2015, a Wikipedian in Residence is at work at the think tank Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, tasked with improving Wikipedia in English and Italian on the topic of press and media freedom in East and South East Europe.

Thanks to the project, the articles on the media system and the media freedom in the Balkan countries (Serbia, Serbia (media freedom), Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania; Kosovo; Macedonia; Romania; Bulgaria, Greece), Turkey and Belarus have already been created, while other articles on the Caucasus and Eastern European countries are being prepared for the month of February. Many other minor articles in English and Italian have been created and updated in the course of the project too.

Wikipedia 15

Wikipedia 15 cake in Palermo

On January 15 many events were organized in Italian libraries with the support of Wikimedia Italia, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia. In Florence, Palermo, Salerno and Venice, librarians have held discussions on the issues of free access to cultural heritage and on the educational use of the wiki platforms. Then celebrations concluded with wiki birthday cakes.


Wikipedia 15

To mark the 15th anniversary of the founding of Wikipedia (Wikipedia 15), Shared Knowledge held a series of events (see Wikipedia_15/Events/Skopje) in honour of this occasion. For the birthday party, you can read in this monthly report of our organization, while for activities related with cultural institutions in this report.

Explore Wikipedia seminar

Participants of the first seminar Explore Wikipedia in American Corner Skopje
Toni Ristovski held a presentation about Wikipedia

The Explore Wikipedia seminar was held on the 16 January, one day after the birthday of Wikipedia, in the American Corner Skopje, small library and organization supported by the State Department of the USA, which is situated in National Library. This seminar was one of our activities related to the 15th birthday of Wikipedia and for a week we had an open call to all interested to learn more about Wikipedia.

Although we had an extremely cold and rainy/snowy day in Skopje, we held successfully this seminar and we had an eight participants. On this seminar we talk with the participants about Wikipedia in general, its vision and mission, we watch a documentary movie about Wikipedia Zero, presentation about Wikipedia, explaining the basics of editing to the people attending, presentation about licences and copyright, activities of Shared Knowledge and what is Wikimedia movement. Also, we explain them how it is possible to become an editor or member of our organization in future.

The Explore Wikipedia seminar was held by Kiril Simeonovski and Toni Ristovski.

American Corners Macedonia (article about corners in Macedonian) expressed an interest to generously host this kind of educational events in future. The participants received certificates for participation and were encouraged to take further interest in our activities.

Edit-a-thon in MANU Library

From the first editathon held at the MANU Library
With the employed staff of the MANU Library

In accordance with the Memorandum od mutual cooperation between Shared Knowledge and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, signed October 2015, under which the Wikimedian-in-residence at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) in the person of Mario Šarevski (user Македонец) was introduced and established, the MANU Library has opened its book fund and facilities for organization of the first edit-a-thon in the month of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia.

Editing on the first editathon held at the MANU Library
Books provided by the Library Staff used for editing articles on Wikipedia

This edit-a-thon was a part of a range of the activities to marking the 15th anniversary of the launch of Wikipedia and according to a prior preparations of the Wikimedian-in-residence at MANU and the employees at the Library it was scheduled to be held on January 22th. The event took place on Friday, January 22th, at the Library of MANU as a three-hour edit-a-thon dedicated to the topic Aegean Macedonia.

The edit-a-thon was attended by 3 Wikipedia users - editors, and it was also attended by 2 students in philology from Poland who are studying a semester on exchange in Macedonia and they have presented their excellent knowledge of the Macedonian language. With the support of the library staff from the rich scientific library book fund were provided 30 books on various topics and areas related to Aegean Macedonia such as settlements, geography, dialects and accents, historical events and personalities of the Ilinden Uprising, National Liberation War during WWII and the Greek Civil War of which on Wikipedia in Macedonian language were edited a total number of 18 articles of which 12 created and 6 significantly improved.

This was the first such event for editing Wikipedia in Macedonian language, which is held in the library of the Academy, that will continue to be open with its rich book fund for future editing Wikipedia articles with accurate, reliable and scientifically proven data, facts and information of all sciences and arts.

Open day at the Archives

Wikipedian in residence at DARM, at work.
The youngest Wikipedian at DARM Open day
On the terrace with the most beautiful view of Skopje, at DARM Open day

As a part of global celebration of Wikipedia 15, in The State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia was organized "Open day at the Archives". Wikipedians and other guests had chance to see part of the work at DARM, as well some original documents from Macedonian history. All of them were part of panel discussion about Wikipedia. Wikipedian in residence at DARM spoke about the beginnings of Wikipedia in general, and about the beginnings of Macedonian Wikipedia. Lightening talk about the numbers of articles and needs for new editors. There was a little cocktail party for all Wikipedians and other guests. After the party, little group of Wikipedians attend the edit-a-thon, while the novices were introduced with the basic editing rules.

As an independent GLAMer, WiR at DARM started with her work at 4th of January 2016. Achievement in January was as this:

  • 13 articles (created or improved)
  • 202 uploaded files in total
  • Used files in articles: 45 or 13.22% of all images of category
  • Many meetings with GLAM employees, who were introduced with Wikimedia movement and with the needs of GLAM employees as editors
  • Basic editing workshop with four employees.

See also


Wiki loves artists - We need your help; Two Wikipedia edit-a-thons

Dear GLAM enthusiasts,

We need your help!

In the Netherlands we recently started a project very originally named 'Wiki loves artists'. Our main goal is to make more images of contemporary art available on Wikimedia Commons. We want to accomplish this by approaching artists directly and explaining them about the benefits of sharing pictures of their work through Commons and the way this works. A more elobarate description of the project you can find below. You can help us! Do you an artist that would like to contribute to this project? Do you know or work at a GLAM institution that has contacts that might be of interest to us? Or do you have advice for us on this topic? Please let us know! Getting in touch with these artists through the back door will greatly improve the speed and succes of this project. Should you have questions or remarks, you also now where to find us.

Thank you so much for helping us out!

Best wishes,

Sandra Fauconnier (User:Spinster), Hanno Lans (User:hannolans), Michelle van Lanschot (User:Mtmlan84)

Wiki loves Artists/Project Contemporary Art

Due to modern copyright restrictions, there are very few images of modern and contemporary art missing on the various Wikipedia projects. In March 2015 we started a project group that set the modest goal of filling this contemporary art gap, so that modern and contemporary art can be enjoyed and used by everybody in the world. By enlarging young artists' knowledge of copyright and emphasizing the different possibilities of sharing their work, we hope to get them excited about contributing to Wikimedia Commons. For more informationː https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiproject/Kunst/Hedendaagse_Nederlandse_beeldende_kunstenaars (projectpage in Dutch)

Two Wikipedia edit-a-thons

Building of the province administration, including visit at the top of the building (23th floor)

On both 18 January as 21 January 2016 a Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised as part of the local writing weeks about the province North Brabant, held from 18 to 31 January 2016.

On 18 January 2016 the edit-a-thon was organised in 's-Hertogenbosch the building of the province administration (Dutch). There we were the guest of the King's Commissioner (governor) of the province. With the edit-a-thon we had together a lunch and we also got a tour through the building, including to the top floor where we had a magnificent view on the capital city of the province North Brabant.

On 21 January 2016 the edit-a-thon was organised in Eindhoven in the building with the name White Lady (Dutch). The building is a former factory building close to the city centre, where Philips produced light bulbs. Nowadays the building is used for other purposes, including the library of the city.

During the writing weeks more than 200 new articles were written and many other articles expanded and improved.

  • The King's Commissioner
    The King's Commissioner
  • Pettelaarse Schans seen from the top floor
    Pettelaarse Schans seen from the top floor
  • Some neighboorhoods of 's-Hertogenbosch seen from the top floor
    Some neighboorhoods of 's-Hertogenbosch seen from the top floor
  • The White Lady in Eindhoven
    The White Lady in Eindhoven
  • Explaining about Wikipedia
    Explaining about Wikipedia

Links:


GLAMing Madrid, Wiki Loves Folk & Gobernantes de Chile

GLAMing Madrid

On January 7, GLAMing Madrid project finished. Some of the last taks, like the upload of files provided by the three museums, were carried out and we uploaded 197 files from the National Archaological Museum, 58 files from the Museo del Traje and 122 files from the Museum of Romanticism.

As well on January 14 finished the GLAMing Madrid Challenge, a writing contest about the three museums and their collections], with the participation of 30 users from 10 different languages. We continued recording concerts of classical music at Museum of Romanticism, uploading to Commons 5 new files from a pianist.

Baptism certificate of Fernando Márquez de la Plata

Wiki Loves Folk

Wiki Loves Folk (WLF) is a public photo competition around folklore, organized by Wikimedia Spain for the first time in 2016. As part of the preparations, we finished the list of items participating and we launched the official website of the competition.

Gobernantes de Chile project

Elche-Mallorca football match

Nacimiento y Defunción de los Gobernantes de Chile is a project by Wikimedia Chile for search, collect, record and digitally publish the certificates of birth and death of the rulers of Chile with the aim to preserve historical data, make them available to the general public and complete historical information relevant to Chile. We collaborated with them getting one certificate from the archives of a church in Seville.

Free pictures and audio files

We started the year covering a football match between Elche CF and RCD Mallorca; the images are already uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. As well, we managed the upload to Commons of audio files of traditional music from the region of León, in asturleonese language, performed by Tsacianiegas.


New year, new projects

Connected Open Heritage

Wikimedia Sverige, along with partners UNESCO (with John Cummings as WiR), Wikimedia Italia and Cultural Heritage without Borders, has received a $300,000 grant from Kulturstiftelsen (the Swedish postcode lottery) to work on a project called Connected Open Heritage.

The project lasts until July 2017, and during that time we will work on:

  • Migrating the information in the WLM database to Wikidata
  • Updating and adding new data about monuments, including from ten countries where cultural heritage is at risk
  • Uploading tens of thousands of images and media files from cultural heritage institutions
  • Increasing awareness about what the Wikimedia movement is doing in the cultural heritage field, both to the Wikimedia communities, general public and also to experts in the field
  • Promoting open data and free licenses
  • Organizing a photo exhibition with images of cultural heritage in at least three countries.

All info on the project, including who to contact if you want to get involved, timeplan, activities and such are available on Meta. The talk page on Meta is open for comments and questions, and all input on this is welcome.

Välkommen till min plats

In another new project called Välkommen till min plats (Welcome to my place) Wikimedia Sverige will work with Stockholmskällan and the National heritage board to create open educational resources connected to the local areas that are important to students. Part of the project is also to get more activity on the Swedish Wikimini project to get the next generation of Wikipedians better prepared.

Data from the Nationalmuseum, Sweden

Nationalmuseum has agreed to release data about creators and artwork in order to update Wikidata and to create links back to authority files in their own database. This project will also help the Swedish part of Sum of all paintings as creators are added and connected.


Audio-describing London Landmarks, celebrating Wikipedia 15

By Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) & Martin Poulter

VocalEyes

Andrew Sachs' audio description of London Zoo

In 2012, VocalEyes, a UK registered charity that works with arts organisations to identify and remove barriers to access and inclusion for blind and partially sighted people, ran a project in which various celebrities described well-known London landmarks, so that they could be better enjoyed by such people. They have now donated forty of these audio recordings to Wikimedia Commons, and they have been added by Liam Wyatt to the articles about the features they describe. Andy Mabbett has also been editing out short extracts, for use on the articles about the readers, as part of the 'Voice Intro Project'.

Oxford

Oxford University celebrated Wikipedia's 15th birthday with enthusiasm. The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) held a public half-day event, combining short presentations from researchers with an editathon led by Martin Poulter, the Bodleian Libraries' Wikimedian In Residence. The OII have released a very positive write-up of the day. Separately, the university's Open Access blog had a guest post by Martin on Wikipedia's role in fulfilling the potential of open access research. The publicity around Wikipedia 15 led to interviews on Sky News, BBC Radio Five Live, regional television, and for Oxford's student newspaper Cherwell.

"An exhibition of dancing dogs" (1785), one of 800 files from the John Johnson Collection in the Bodleian Libraries

Martin presented at a day conference on "DIY Digitisation": this expression describes when libraries encourage readers to take photographs of historic books and post those online. Martin—and most of the other speakers—urged that images created in this way should be shared under free licences. At a seminar for History postgraduates in London, Martin urged them to look at WikiProject History's 7,000 stubs as an opportunity to improve public understanding of their subject and to develop writing skills.

This month's uploads are from a unique collection: the John Johnson Collection is part of the Bodleian that collects ephemera: things like tickets, leaflets, newspaper clippings, board games, or writing paper that are not "publications" in the usual sense but give an insight into culture, mainly of the 19th century.

January also saw the start of the Open Knowledge Ambassador course, aiming to give the keenest members of the university a deeper knowledge of Wikipedia and related sites, and the ability to support outreach. Coming up in February are more Ambassador training workshops, the first ever Tudor Music editathon, a workshop for staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital, and a workshop for staff at the Voltaire Foundation.


Pre-production starts for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tutorial videos

By Pine

We are excited that pre-production has started for a series of motivational and educational videos that will introduce Wikipedia and some of its sister projects to new contributors.

Over the past several years, many videos have been produced to train new contributors. This series will feature VisualEditor and the new citation tool called Citoid. Additionally, the series will include an introduction to the Wikimedia Commons repository of freely-licensed media.

The video series and associated materials will help students and instructors who participate in the Wikipedia Education Program. The series is also designed to assist the professional staff and volunteers of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) with understanding how their content gains exposure on Wikimedia sites, and how to document or upload their content for direct viewing on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The video content will be available in segments that can be viewed, translated, or updated individually.

There are currently volunteer translators for Arabic, Armenian, Czech, German, Greek, Odia, and Spanish. Additional volunteers with high proficiency translation skills are welcome to sign up on the talk page.

We are currently seeking feedback on the outline for the scripts, as well as suggestions for an attractive name for the series. Please leave any comments on this talk page!

Regards,

Pine✉

Series director and screenwriter

Notes

This series is funded by an individual engagement grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. A big thanks to the community, the IEG Committee, and WMF for their support.


Open Access stats; data citation, dino jaw, dozens of beetles

Open Access stats

At the time of writing, there were 33464 files in the Commons category Open access (publishing), of which 9401 were used a total of 98460 times across the main namespaces of Wikimedia projects. So far, these wiki pages were thought to receive a daily average of about 1 million page views, but since December 2015, these page views are calculated using the new Wikimedia pageview API, according to which the number is about twice as high.

Recent uploads: data citation, dino jaw, dozens of beetles

The following represents a selection of the files that have been uploaded this month from open-access sources. Most of these came from PubMed Central through the Open Access Media Importer, whose uploads now total over 21,300. If you can think of wiki pages where these files (or other files from the same source articles) could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.


Wikidata this month

By Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing)

Congratulations to Wikipedia, which was 15 years old in January! Fifteen years ago, Wikipedia was a very different place.

Tech developments

GLAM news

Current events

By the time you read this, Andy Mabbett will have started a series of Series of Wikidata/ GLAM talks in Australia and Indonesia, continuing throughout February. He will also be attending social meetups. Do join him, and tell your contacts in those countries.

New GLAM-related properties

A bumper crop, this month!

For full Wikidata news, see the weekly status updates.


February's GLAM events

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Melbourne 32 - meet Andy Mabbett, Wikimedian in Residence
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Perth Conference = Keynote speaker Andy Mabbett on WikiData
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Perth 24 - meet Andy Mabbett, Wikimedian in Residence
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