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"Have we ever done a GLAM partnership in Africa?"

By Elitre

This question popped up in a recent thread in the Cultural Partnerships mailing list, which was discussing latest news about allegedly burned Timbuktu Manuscripts.

Looks like the perfect time and place to recap what the GLAM programs have accomplished so far with and in Africa!

This very same newsletter has been regularly updated about projects and activities in Africa since December 2011, mainly by people living and working in the continent. The WikiAfrica project, launched in 2006, has reached its goals and is actually exceeding any expectations. As the project report for February 2013 proves, the milestone of 30,000 contributions is now history, with new figures giving a total of 35,000.

Among the list of the institutions which took part in the project, one can read dozen of names of African partners, behind the contributions of the Africa Centre, main partner of WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge, and those of the photographers for Wiki Loves Monuments 2012.

Case studies in English are now available for the collaborations with doual'art, based in Cameroon; Kër Thiossane, based in Senegal; the Chimurenga Library, based in South Africa.

Along with celebrating the good results achieved, let's make sure that new ones follow. The list of Wikimedia chapters in discussion phase and proposed ones in the continent is not short, and people involved in these plans could certainly use a hand from more experienced Wikimedian fellows. And if you have ideas about African partnerships or would like to help in any way, these guys here are definitely looking forward to hearing from you.


News from Toulouse; Contacting GLAMs in Strasbourg; French Bishops; Public domain day

News from Toulouse

Harpoon from Le Mas-d'Azil, France - Muséum de Toulouse (MHNT PRE.2010.0.3.5)

The Projet Phoebus, project with the Muséum de Toulouse started in 2010, was especially highlighted this month in different French online newspapers. Some stats about the project were given to show the success of the project:

  • around 1,700 photographies with very high quality are uploaded on Wikimedia Commons
  • these photographies are used on more than 62,000 articles in more than 260 Wikimedia projects
  • each month, around 2.5 millions of pages with pictures from the Museum of Toulouse are viewed on Wikimedia projects.

The material from the Museum de Toulouse is used outside of the Wikimedia projects, for example by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle of Paris. We've learned that an Ukrainian collector — who also happens to be a dedicated user of Wikimedia Commons — gave his collection of valuable shells from the Black Sea to the Museum after assessing the quality of its collections on Wikipedia.

The project was recently highlighted in the media:

On January 30th, Didier Descouens and a wikimedian have presented the project at the Philosophy house in Toulouse. It was a valuable conference to share and discuss about knowledge transmission and free licences.

Contacting GLAMs in Strasbourg

On January 16th, Adrienne was in Strasbourg to explain GLAM projects with people from the different GLAM institutions of the city. 18 people were present, from the direction of cultural communication of the city, to the different curators of the museums. During a three hours meeting, the principles of GLAM projects and various questions about Wikimedia projects, public domain and free licenses were in discussion. We expect to start GLAM projects in the following months, especially with the Musée Alsacien which is especially interested.


French Bishops

On January 25th, Wikimedia France met with the Art commission of the French Bishops conference, and have drafted a contribution project where Wikimedia France would do training workshops. Stay tuned to hear more from this project.

Public Domain Day

Public Domain Day in Paris, January 2013

On January 31st, Wikimédia France and the French chapter of Open Knowledge Foundation celebrated the Public Domain Day.

It is the second year we celebrate the Public Domain Day with the OKFN French group. This year, we have made an event with 80 people in the Centre Pompidou (Paris). During the evening, we had a various program:

  • Presentation of the estate of the Public Domain in France and the positive agenda of Communia and other organizations (like La Quadrature du Net)
  • News about the Public Domain Calculator (OKFN)
  • Tribute to Aaron Swartz with a lecture of his Open Access Manifesto
  • Testimonies from artists who release their works in the Public Domain
  • Remix the public domain: musicians and actors who remix the Public Domain or record Public Domain under free licenses presented their works.

With the OKFN, we proposed to open a contest to promote remix of Public Domain works. In the following weeks, we will present the project.

See the website for the event


de.GLAMwiki 2013 - German GLAM workshop, Wikipedian in Residence in Germany

de.GLAMwiki 2013 - German GLAM workshop

The German Wiki community is currently planning the first German GLAM-related workshop: de.GLAMwiki 2013.

Bringing together longstanding members of the German GLAM community, the German Wikipedia community and the German Chapter is vital for the future of GLAM in Germany. The community-shaped programme includes topics such as GLAM handouts, COI, Paid Editing, a relaunch of the German GLAM page but also fundamental issues like working definitions for GLAM related terms and communication channels.

Results and experiences will be shared on German Wikipedia as a basis for further community-driven discussion and decision-making.

The German-language event will be held in early March 2013 and is funded by the Germany chapter. Interested participants can sign up for the remaining 2 spaces at Wikipedia:GLAM/de.GLAMwiki 2013#Anmeldung. Date, location and accommodation are going to be confirmed within the next few days.

Wikipedian in Residence in Germany

Throughout 2012 we had two Wikipedians in Residence (WiR). One at the Museum for Berlin's history during 3 month, the other during 6 month at the German Archeological Institute. Both projects focussed strongly on the training of the staff becoming editors themselves in the Wikipedia and to establish structures that will help Wikipedians in the future to get in touch with the institution in order to obtain contents for their article work. Intercultural dialogue is the proper way to describe the communication in between the two GLAM institutions and the Wikimedia - projects. Mainly the work of the WiR consisted in trying to explain to the institution how Wikipedia works and to the community why content liberation is not that easy. Progress is obtained at a slow pace, which made us consider if if the short period spent at the institution of time is but a appetizer for more to come. How to transform the start-up into a lasting enterprise, is one of the core question right now. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences handling this dialogue. What are typical frictions, desillusions and prejudices you are confronted with? What helped to overcome misunderstandings? How is the discussion on paid edtits reflecting the GLAM-work, taking in account that we train staff to become "paid editors"?--Barbara Fischer (WMDE) (talk) 10:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


WiR and VIAF bot

Looking for Wikipedians in Residence and Wikipedian Guides

Wikimedia Italia has issued two calls for 8 "Wikipedians in Residence" and 8 "Wikipedian guides" in the scope of the new project: Archeowiki. Archeowiki aims to improve the quantity and quality of archaeological articles on the Italian Wikipedia. Archeowiki is a project born from the collaboration of Wikimedia Italia with several partners and its targets will be six cultural institutions in Lombardy, Italy.
Among them the most known is the Sforza Castle in Milan. Read more about the calls (in Italian) here.

VIAF bot is running on it.wiki

The Italian Wikipedia, following the example of the English Wikipedia and the German Wikipedia, is importing via bot the VIAF identifiers in all his biographies.
The job is run by JarektBot, avatar of User:Jarekt, who previously updated Creator pages in Commons with the same identifiers. Crawling English, French and German Wikipedias, and following interlanguage wikilinks, the bot finds suitable pages and paste the identifiers in the authority file template.

Donation of 100 photos

ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México donates 100 photos to Commons

Student receiving diploma at a graduation ceremony at the campus

At the end of January, ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México donated 100 photos from its student paper and communications archives to Wikimedia Commons Category:Images_from_ITESM-Campus_Ciudad_de_México Most of the photos relate to student cultural activities, especially dance, visits by notable people such as Consuelo Sáizar and José Emilio Pacheco as well as academic activities. Many of the photos have been added to articles in both English and Spanish, including those related to tap dance, jazz dance, eye examinations, as well as Pacheco's article in various languages and of course to the article about the campus.


Wiki Loves Monuments exhibition and evaluation, and New Year's Reception

By Sandra Rientjes, small edits by Spinster

Wiki Loves Monuments Exhibition in Gouda

Opening of WLM photo exposition Gouda

January 9-25. In the Town Hall of Gouda, prize-winning photographs from the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 competition were exhibited. These included photographs from Gouda itself, from the Netherlands, and indeed from all over the world. The exhibition was opened by the local Alderman (wethouder) and WMNL chair Ziko van Dijk.

Evaluation Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 (international meeting)

WLM international team in Utrecht snow, showing off their Guiness Book of World Records certificate, photo by Raimond Spekking

The international co-ordination team of Wiki Loves Monuments met at the WMNL offices on January 19 and 20 to evaluate the 2012 competition and begin planning for 2013. For at least one participant, this meeting also provided an opportunity to experience snow for the first time.

New Year's Reception

Main reception area and sign-up for guided tours during the New Year's reception in the area shared by the Allard Pierson Museum and the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, Photo by Ziko van Dijk

January 19: about 100 people attended a very successful WMNL New Year's reception at the University Museum Amsterdam. Several participants signed up to become active in new projects. During the reception, there were various guided tours through the museum and a small kick-off of a Wikipedian in Residence trajectory (still in preparation, depending on funding) about expeditions, in collaboration with Tropenmuseum and various Dutch university museums.

CardioNetworks

A content partnership with CardioNetworks (which are based in the Netherlands) is described in the USA report.


GLAM activity in Spain

Course for Librarians and Documentalists in Valencia

Tomás Saorín during the lecture before editing on Wikipedia.

On January 18th, Wikimedia Spain started the collaboration with the Professional Association of Librarians and Documentalists of Valencian Community (Col·legi Oficial de Bibliotecaris i Documentalistes Comunitat Valenciana). The Association organized, with Wikipedia Spain, a course about Wikipedia and Wikimedia at cultural institutions at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) intended for Librarians, Archivists, Documentalists and other people interested. The course was given by Tomás Saorín, a member of Wikimedia Spain and a Documentalist, and consisted of a lecture and an edition workshop on how to edit Wikipedia. Other members of Wikimedia Spain helped the more than 30 attendees during the workshop. The course was offered for free and received positive comments from both the Association and the participants. Before the course, members of the Spanish chapter met the board of the Association in order to deal with organization matters and talk about further collaborations.

Course for Museum Studies Students in Barcelona

On January 8th, user Kippelboy, from Amical Viquipèdia, gave a course on GLAMWiki and Wikipedia editing to the Post-degree in Museum Studies of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona. This is the 3rd yearly edition where students of this postdegree. After the lecture, students must create or improve and Article on any Wikipedia (mostly on Catalan), but also in Spanish, French or Italian, depending on the Students preffered language. You can follow the 2013 Wikiproject here and also 2012 and 2011 editions.

Interview on Catalan National TV

The project among Catalan Libraries Public Network and Amical Viquipèdia is being so successful that the chief officer of Catalan Libraries and a Wikimedian where interviewed in primetime for Catalan National TV3 Night news magazine. Take a look at the video here.

Post on Europeana

User Kippelboy did a guest post for Europeana's official professionals blog, about How Europeana helps Wikipedia editor and GLAM ambassador. You can read it here.

Digital Humanities Seminar in Barcelona

The Faculty of Humanities of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya did a 1 week Seminar on Digital Humanities, specially focused on Wikipedia, where attendees got more than 8 hours of lectures, debates and discussions related to OpenGLAMs and GLAMwikiprojects, thanks to an agreement with Amical Viquipèdia.

Basque Librarians wants to join the party

On January 24 & 25 Amical Viquipèdia member & the Chief librarian went to Sant Sebastian (Donosti) to share their experience with the local librarians of Donostiakultura, their municipality cultural department. After our presentation, they want to start their own GLAMwiki project with the Basque Wikipedia editors community.


More work and more people

New staff

Wikimedia Sweden has hired a GLAM-technican. André Costa, also known as Lokal_Profil, started working in January and will mainly focus on setting up a database on public art in Sweden and populating the database with data from institutions and municipalities. He will also work on the database and tools required for Wiki Loves Public Art. Squeezed in on odd hours he is doing some data ingestion and batch uploading, starting with 20.000 images from the Royal Armoury and two other museums.

Crowdsourced exhibition

The Vasa Museum are planning an exhibition to open in December in a new part of the museum. The exhibition will look at different cultures between 1600 and 1650 and they want to use as much free material as possible and have input from users from all over the world. Please help them find and select images based on the places, keywords and people listed on the portal page I've set up for them.

Working with working life museums

As a spin-off from our collaboration with the Council of the Central Museums we have a new project about to be launched where there will be presentations and a series of workshops together with The Working Life Museums Co-operation Council. The council represents 450 of the ~1300 working life museums in sweden and the museums are often run by volunteers. The goal for this collaboration is to increase participation on the Wikimedia projects by the volunteers working with the museums and to have them both write and expand articles within their field of expertise and also to have them upload old and new images to Wikimedia Commons.


UK GLAM report

Wikimedians in Residence

Wikimedia UK has developed partnerships with notable cultural institutions to offer positions as Wikimedian in Residence. The first of these positions is working with the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum in London. You can find more information about the position here on our blog and full details of the position here. The closing date for applications is 10 February 2013.

We are currently working on the details of three other positions to be announced soon. These will be with the National Library of Scotland, the Black Cultural Archives in partnership with the Equiano Centre, and Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums. Details of these roles will follow on this page. If you have any questions or comments please email daria.cybulska﹫wikimedia.org.uk


GLAM-WIKI 2013

Preparations for our GLAM-WIKI 2013 conference continue. The event takes place at the British Library, London, over the weekend of 12-14 April 2013 and is a conference for the global GLAM sector and the Wikimedia community. We're in the process of finalising what promises to be an exciting programme. Our confirmed keynote speakers are Michael Edson from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Lizzy Jongma from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Nick Poole from the Collections Trust.

The call for papers for the conference is open and the process closes on 15 February. Tickets are now available for the conference and can be booked here. Thanks to our partnership with Europeana and the British Library we've been able to offer concessions and keep the cost of tickets down to £15-£40.

For more information about the conference visit this page on our wiki.


GLAM in the USA

Wikimedian takes on two new roles: US OpenGLAM Coordinator & Wikipedian in Residence at the World Digital Library

Sarah Stierch, former Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow and former Wikipedian in Residence at the Smithsonian Institution, has taken on two new roles within the GLAM community: US OpenGLAM Coordinator for the Open Knowledge Foundation and Wikipedian in Residence at the World Digital Library. As US OpenGLAM Coordinator, Stierch will develop programming related to open data policies in US cultural institutions, develop further partnerships between open culture projects and GLAMs, strengthen transcontinental partnerships, and continue her role as an advocate for open sharing and culture. A new blog summarizing Stierch's new position at the Open Knowledge Foundation has been posted here.

She also starts a year long position as Wikipedian in Residence at the World Digital Library. WDL is a project of UNESCO and will have Stierch's work centralized out of the Library of Congress. As resident, Stierch will develop planning and programming for over 60 institutions who are partners of WDL, create project partnerships, provide internal awareness, and help share the wealth of primary materials inside over 60 libraries around the world with the world, for free, through Wikimedia partnerships.

Association of Writers in Galician Language (AELG) Writer Images

About 850 photographs encompassing 265 authors of the Association of Writers in Galician Language were uploaded from its photo gallery under a CC-BY-SA-3. The photos were uploaded by Smallbot following a batch upload request. The images are categorized by author at commons:Category:Images from AELG. Currently, GLAMorous reports 264 uses of the images including 253 on the Galician wiki.

  • Carlos Negro
    Carlos Negro
  • Pere Tobaruela
    Pere Tobaruela
  • Marga do Val
    Marga do Val

CardioNetworks

CardioNetworks

Uploads for media from CardioNetworks have begun. ~4100 files from ECGpedia were uploaded by Smallbot and can be found at commons:Category:Media from CardioNetworks ECGpedia. Unfortunately many images lack a description. Echopedia and pcipedia are scheduled to be uploaded in February.

  • De-Pacemaker rates
    De-Pacemaker rates
  • Conduction blood supply
    Conduction blood supply

News in brief

  • A case study detailing the partnership between Wikimedia and the Walters Art Museum is now available online. The case study touches on the 18,000+ image contribution the Walters made to the Wikimedia Commons, developing an internship inspired by the Wikipedian in Residence model, and an ongoing transcription project involving Latin collections and Wikisource.


The Europeana - Wiki GLAM Toolset

The name of this project is probably the most difficult part of the scheme to understand; what is important is that the end result is a new service that will make your life much easier.

The Europeana - Wiki GLAM Toolset is a collaboration between Europeana, Wikimedia Nederland, Wikimedia France, Wikimedia UK, and Kennisland. In this project, a software tool is to be developed that will make it as easy as possible for any institution or project to put digitised cultural objects into the Wikipedia database.

Over the last few years, GLAMs have been digitising their collections; by doing so, the reach of cultural content has grown enormously. Think of new audiences who are being reached on Facebook, Pinterest or via new mobile applications. The Wiki GLAM Toolset is just going to add to this, tapping into the world of Wikipedia visitors. And lets bear in mind that Wikipedia has almost 500 million unique visitors per month.

As Wikipedia has become a mainstream source of information, more pages are being created, and more topics are being covered. Via the Wiki GLAM Toolset, GLAM institutions and GLAM lovers will be able to upload data files to Wikimedia Commons in large or small quantities. After uploading, all content can be used to illustrate existing pages, or it become a primary source for new Wikipedia pages.

More information

The Europeana – Wiki GLAM Toolset project page can be visited here: Commons:GLAMToolset project.

We are currently looking for Wikipedians who can help us developing the tool, or GLAMs who can give us input on what they would like out of a statistics report.


Aaron is dead; 1 year WikiProject Open Access


Aaron Swartz dead

Aaron Swartz (User:AaronSw) in 2007




On January 11, Aaron Swartz died. He has had a profound effect on many corners of the Web, including the Wikimedia and Open Access communities. His actions towards providing Open Access to scholarly research articles were controversial, but even more so the reactions by the legal system that likely contributed to his early death.

Let's make the world that wouldn't have killed him.

1 year WikiProject Open Access

Approximate Bayesian computation conceptual overview

WikiProject Open Access was started on January 10 last year. The anniversary was marked by the publication of the second Topic Page in PLOS Computational Biology — which now lives on in the article Approximate Bayesian computation on the English Wikipedia — and by the Commons category Open access (publishing) passing the mark of 15,000 files, which have been used a total of over 75,000 times across Wikimedia projects.

Open Access Media Importer

The Open Access Media Importer has now imported over 10,000 files to Wikimedia Commons and is currently mainly working on the upload of files from recently published articles. Fine-tuning of the code continues, as well as work on getting some older files uploaded despite earlier problems with them. By the end of January, the tool has also been migrated to a server at the University of Regensburg, where it is planned to stay at least until the future of the Toolserver or a functional equivalent becomes clear.

The following files represent a selection of what has been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month. If you can think of wiki pages where these files could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.

Gasterosteus aculeatus with stained neuromasts. An image from G3.

Articles started this month

According to TreeViews, 28 articles on OA topics have been started this month across languages, including

WikiProject Open Access News

The following news from WikiProject Open Access have been posted this month (in reverse chronological order):

Water droplets rolling down an inclined plane with a superhydrophobically coated surface.
A cell full of red.
Calling song of Magicicada cassini.
A red beetle.
A red beetle.
Mice running around between a set of nests, thereby making their social network visible.
A PhD Comic special explaining open access.
Motion-tracked finger movements of two pianists playing the same piece.
Paedophryne swiftorum, a tiny little frog.
Paedophryne swiftorum, a tiny little frog.
Portrait of Aaron Swartz
Portrait of Aaron Swartz
Approximate Bayesian computation conceptual overview
Approximate Bayesian computation conceptual overview
A map of Cambodia showing how Dengue fever cases are distributed across the country during different times of the year.
A microstructure folding into a cube.
Pampa of Quebrada Yanachaga
Pampa of Quebrada Yanachaga
Wolbachia
Wolbachia
Cell and tissue dynamics in zebrafish fin development.
Robots moving around in an enclosure, initially rather erratically, then in a coherent fashion.
Brown Boobies in flight at sea.

Open Access File of the Day

The following files have been featured as Open Access File of the Day this month:


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