Jump to content

GLAM/Newsletter/July 2015/Contents/Germany report

Add links
From Outreach Wiki


Germany report

Fancy new apps based on GLAMorous data

By Barbara Fischer

Coding da Vinci: the 10 weeks GLAM hackathon

Organized by Wikimedia Deutschland, OKF, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and DigiS

Berlin's State Secretary for Culture Tim Renner opening Coding da Vinci in April 2015
Coding da Vinci Coders working hard for their project
Happy winners and teams at the Coding da Vinci award ceremony in July 2015

Coding da Vinci is a slightly different GLAM hack-a-thon.

  1. It is run by 4 partners. Wikimedia Deutschland, Open Knowledge Foundation, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and DigiS. Already the partnership represents the linking of two worlds. On one side art & heritage institutions and on the other side developers and volunteers. At Coding da Vinci they both meet. They talk to and learn from each other.
  2. It includes a sprint. In 10 weeks out of more than 600,000 media files and 65 million metadata entries roundabout 100 coders, designers and art fans created 20 new projects.
  3. And third it has a fancy award ceremony.

It was a tough job to the jury to assign five prizes. Out of competition was Rolling Stone, a web app making stones talk. Most funny was considered the online game Nürnberger Lebkuchen based on old gingerbread recipes. The Most technical award was assigned to the combined hardware-software installation Kurbelkamera (crank camera) giving its user the chance to became a movie star in 100 year old movies and share the new film on the net. The app Midiola was awarded for Best design, giving sound to silent punch cards from mechanical pianos. And finally in the category most useful was the plant identifier app Floradex, using 175,000 entries of the herbarium of Berlin's Botanical garden, founded in 1819. It gained the prize from the audience Everybody's darling as well.

Wikimedia Deutschland funds Coding da Vinci because it encourages GLAM institutions to define datasets under a free license. Many of them do this for the first time. We are integrating all this data into Wikimedia Commons. Coding da Vinci shows the potentials of free licenses to creativity. GLAMs can see the offspring of their collection in a new surrounding. This is motivating GLAMs shaping access to their collections compatible to Wikimedia Projects.

KulTour - a format for handy cooperations

The new format the German GLAM community has launched under the label KulTour is quite popular. Community members visit for some hours a museum together. They take photos and might enjoy a guided tour. The format is not new in it self, but having a name makes it apparently easier for volunteers and institutions alike to go for it. In July the Couven Museum in Aachen was visited by the local community. Geolina guided the group. WMDE helped by convincing the the director to allow CC BY SA licensing for the photos and gave free entry to the volunteers. Check out the results in a while for your articles on historical SPA culture.

Retrieved from "https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=GLAM/Newsletter/July_2015/Contents/Germany_report&oldid=107212"