GLAM/Newsletter/July 2022/Single
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Provinces: our main characters
Another province receives one of our scanners
A museum in Concordia, a historical city placed at Entre Rios province, won this year's Techincal Fund for Endangered Heritage and was awarded with a scanner for photographies and documents. The museum is Palacio Arruabarrena, but the agreement is hold between the Municipality in order to continue digitizing heritage in other public cultural institutions.
Apart from deliverying the tecnical equipment, we held two capacity building activities about Wikimedia proyects and local culture, and finalized with a workshop where participants had to upload pictures from the city to Wikimedia Commons and then learnt how to add them to Wikipedia articles. This resulted in 58 pictures that can be seen in this category.
We received Fundación Williams' grant
After some weeks, we finally got an answer: our proyect to conect indigenous communities from Chaco province with Wikimedia proyects was approbed and will receive Potenciar and Fundación Williams funding. This is an important step for promoting knowledge equity inside wikimedia movements and proyects by developing new strategies in order to incorporate non-traditional knowledge from indigenous communities. We are working on a final schedule, willing to start this proyect on late September.
Meanwhile we continue designing virtual activities to debate how indigenous archives had been created, clasified and used in different ways. If you're working on some topics related to these, please let us know :)
New Wikimedian in Residence explores Australian music content
A new Wikimedian In Residence program commenced with the Australian Music Vault at the Australian Performing Arts Collection (APAC) in Melbourne this month.
Wikimedian James Gaunt will be using the APAC collection to expand and add information to Wikipedia pages, as well as provide training to staff on Wikimedia’s projects.
“On my first day I was given a tour of the collection , which have mostly sat untouched for the past two years”, James said. “There’s everything from old magazines, Kylie’s costumes, Nick Cave’s handwritten lyrics, and a great collection of books covering Australia’s performing arts.”
“It’s enough to keep me busy for years, but I’ll only be here for 12 weeks so we’ve made a shortlist of pages to work on based on what's in the APAC collections and not already on Wikipedia.”
The Australian Performing Arts Collection collects items relating to circus, dance, opera, music and theatre from across Australia, and is part of the Arts Centre Melbourne. They also run the Australian Music Vault, a permanent exhibition space at the Arts Centre, dedicated to Australian music.
The team from APAC and the Vault have closely supported The Record: Australian Music On Wikipedia, a series of music related editathon events run in partnership with Australia Council for the Arts.
Senior Curator of the Australian Music Vault Carolyn Laffan attended several of these events and was excited to be able to partner with Wikimedia Australia in a new way.
“The excitement engendered by the music-themed Wikipedia edit-a-thons was quite infectious but we could also see some of the barriers people had in finding information about Australian music and musicians," Carolyn said.
"Hosting a Wikimedian In Residence provides us with a great opportunity to reimagine how we share the extraordinary music objects, archives and stories in our keeping in a way that is broadly accessible and that reflects the interconnectedness of the music community across the country.”
For James, the residency is an opportunity to explore rare materials and grow their discoverability through Wikipedia.
“There’s so many books here which aren’t available anywhere else in Melbourne, so that’s already been great for checking small details,” he said.
“But then the Vault also created Long Play, a series of longform video interviews which are on YouTube, so those are great too for expanding people’s biographies.”
Pages created so far include:
Brazil holds its National Wiki Conference, and many GLAM partners join
The main topic of this 2022 edition of WikiCon Brasil was Wikimedia against misinformation and the conference had four keynote speakers to bring more context about:
DAY 1
- Structural Racism, with Silvana Bahia
- Scientific Denialism, with Bernardo Esteves
DAY 2
- Political Misinformation in Brazil, with Bia Barbosa
- Historical Negationism, with Caroline Bauer
During the event, there were also activities about GLAM and with GLAM partners:
DAY 1
- Portable Museum: diffusion of documentary memory and historical knowledge, a meeting with Carolina Matos (Project Museu Portátil), Diana Santos Souza (GLAM with Santa Casa de Misericórdia da Bahia) and Vitória Bispo (GLAM with Museu da Capitania de Ilhéus)
- GLAM-Wiki partnerships and upload of collections, a workshop with Lucas Belo (WMB) and Sandra Soster (WMB)
- Cultural Session: Harpsichord & Wikidata, a musical presentation and a lecture with Rosana Lanzelotte (GLAM with Musica Brasilis - see also the GLAM WIKIDashboard)
DAY 2
- GLAM Panel, with Solange Ferraz de Lima (GLAM with Museu Paulista), Stela Madruga (GLAM with Labraries at USP) and Paula Nunes (GLAM with Midiateca Capixaba)
- Closing session of this wonderful event with a GLAM surprise, with Sandra Soster (WMB), Valério Melo (WMB) and Diana Souza (GLAM with Santa Casa de Misericórdia da Bahia and now also GLAM with Rede de Historiadoras Negras e de Historiadores Negros - see more about it below)
GLAM with Rede de Historiadoras Negras e de Historiadores Negros
During the closing session of WikiCon Brasil 2022, the audience were surprised by one of the first decolonial GLAM partnerships of the Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB), signed in-person by Valério Mello and Diana Souza from the Rede de Historiadoras Negras e Historiadores Negros (Black Historians Network).
RHN is a Brazilian collective that aims to:
- Create a on-wiki Open Digital Repository of the academic production of Black Historians;
- Create Wikipedia articles about Brazilian black personalities and other people who played a leading role in historical events and processes;
- Add many Wikiquotes of Brazilian black researchers and great personalities, books, films and proverbs.
This in-person signature represents not only our desire of having many more partnerships in favor of diversity on Brazilian Wiki, but also our hope about the future. We wish that from now on we can once again have many opportunities to meet the community in person to fraternize, sign partnerships and think about projects.
The Núcleo de Pesquisa em Estudos de Linguagem em Arquitetura e Cidade (N.ELAC) (Center of Studies of Language in Architecture and City) is a research group at University of São Paulo (USP) and studies means of representation and design methodologies in Architecture and Urbanism, and the paradigm shift due to the digital media. During the researches, students and Professors carry out architectural surveys and this GLAM partnerships aims to share some of these results. The first upload is a set of images of photogrammetry processes for 3D representation of historical buildings.
3,603 new media to Commons from GLAM with MAG Seguros | A Brazilian collection named Memory of the World by UNESCO. The former Montepio Geral de Economia dos Servidores do Estado (MonGeral) is the first official social security institution in Brazil, founded in 1835.
973 new media to Commons from GLAM with Museu da Pessoa - see also the GLAM WIKIDashboard | A Brazilian project that gather stories about people, showing that every person deserves to have their memory preserved.
2,898 new media to Commons from GLAM with Arquivo Nacional - see also the GLAM WIKIDashboard | The Archive is responsible for the management, preservation and dissemination of the documents created by the federal public administration.
On mid-July, a group of researchers (Alves, Burley, Lima, Peel and Peschanski) published an article in Essachess - Jornal of Communication Studies, entitled The Technical Infrastructure of Cultural Initiatives on Wikimedia: Three Case Studies From Brazil, presenting the organization and workflow of three Wikimedia initiatives: The photograph contest Wiki Loves Monuments, the National Museum Cross-Wiki Project and the Museu Paulista GLAM-Wiki partnership. In this article, the authors present the strategies for the preservation of cultural heritage collections and the innovations in content dissemination of those initiatives, in the attempt to answer two questions: What is the optimised infrastructure for cultural movements on Wikimedia? and How does the development of processes and resources for cultural preservation and dissemination in a collaborative digital environment happen? The three cases are presented with a Global South perspective on cultural activities on collaborative enviroments and how they should be framed within the local realities of the Global South. The article is available at https://doi.org/10.21409/QJSC-BK48
A very busy July for Colombian libraries / Un Julio bastante movido para las bibliotecas colombianas
Workshop: Texts, data and metadata. Inclusive digital communities in Colombia. Retrieving our own
During the month of July, 3 things happened related to the library sector and our Culture program at Wikimedia Colombia that point to a much closer collaboration between Colombian libraries and the Wikimedia Movement. We had our first workshop with the National Library of Colombia and librarians from the National Network of Public Libraries and we participated in two international events, Wikimedia + Libraries and the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Ireland. Here we tell you the details (in Spanish).
Taller: Textos, datos y metadatos. Comunidades digitales inclusivas en Colombia. Recuperando lo propio
Durante el mes de Julio, pasaron 3 cosas relacionadas al sector bibliotecario y nuestro programa de Cultura que le apuntan a una colaboración mucho más estrecha entre las bibliotecas colombianas y el Movimiento Wikimedia. Tuvimos nuestro primer taller con la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia y bibliotecaries de la Red Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas y participamos en dos eventos internacionales, Wikimedia + Libraries y el Congreso Mundial de Información y Bibliotecas de IFLA en Irlanda. Aquí te contamos los detalles.
Wikimedian in residence in Clermont-Ferrand
Nearing the end of the Clermont residency
The one-year Wikimedian in residence in Clermont-Ferrand is near to its end. A report will be written soon but here is already some figures :
- more than 30k edits (and counting)
- by almost 40 peoples
- on several Wikimedia projects, by order of edits: Wikidata, Wikisource in French, Commons, Wikipedia in French and others Wikimedia projects
- a lot of actions: presentations, workshops, contributing sessions, etc.
- participation in #1Lib1Ref
- mass import of a collection of portraits on Wikidata+Commons with OpenRefine
- actions in and about the whole territory of Auvergne and not just Clermont
- training of specific people to keep up some actions
July: month of project closure
Archivio Ricordi - project closure
The musical scores project started in January, carried out by the collaboration between Ricordi Historical Archives and Wikimedia Italia. The initiative created free access content starting from the Digital Collection of the Archive; by sharing content from its own book collections and archive (publications, images, texts), in fact, the Archive enhanced its heritage and contributed to the improvement of Wikipedia entries, opening up to the open access and open content philosophy. In addition, the archive has decided to accept Wikimedia Italia's invitation to develop a new experimental project, proceeding with the publication of some musical scores from its catalog on Wikisource, using the LilyPond software.
Thanks to this collaboration and the work of a Wikimedian in residence (musician, composer, teacher, instrumentalist, IT and of course supporter of free software), it's now possible to listen to music on Wikisource. We have already discussed this in the April newsletter, here.
Call for cultural institution - project closure
The winners of the for Proposals for Museums, Archives and Libraries 2022, promoted by Wikimedia Italy in collaboration with ICOM Italy and Creative Commons Italy to encourage the sharing and free reuse of images, data and content preserved by cultural institutions, have completed their projects.
Below some of the activities and goals achieved:
- - English, French, Spanish and German translations;
- - Enhancement of two Wikipedia entries: 'puppet opera' and 'Antonio Pasqualino international puppet museum'
- - creation of an Itinerary of the work of Sicilian puppets on OpenStreetMap and WikiVoyage
- Istituto Campana per L'Istruzione Permanente in Osimo:the project involved creating or improving entries related to the location, history, personalities (distinguished Campana College faculty and students, architect, artists, bishops, etc.) and cultural heritage of the Campana Institute for Continuing Education. Work was then done on digitizing and uploading to Wikimedia Commons geographical maps, city views, architectural drawings and prints, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. Here, link of new contents.
- The historical archives of the parish of Santa Maria Assunta in Trevi nel Lazio: digitized 23 parchments dating back to the period between the 13th and the 16th century. Here, the project page on Wikipedia. Here, upload file on Wikimedia Commons.
- Museo Ugo Guidi in Forte dei Marmi: the project involved digitizing, i.e., scanning, processing, archiving and sharing on Wikimedia Commons under a free license a relevant part of the collection present at the Casa Museo Ugo Guidi in Forte dei Marmi(LU). The works covered by the project number 100 and are part of Ugo Guidi's artistic production from 1944 (previous works were dispersed due to war events) to 1977 (the year of the sculptor's death) and include both part of the sculpture works catalogued by the Superintendence of Lucca and Massa Carrara in 1978(assets and collections of historical interest of the Code of Cultural Heritage Legislative Decree No. 42/2004), and works of painting and documentation of the master Ugo Guidi. Here, on Wikimedia Commons.
- Conservatorio Giuseppe Nicolini in Piacenza: 31 new article, 23 expanded articles, 44 new items on Wikidata, 37 improved items, 32 new category on Wikimedia Commons and its first organized edit-a-thon dedicated to "Great Voices of Opera," concluding the "Digital Humanities and Musical Heritage in Wikipedia" training.
- The Library of the Research Area of the CNR of Bologna: creation of the [https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/NILDE NILDE network website element] on Wikidata, uploaded to OpenStreetMap the data of Italian libraries that belong to the network (here),trained participants who will learn how to share NILDE-related content independently to continue to update the Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap projects with quality content in the medium and long term. As part of the call for proposals, the uploading of data at the regional level has been planned, after which it is expected to give continuity over time to the data entry action with the extension of data to the national level. In the long term, the inclusion could concern data at the international level.
- The library of the University of Salerno: the "Iris UniSa in Wikidata" project aimed to reconcile the data of researchers and professors pertaining to the University of Salerno in Wikidata through the IRIS identifier, in order to create search paths in which the information and production of each researcher can be explored, wherever they are found: national and foreign library catalogs, encyclopedia entries, Wikipedia, biographies, repositories, sources of international authorities such as VIAF and ISNI, ORCID, SCOPUS,etc. (here, the project page on Wikidata).
News from Auckland Museum, the West Coast, and New Zealand's thesis repositories
Auckland Museum
Focus on West Auckland
Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira has been focusing on producing quality history articles for the suburbs and areas of Auckland, as a way to empower teachers and students before the start of the 2023 local history curriculum. This month a major milestone was reached when an article on West Auckland was published. Due to some quirks of local history, it was the only major area of the city without an article. The article details the natural history of the area, early Tāmaki Māori history and how the region developed during the colonial era.
Additionally, a new article was created for the Portages of New Zealand, te tōanga waka, the important waka (canoe) hauling passages that linked people across Aotearoa. These are especially important for the history of Auckland, where portages helped connect communities of the Kaipara, Manukau and Waitematā harbours. Work was also done on some of the species native to the West Auckland area, such as Veronica bishopiana.
A number of museum resources greatly helped sourcing the information on the page, including books and articles written by people associated with the museum. The museum's photography also helped to enrich West Auckland-related articles, such as the museum's collection photography, habitually released under a CC-BY license, and many archival works which have since become available in the public domain.
Online Cenotaph Wikidata project
A major initiative of the Auckland War Memorial museum is Online Cenotaph, a living memorial compiling research about the people who served for Aotearoa New Zealand. Over the course of July, people who have English language Wikipedia articles (anyone in Category:New Zealand military personnel and Category:New Zealand people by war) were cross-referenced with their Online Cenotaph entries. Over 500 people had their Online Cenotaph IDs linked in Wikidata, doubling the number times this field has been used.
Linking Online Cenotaph IDs in Wikidata creates many opportunities to improve both the museum's database and Wikipedia in the future: resources such as CC-BY photographs and dates of birth can more easily be shared, and any differences can be investigated (such as differences in dates of birth and names), improving both resources. The project still has much more room for growth: personnel from World War II continue to be matched, and many service-people from countries other than New Zealand (such as soldiers from Pacific nations who served for New Zealand) can have their Online Cenotaph IDs linked.
Women in Red
A number of articles were made for Women in Red, including new articles for West Auckland home birth-advocate Vera Ellis-Crowther, filmmaker Tweedie Waititi, known for adapting Disney animated films into Reo Māori, and biographer Judy Siers. In the last two years, 30 articles on New Zealand women have been created as a part of the museum's focus on Women in Red.
West Coast Wikipedian at Large
The has finished its first month on the West Coast of the South Island, with field trips to Punakaiki, Lake Brunner, and Karamea. User:Giantflightlessbirds was joined by two volunteers from Wellington who hiked 10 km to photograph native forest and crawl through three caves, encountering New Zealand's largest spider, to create an article on the Fenian Track. With one month to go, the team of 11 has uploaded over 500 photos, created 19 articles, improved 178, and added 58,000 words of text (dashboard stats TK). The project has been covered in local papers, on radio, and in two TV news spots. One TV crew filmed Giantflightlessbirds photographing mountains and editing Wikipedia beside a scenic lake, although the camera did not pick up the hundreds of biting midges he was being attacked by.Articles from the project have appeared in three DYKs, and the featured video clip for one of them got 405,000 views. The next area to be tackled is Haast, after which the Wikipedian at Large will have travelled the entire 600 km length of the West Coast.
The New Zealand Theses project
As introduced in This Month in GLAM in March, User:Dr Thneed as part of the has created a Cradle templete, uploaded 66,000 New Zealand theses or dissertations from university repositories into Wikidata, and matched 6000 of them to authors. She has documented the project on YouTube, including Histropedia timelines, the Mix'n'Match author catalogue, and how these can now be cited with CiteQ in Wikipedia articles. This is very likely the first ever attempt to place an entire country's academic thesis repository in Wikidata, and in the [thesis by institution dashboard] New Zealand institutions now occupy nine of the top 20 places. Dr Thneed, who is supported by a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa NZ, is continuing to run maintenance queries and clean data, and is developing a plan so the partner universities can arrange an annual upload to Wikidata of each year's new theses.
Edit-a-thon in the National Museum in Cracow, GLAM editing contest on the collection of artworks
Edit-a-thon in the National Museum in Cracow
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Exhibition tour with the curator before edit-a-thon
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wikipedians in action
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new article on museum's painting
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wikipedians in action
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Wiki-sweets and exhibition catalouge
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Books in the museum's library
The first stage of Wikiresidency in the National Museum in Cracow is coming to an end. Its results are vital for further development of partnership. Although a huge amount of work has been done during two previous months, it was concentrated mainly on preparing a ground for deeper cooperation (preparing an upload, building wikiproject site, selection of the artworks for upload, introducing wikipedian-in-residence to the museum’s staff, and museum to the wikimedians).
At the end of this stage we wanted to deliver the greater visibility of the project and show how the wikimedia projects works in practice. Therefore, from the beginning of the residency, we planned to organize the edit-a-thon in the museum to write and develop the articles connected with the institution and its unique collection of artworks. The main goal of the event was to introduce the wikipedians to the museum and to start building stronger connection between them and the museum.
On 30th of July we met in Cracow and started the day with the exhibition tour of Jacek Malczewski. The romantic with the curator Urszula Kozakowska-Zaucha. After a short break we gathered in the museum's library, the best place to focus on editing with easy access to the books. As a result ten participants created 8 new articles and developed 3 more (detailed statistics available here [1]).
The good atmosphere of the edit-a-thon, the engagement of wikipedians and the museum’s hospitality have laid a good foundation for further cooperation. The successful organization of edit-a-thon and the editing contest (more below) was possible thanks to great involvement of volunteer Jamnik z Tarnowa, Wikipedian in residence Filip (MNK) and museum's representatives: Agata Jabłońska and Joanna Szytuła.
GLAM editing contest on the collection of the National Museum in Cracow
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Bouquet of Flowers
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Wladyslaw Podkowinski, Ecstasy
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Stanislaw Wyspianski, Selfportrait
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Jozef Mehoffer, Witraz
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Alexander Roslin, Princess Izabela Czartoryska nee von Flemming
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Portrait of Mary Ruthven
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Joseph Anton Harzath, Hunting Scene
In order to reach a wider audience and encourage the Wikimedia community to get involved in the GLAM-Wiki project with the National Museum in Cracow, together with the museum we prepared an editing contest dedicated to its collection of artworks called GLAM Month with the National Museum in Cracow.
The contest started on 30th of July, at the day of the edit-a-thon, so all the articles created during the event will take part in the contest. The prizes will be awarded for individual and collective contribution. The competition will be run throughout August and we hope to organize GLAM editing contests regularly in the future.
Portugal’s first GLAM-Wiki open access museum project is launched!!
Portugal’s first GLAM-Wiki open access museum project is launched!!
Wikimedia Portugal has teamed up with Lisbon’s Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre Museum to make openly available 51 artworks under a CC BY-SA (4.0) license in Wikimedia Commons.
The first museum partnership of its kind in Portugal, we hope the project will inspire other museums to make their collections openly accessible via Wikimedia Commons.
Consisting mostly of Chinese artefacts dating from the Bronze age to the 20th century, the collection also contains important works relating to Macau’s history.
The project also led to the insertion of 295 objects from the collection into Wikidata and the creation of the Wikipedia articles about the museum in Portuguese, English and Mandarin.
Presentation of GLAM activities at Edu Wiki Camp
Presentation of GLAM activities at Edu Wiki Camp
After two years of online editions, we organized Edu Wiki Camp live! Among the many activities, the GLAM program was also presented, the most important activities and the project, which attracted considerable attention, Wikipedian in residence. We believe that this camp is only the first step towards numerous activities and collaborations.
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
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Edu Wiki Camp - Wikimedia Serbia
Khalili Collections
Khalili Foundation
Four new images of paintings were uploaded this month, plus three cropped versions of previously-uploaded images. The four paintings, and the album they are part of, are described with new Wikidata items. The four images were requested by User:LouisAragon; together we have created and populated a Commons category for Shaykh Sanan and the Christian maiden. This is a scene from the Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds; the Commons category includes art depicting this scene from collections including the MET, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Arts Museum of Iran.
My residency is increasingly taking on the inter-cultural understanding mission of the Khalili Foundation, in addition to the mission of documenting the Khalili Collections. I have spent some time this month improving Wikipedia project pages about art outside the Western canon with a view to launching a Task Force to improve this topic on English Wikipedia.
I have continued to add detail to the Wikidata representation of the Collections. There are now more than 10,000 statements about Khalili Collections objects, including properties of paintings within manuscripts and albums. Sum of all Paintings, the effort to document all notable paintings in Wikidata, now lists the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art with 95 paintings.
Khalili Collections images are now visible in 1145 categories on Wikimedia Commons: 62 more than last month. The new categories include Suzuri bako, Shōwa Emperor, Cane handles, and Carved panellings among others. "Uncategorised" images (those with only one category) have decreased from 133 to 99.
GLAM for the Masses
GLAM at Chautauqua Institution
On July 20, 2022, Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado) was a featured speaker at the Chautauqua Institution Summer Lecture series where he talked about the Wikimedia movement and GLAM around their theme of the "Future of History." Chautauqua is a long-standing American arts and culture summer festival that lasts nine weeks in western New York, near the Pennsylvania and Ohio borders.
The talk, "Free for All: Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and the Future of History," was a chance to speak to an amphitheater crowd of more than 1,000 attendees about Wikipedia's influence after 20 years. It introduced newcomers to community terminologies such as Commons, Wikidata, GLAM, and the Wikimedia movement. The video is scheduled to be released at a later date.
Coverage from the local paper The Chautauquan Daily:
- Tech journalist, Smithsonian’s Wikimedian-at-Large Andrew Lih to trace Wikipedia’s power in cultural heritage by Arden Ryan, July 19, 2022
- Digital strategist Andrew Lih traces past, present, futaure of information, knowledge through lens of Wikipedia by Ellen Mintzner, July 20, 2022
Lecture
The talk (slides) centered around introducing the term "Wikimedia movement" to showcase how Wikipedia's influence over 20 years has gone beyond simply being a compendium of written articles. To keep things simple, only four policies were discussed to explain why Wikipedia works and has been able to stay a top 10 website - NPOV, NOR, RS, and V. Images from Wikimedia Commons and examples from Wikidata helped show the trajectory of the projects beyond Wikipedia. GLAM was also introduced to the audience, showing how the most respected cultural and heritage institutions were partnering with the Wikimedia community to increase access to digital holdings through open access programs (such as with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the Smithsonian Institution).
There was a lively question and answer session where people were interested in how the movement gets funding and whether it was at risk of having a few large donors be too influential.
Workshop and Wikimedia Space
Along with the talk, the Chautauqua Festival was interested in a more interactive program to accompany the public lecture that would be held in their local library space. Rather than trying to accommodate a traditional edit-a-thon for more than 100 people, which would have required laptops, a larger space, and many instructors, it was decided to run a more "self-guided" Wikimedia engagement.
This was a good opportunity to build off the work of the original Wikipedia Space poster-based exhibit created in 2016 for the U.S. National Archives and had been set up in the NARA Innovation Hub for many years. Fortunately, the exhibit had always been portable, so the color vinyl pull-up panels were rolled up, and brought to Chautauqua.
The next challenge was how to meaningfully go beyond the static printed banners and provide a more immersive and interactive demonstration of the Wikimedia movement. It was decided to add two main features:
- Looping video programming. This was designed so people could sit and experience some of the stories, people, and faces of the Wikimedia movement. This was deemed a high priority as most average users have no idea who actually writes Wikipedia, and the community behind it. Fortunately we had a 2018 Wikimedia highlight reel (Vimeo link) created for WikiConference North America, which is a compendium of the best videos from the Wikimedia movement, including "Edit 2015," an overview of the Armenian summer camp for youth, and how a BlackLifeMatters edit-a-thon helps improve Wikipedia. Unfortunately, since the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement at large has not prioritized video storytelling in its documentation of the community's activities, many of the best visual content date back to 2015 to 2018. Additionally, the last two years of the pandemic have prevented meetups and conferences, making recent visual documentation even harder. We also had a second screen with Listen to Wikipedia running, but this was much less engaging, as two running audio programs was too busy.
- Interactive QR code stations. We worked on the premise that we could depend on most attendees to have a mobile phone. With the exhibit space in a library with Wifi, it was decided to create five interactive stations with QR codes that people could scan with their device to interact with Wikimedia content. In the case of folks without a mobile, or could not get QR scanning to work, there were at least two stations that had an iPad with the content loaded already, so people could interact with the device in front of them, rather than using their own. The five stations included:
- Wikipedia app (Wikipedia). Directions on how to install the Wikipedia app on iOS and Android, and the benefits.
- Wikidata knowledge graph (Wikidata). Visualizing Wikidata connections of dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley with a Wikidata SPARQL query and graph display. (Preloaded iPad available at station.)
- 360 Photospheres (Commons). Loading a Commons 360 degree photosphere image of San Juan, Puerto Rico's El Morro citadel. (Preloaded iPad available at station.)
- English Wikipedia Top 100 (Wikipedia). Showing Hatnote's Top 100 list.
- Wikimedia statistics dashboard (Wikimdedia). Link to the main https://stats.wikimedia.org site.
Conclusions
- Wikimedia as a term. In my experience, this was my first large-scale attempt to base a talk around the Wikimedia movement as a core concept. I felt it worked well because the Chautauqua Festival and its regular attendees have a parallel concept, namely from the CHQ.org site's About page which states "...many new Chautauquas were created, known as 'Daughter Chautauquas,' giving rise to what was called the 'Chautauqua Movement.'" In this case, it was quite easy to map over what the audience already understood as the Chautauqua movement to the Wikimedia movement.
- Hands-on engagement. We only had 90 minutes for the hands-on session, but about 100-150 people made their way through the space. Most folks were transfixed on the running 2018 Wikimedia Reel, which I believe shows an interest in the people behind Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and also the value of highly produced video content. It does pay dividends in forums such as these.
- Follow-up. By giving the talk on a Wednesday, and staying the rest of the week, I interacted with many of the attendees casually in what is essentially a "summer camp" environment. Many said they learned a lot about how the Wikimedia movement worked, had no idea GLAM institutions were working with Wikimedia and saw that as an endorsement of Wikipedia's quality.
- Popular questions
- How does the community get its money? I mentioned the similarity to the NPR/PBS/public media model of many small donors yearly, and many folks confirmed they were indeed annual donors.
- Are you worried about big donors having too much control? I explained that there are limits in place to ensure no one donor ever makes up too much of the income for the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Wikileaks. Fortunately about half the comments about this were: "I know Wikileaks is completely different than Wikipedia but isn't that confusing to regular folks?" However, it does still show that in popular culture there is confusion.
Wiknic NYC
Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, Wikinic Queens.
Cooperative Agriculture edit-a-thon
USDA National Agricultural Library held a workshop, Cooperative Ag edit-a-thon.
San Diego
San Diego Wikimedians User Group host a meetup, San Diego/July 2022, at Leucadia Pizzeria.
Upcoming Wikimania 2022 remote events
Wikimania 2022, while mostly virtual, is encouraging local meetups as an adjunct to the online event. Some things happening in the United States:
- Wikimedia NYC will be hosting Wiki World's Fair, on Saturday August 13, 2022 at the Queens Museum.
- Ohio Wikimedians User Group, and Wikimedia DC, will be hosting Wikimania 2022/Pittsburgh Meetup, from August 11 to August 14.
- Utah Wikimedia users and Salt Lake City Public Library, will be hosting Utah/August 2022, on August 13, 2022.
- San Diego Wikimedians User Group, will be hosting San Diego/August 2022, on August 13th, 2022.
Wikimania
Crisis and GLAM (11 August 14.05 –15.00 UTC)
AvoinGLAM arranges a workshop on the opening day of Wikimania. What role does open access to cultural heritage play in today’s crises? Join to hear about the experiences and activities of wikimedians responding to crises, and to map out collaborations and practices that can help combat crisis situations facing humans, the environment, and cultural heritage.
Éder Porto (Wiki Movimento Brasil) introduces the digital reconstruction work they undertook when a massive fire devastated the building and collections of the National Museum of Brazil in 2018.
Nassima Chahboun (Wiki World Heritage) walks us through the work of WHindanger that promotes and raises awareness of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in danger using participatory creative tactics and Wikimedia projects to create an interactive website.
Hanna Osadchuk (Wikimedia Ukraine) talks about open access to cultural heritage as seen from within the ongoing war.
The workshop is moderated by Patricia Diaz Rubio (Wikimedia Chile) and Susanna Ånäs (AvoinGLAM).
Bring your ideas and experiences to the meeting! Based on the introductions, new tactics combining cultural heritage, voluntary work, humanitarian and creative activities can be developed together.
Wikimania Watch Party in Helsinki (11 August 9.00–15.00 UTC @ URBAN3, Maria01)
The workshop is part of the program of the Wikimania Watch Party, organized in the joint base of AvoinGLAM, Wikimedia Finland and Open Knowledge Finland. In addition to the workshop, we can watch the opening ceremony and other Wikimania program, play Commonspoly and socialize with each other in the Finnish open data & culture community. After the events ends, we will join the OpenStreetMap birthday party, organized by the Free Thursday community in Helsinki.
→ Program page and registration
History of media art in Finland
The project MEHI – the History of Media Art in Finland project is a tour-de-force of several contemporary arts organizations in Finland, coordinated by the Media Art Network in Finland. The history project has several dimensions:
- A database of 2500 media artists, organizations, artworks and events in Finland that will be hosted by the National Gallery. The data will also be published in Finna, the Finnish national GLAM aggregator, and added to Wikidata for applicable parts. Some artists will also openly license images of their artworks, which will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
- OMA, the Ontology for Media Art of over 1500 concepts related to media art, is partly gathered from existing Finnish and international sources, partly harvested from the descriptions of the artworks. The ontology is published as part of KOKO ontologies, a collection of Finnish core ontologies at Finto, a centralized service for interoperable thesauri, ontologies and classification schemes from the Finnish GLAM sector. The concepts have been added to Wikidata, and further linking will take place over time.
- An open access policy, which will outline the principles of open licensing and the use of Wikimedia platforms.
- Conservation plans for media artworks.
- An anthology of Finnish media art.
- An editathon at the central library Oodi on 4 August gathered nearly 30 representatives of contemporary arts organizations in Finland to learn to write articles about these topics to Wikipedia.
AvoinGLAM is not directly involved in the project but will carry out some additional tasks, such as facilitate the import of media art database data to Wikidata, and present the project as one of the case studies of open access in the Finnish GLAM scene.
Wikimania activities
Wikimania activities
With Wikimania around the corner there are three Hub related presentations to add to your watchlist.
- Saturday 13 August, 8.50 (UTC): The Helpdesk at the Content Partnerships Hub, Speakers: Eric Luth, John Cummings, John Andersson
- Saturday 13 August, 10.10 (UTC): Volunteer developers and improving content partnership software in the Wikimedia environment, Speaker: Sandra Fauconnier + invited panelists
- Saturday 13 August, 11.25 (UTC): The Grand Tour of Wikimedia, Speaker: Josefine Hellroth Larsson
What next for 1Lib1Ref?
Overview
The first “One Librarian, One Reference” (#1Lib1Ref) campaign was launched in January 2016 to celebrate the 15th birthday of Wikipedia. The organizers asked librarians to “Imagine a World where Every Librarian Added One More Reference to Wikipedia.” Librarians were invited to become contributors to Wikipedia through a small first edit that was perfectly aligned with their purpose, knowledge, and skills.
Since then, #1Lib1Ref has grown from a primarily English-language initiative to a twice-annual campaign with support for more than 50 languages. Organizers around the world have made it their own, localizing the identity and timing (e.g. #1Bib1Ref in Latin America), experimenting with themes (e.g. human rights and gender), and developing the campaign into a more robust professional development opportunity (e.g. African Librarians Week). Recent campaigns have started to experiment with new tasks.
Organizers have also faced local challenges and resistance. Some report that the campaign is perceived to have regressive gender dynamics, inviting a feminized profession (librarians) to clean up after predominantly male Wikipedia editors. Others talk about the difficulty of overcoming internalized censorship in post-communist society. While the campaign is growing in some regions, the numbers are down elsewhere.
We used the opportunity of the Wikimedia and Libraries International Convention to reflect on what’s working and what needs to change, in a workshop titled, Where next for 1Lib1Ref?
Tactics
To complement the core tactic of adding citations, workshop participants suggested creating Wikidata items for works on Wikisource, Nearby adding nearby places of interest to Wikidata and Wikipedia, and adding quotes to Wikiquote. Participants also talked about how 1Lib1Ref could better connect with librarians’ motivations, for example, by focusing on local history, addressing the gender gap, or showcasing writers in underrepresented languages. There was a strong sense that librarians could do more than just add citations, with participants suggesting that they could add sections to articles, or rewrite parts of articles that aren’t achieving a neutral point of view.
Finally, advocacy itself is a tactic. The African Librarians Week campaign called on librarians to represent their country by posting to social media. Having so many librarians sharing their dual identity as ‘Wikibrarians’ helps to build the reputation of our projects and bring in more readers and contributors.
Challenges
Most of the challenges related to how we articulate the benefit of the campaign to librarians. How does 1Lib1ref develop librarians’ digital literacy and career opportunities, raise awareness of their collections, improve their service for researchers and local users, or support their institution? And how do you bring contributors back, year after year?
Participants also noted the need for better campaign tools and they want to measure the quality of contribution, not just the quantity of contribution.
Solutions
There was a lot of discussion about who makes the invitation, with proposals to bolster the campaign through outreach to decision makers for the library sector, for example, government, professional bodies, and leadership at the biggest institutions. Participants also thought it was important to encourage librarians to use their own collection resources and tools, to make the campaign more accessible and impactful for them.
August's GLAM events
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