GLAM/Newsletter/June 2013/Single
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Completion and continuation
Residency concludes
The formal association between Wikimedia Australia and the State Library of New South Wales concluded in mid June with the end of Whiteghost.ink’s residency but the relationship continues. Its purposes and progress were described in previous issues. (See Part I, Part II and Part III.) The SLNSW Project page also sets them out and has been developed to include sections on outcomes and processes and is linked to information about its Evaluation.
In brief, Wikimedia Australia now has a good relationship with the library, whose staff and management have an understanding of how Wikipedia and Commons can help make their collection more accessible and available. They have incorporated these projects into normal business and they continue to work with us by providing venues and resources for future editathons.
Editathons
Focusing on women's involvement in the war, its context and impact (as opposed to its battles), we started small with a virtual editathon on World War I aligned with concurrent efforts in Europe. This first WWI editathon produced wonderful new articles such as Bluebirds (Australian nurses) from Nick-D and Claude Marquet from Lankiveil. We hope that more Australian Wikimedians will come to the Library for the meetups and follow up editathons whether about the War or about special Library exhibitions.
Evaluation Workshop
An Evaluation workshop run by the Wikimedia Foundation, held at the end of June and aimed to assist participants to identify the necessary inputs to Wikimedia activities as well as to measure outputs and outcomes, was attended by Whiteghost.ink. This is relevant to any programs that we plan or undertake. For further information see:
- Community blog about the workshop
- Program evaluation basics: why evaluate in the first place?
- Program evaluation basics: glossary of evaluation terms
Edit-a-thon; Wiki Loves Monuments; Open Data Day
Edit-a-thon about World War One
99 years ago the First World War started and had Belgium as chess board. With this idea in mind a group of Wikipedians from multiple Wikipedias organized an edit-a-thon at the same time with other edit-a-thons in Europe and Australia to improve and enlarge the information present on Wikipedia about the First World War and to use more images from Europeana. We found a free location at Leuven University where we were able to use internet and a digital board on the wall to show some things.
Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium and Luxembourg
The preparations of organizing Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium and Luxembourg have started.
Open Data Day
On 14 June Flemish government organized with Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) the Open Data Day. On this day a lot of Flemish government organisations were present to get informed and inspired about Open Data. Some thoughts that the government has as goal:
- Open Data will become the norm for all Flemish Government organisations
- Re-use is allowed
- Open Data uses open standards
Edit-a-thon about 1864
An edit-a-thon about 1864 was held at the National Archives in Copenhagen with a sister event in Stockholm and several contributors all over the world. The Edit-a-thon 1864, which was attended by 8 persons in Copenhagen and something like six persons elsewhere, ended up creating 11 new articles (most in Danish) and improving ten more (not counting a host of small changes). The event was covered in an article in national newspaper Politiken and in a blogpost in the National Museum's blog about digital issues.
National Archives & Toulouse
National Archives
An agreement has been signed between the French National Archives and Wikimédia France. The Archives will upload photographs from their collections and write articles on the institution and archives.
Toulouse
AncelyBot has finished uploading the Fonds Ancely: Personal collections of Réné Ancely acquired by the city of Toulouse in 1967 and curated by the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse. As a result, over 2000 pictures were automatically uploaded by AncelyBot after volunteers from Wikimédia France GLAM workgroup have worked on the metadata conversion process.
- If you want to see the work done, please go to the list of files uploaded by AncelyBot
The Musée des Augustins (Museum of fine arts of Toulouse) had an intern from end of May to mid-June to upload pictures from their collections on Wikimedia Commons. The intern worked with Wikimédia France GLAM workgroup in order to get some help with the metadata. The result of the intership is that all artworks exposed in the Salon rouge have been uploaded by the Museum.
- If you want to see the work done, please go to the list of files uploaded by the intern
Edit-a-thon and more at Landesmuseum Braunschweig
Wikipedians and GLAM contributors visit State Museum of Braunschweig
Between June 21-23, around 20 Wikipedians and GLAM activists spent a weekend at Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum to learn everything about the great upcoming exhibition Roms vergessener Feldzug. Die Schlacht am Harzhorn (Rome´s forgotten campaign. Battle at the Harzhorn).
The exhibition, opening September 1, is about an extraordinary archaeological discovery: near Kalefeld, ancient military findings enabled scientists to reconstruct a Romano-Germanic battle in 3rd century A.D. Within the scope of a project in support of local cultural cooperations between Wikipedia communities and cultural institutions (GLAM on tour), a programme was set up by Wikipedians, Wikimedia Germany and the museum.
Both sides gained from the project. Local Wikipedians and GLAM activists were invited to visit the exhibition in advance, hear exclusive scientific lectures about the historical context and talk with the curator. The museum provided a guided photo tour through the depots and laboratories of the museum, where objects for the exhibition get restored. During an edit-a-thon, articles about the topic could be started or updated; many have been revised, updated and picturized by now.
Two longtime Wikipedians held a lecture about Wikipedia for the museum staff, prospective Wikipedians from Braunschweig and invited press. The museum´s director underlined that it was most interesting for her and all her colleagues to get to know the people behind Wikipedia. After the lecture, interested guests were invited to make their very first steps in editing Wikipedia, supported by experienced Wikipedia contributors. The most exciting part of the weekend was our field trip to the ancient Roman battlefield. The lead researchers gave the Wikipedia group a vivid insight in the Romano-Germanic combat that had been forgotten for hundreds of years.
Given the fact that this pilot cooperation worked out really well, all participants, the Wikipedians and the museums staff, are enthusiastic about future cooperations. A Wikipedia workshop for the staff and another edit-a-thon during next years exhibition about the centenary of World War I are planned. Learn more about the cooperation in our Blog and on the project page (in German).
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Wikimedia community is invited to contribute to an exhibition on the digital society
A 2014 exhibition on the digital society is currently in the planning phase, and the Wikimedia community is invited to put forward any ideas it might have on the matter. The exhibition is to be installed on a ship that will travel major rivers in Germany and Austria next summer, stopping for a few days each in about 40 cities along the way. For details, see the project page.
Backstage event NA/KB; WWI Edit-a-thon; New potential partners
Backstage event ("Achter de Schermen") at NA/KB
The National Archives of The Netherlands (NA) and the National Library of The Netherlands (KB) hosted a behind the scenes event on june 8th. Visitors could get a tour through parts of their buildings that normally aren't accessible for visitors. This event was also a Wiki-saturday on location: an opportunity for interested people to meet volunteers of Wikimedia Nederland.
WWI Edit-a-thon at Huis Doorn
Wikimedia Nederland participated in the International World War I edit-a-thon. The event was kindly hosted by Huis Doorn, which has become known as the last residence of the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm ll. Two volunteers of Huis Doorn were available for questions during the event. Participants were taken on a tour through the house and were allowed to take photos for Commons.
New potential partners
There have been talks with several new potential partners in The Netherlands. These are
- the Maritime Museum is interested in edit-a-thons for their exhibitions,
- The New Institute showed interest in donating content,
- Boek.be contacted WMNL to discuss the possibility to reuse Wikipedia content for their data services,
- Communication and Multimedia Design at the the University of Applied Science in Utrecht might be interested in partnering for their Museum Battles, a five day pressure-cooking concepting event for students with different backgrounds.
These were a first introduction and will hopefully lead to cooperation in the near future.
Wiki Loves Public Art Winners; Viquimodernisme case study
Wiki Loves Public Art Winners
All of the participating countries decided on their winners during June and the ten best images uploaded as part of the Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest. These images are now being judged by the international jury, chaired by Swedish volunteer Arild Vågen. The jury's choice for Barcelona can be seen here.
Viquimodernisme case study presented in a Art Nouveau International conference
Since 2003, the Art Nouveau European Route magazine coupDefouet has sought to tell the story of Art Nouveau by focusing on the fine detail while contextualising it within a global outlook. To celebrate coupDefouet's tenth anniversary, the Art Nouveau European Route holded the coupDefouet International Congress in Barcelona on 26–29 June 2013.
The main theme strand of the Congress was Art Nouveau European Cities: Between Cosmopolitanism and Local Tradition. Two local Wikipedians, Àlex Hinojo and Esther Solé, presented the results of the Viquimodernisme case study to an international audience.
Experimenting with different types of edit-a-thons, announcing winners and adding data
Collection Days edit-a-thon
An edit-a-thon was organized in Warsaw together with Wikimedia Polska in connection to the Collection Days organized by Europeana 1989. At the Collection Days the public can bring their memorabilia from the time around 1989 and get them digitized, which is then released under a free license. Our edit-a-thon focused on contextualising some of this new free material on Wikipedia and to reach out to the people attending the event. As there wasn't that many people showing up in Warsaw we turned out to focus more on writing than teaching. In any case we had a good time and it was great meeting the volunteers from Wikimedia Polska and learn about their work. A list of lessons learned from the organization of the event has been compiled so that other Chapters in Eastern Europe more easily can organize Collection Days edit-a-thons themselves (the Collection Days are coming to the Baltic States next). We'll be happy to help you find the right people to connect to.
1864 edit-a-thon
Wikimedia Denmark organized their first edit-a-thon ever and WMSE decided to organize a small supportive edit-a-thon in parallel in Stockholm. We uploaded some images from Europeana that could be used by the participants as inspiration and also helped with some external communication about the event.
Parallel WWI edit-a-thons
On the 29th of June there were seven parallel WWI edit-a-thons organized in six European countries (in Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and also in Australia. The goals were to improve Wikipedia's coverage of WWI, to initiate new cooperations with GLAMs, get some positive media attention and to use new material uploaded from Europeana. To spur more interest the Europeana Challenge offered the most active volunteer a prize – a travel cheque worth 300 euros! A lot of people participated in the seven events and we feel inspired to organize similar activities again in the future!
Wiki Loves Public Art Winners
All of the participating countries decided on their winners during June and the ten best images uploaded as part of the Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest. These images are now being judged by the international jury, chaired by Swedish volunteer Arild Vågen. The jury's choice for Sweden can be seen here.
Open Database of Public Art in Sweden
The dataset of public works of art in Stockholm has been added to our database and we have registered the domain http://www.offentligkonst.se (incredibly enough the domain was not registered before!). On this first version of the website you can view the artworks that have coordinates on a map, complete with information about the artwork, links to the artist's article on Wikipedia and images uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. Read more in our blog post.
Wikipedian in Residence at the Swiss National Archives
Wikipedian in Residence at the Swiss National Archives from the 1st July 2013
The Swiss Federal Archives and Wikimedia CH are joining forces to review source materials from the Federal Archives and publish them online through a Wikipedian in Residence. The first joint project will provide access to a photographic collection on the First World War.
The Wikipedian in Residence at the Swiss Federal Archives started work at the beginning of July. Micha L. Rieser has been an active Wikipedian since 2005 (user page: de:Benutzer:Micha L. Rieser). He will assist the Federal Archives in publishing selected documents as part of Wikimedia projects and advise the Federal Archives staff on how to contribute to Wikipedia. Micha Rieser is also the contact for anyone in the Wikipedia community wishing to learn more about the tasks and fonds of the Federal Archives.
This project was initiated by Wikimedia CH’s volunteers, Rupert Thurner and Beat Estermann. Wikimedia CH’ volunteers and CAO had several meeting with the Federal Archives’ direction and an agreement was signed on April : a paid Wikipedian in Residence will be hired for a period of 4-6 months by the Swiss Archives. Wikimedia CH will share the salary costs with the Archives and advertise the position in the movement, as well as give advice on the applications.
June in the UK
Tyne and Wear Museums
The three month residency at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums came to an end, highlights included a dialogue with WikiProject ships on the English Wikipedia which led to the release of this image of a battleship launch on the Tyne - now included in two featured articles. For a write up of what the project achieved, you can have a look here.
Natural History Museum residency
The project, which started in March 2013, continues - in fact it has been extended to run till January 2014. For an update of all the exciting projects John Cummings, the Wikimedian, is involved in, you can have a look at his report section at the bottom of the page here.
Ballet at the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House hosted an editathon on 22 June focusing on the works of Sir Frederick Ashton, the founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet and one of the most prominent figures in 20th century ballet. The ROH provided material from their collections, including the archive of press clippings, and arranged a talk from representatives of the Ashton Foundation.
Around 20 people attended, producing new or heavily expanded articles on ten of Ashton's ballets as well as more general ballet topics. To learn more about the results, you can have a look at our documentation pages.
Europeana WWI project at the British Library
On 26 June, the British Library hosted a workshop to help publicise the upcoming Europeana 1914-1918 project. The program will involve the digitisation of several thousand books, newspapers, maps, photographs, and manuscripts, to be published online in early 2014. The workshop aimed to make some of the public-domain content available in advance, giving researchers and Wikipedians a first chance to work with the material.
Future events
People can now sign up for the following future events:
- Bloomsbury Group editathon 19 October, London.
Chemical Heritage Foundation Project
Chemical Heritage Foundation Wikipedian in Residence & Edit-a-thon, May-June 2013
Goals of the project included educating the CHF community about Wikipedia, conducting an initial assessment of resources at Chemical Heritage Foundation for potential usefulness on Wikipedia, and sharing resources on Wikimedia. Because of the short time period involved, activity focused around three events: an initial talk describing Wikipedia and its policies, a workshop on how to edit, and an edit-a-thon, open to Wikipedians and the CHF community.
The edit-a-thon was held on June 20, 2013. Visitors toured the museum, rare book room, and archive. The coaching of guest Wikipedians was greatly appreciated by the CHF staff and other visitors, who spent a very enjoyable afternoon creating and editing articles and linking images and videos to articles, many about women chemists. Remote participants were also active.
The two-month CHF Wikipedian in Residence project was received positively by CHF staff. They have a diverse collection of resources, and a strong interest in sharing them. Working with the Chemical Heritage Foundation was a pleasure.
WikiProject Open Access at Open Access conference; fifth Topic Page
WikiProject Open Access at the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication
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From June 19-21, the 8th CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI8) took place in Geneva, where librarians, researchers, research administrators, research funders and research publishers discussed how open access is changing the way academic research is being communicated. Amongst them were four members of WikiProject Open Access, who also organized a breakout session on actual and potential interactions between the open access and Wikimedia communities. One of the outcomes is a nascent collaboration with Open Book publishers, which resulted in a first book being uploaded to Wikisource.
PLOS Computational Topic Page on Cooperative binding
Cooperative binding is the fifth Topic Pages article that has been published in PLOS Computational Biology and posted on the English Wikipedia.
Open Access Media Importer
The following represents a selection of the 633 files files that have been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month, bringing the total well over 12,000. If you can think of wiki pages where these files could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.
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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June 30: A flower of the orchid Trichocentrum ascendens. -
June 29: 3D synchrotron tomography of the fossil skeletons of a cynodont and a temnospondyl found in the same Triassic burrow.
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June 28: The crab Bathynectes piperitus. -
June 27: the spider Copa flavoplumosa -
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June 24: A pair of Otus jolandae. -
June 23: cutaneous histological features of erythropoietic protoporphyria -
June 22: Microcaecilia dermatophaga. -
June 21: Leptidea morsei -
June 20: courtship rituals of male Maratus volans, a spider
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June 19: female cone of Ephedra strobilacea -
June 18: Skeletal reconstruction of a Troodon. -
June 17: the land snail Xerocrassa montserratensis -
June 16: gene regulatory network of Candida albicans -
June 15: muscle development of the horseshoe worm Phoronopsis harmeri
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June 14: butterfly species of the genus Maniola -
June 13: Skeletal reconstruction of Hatzegopteryx. -
June 12: Macaque monkey's premotor cortex -
June 11: the habitat of the green lacewing Semachrysa jade -
June 10: the sea snail Lobiger viridis -
June 9: A courtship song of a male Cotesia congregata.
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June 8: The snake Cerberus schneiderii. -
June 7: virtual dissection of the worm Lumbrineris latreilli
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June 6: The Mana River at Angoulême, French Guiana. -
June 5: group of tube worms Lamellibrachia luymesi living at a cold seep -
June 4: female Apocephalus borealis ovipositing into the abdomen of a worker honey bee -
June 3: The ginger Larsenianthus assamensis -
June 2: The snail Elimia clara. -
June 1: Ophthalmoscopic findings during vitrectomy
BaGLAMa and GLAMorous ported to Wikimedia Labs
Over recent months, many of the tools regularly used in GLAM-Wiki contexts have become increasingly inaccessible due to the Toolserver being overloaded (symptom, background). The recommended solution for maintainers of such tools is to port their code to a new environment on dedicated servers, Wikimedia Labs (details).
There is no comprehensive listing of the tools to be ported and the progress of the porting, but Magnus Manske has such an overview for his tools, and he invites feedback from users on what to port and how to prioritize. Following popular demand, he has already ported some of the most widely used applications. As a frequent user of several of his tools, I am following the process and will attempt to share my observations on the matter in this and upcoming issues of the Tool testing reports, starting with Quick Intersection, BaGLAMa and GLAMorous.
Quick Intersection
Category intersections provide a listing of wiki pages that are in two specific categories. Magnus' Quick Intersection is one of several tools available for that, and one of the first to be ported. I like it because it is simple and quick. For instance, it allows to find all files uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer that are missing categories or lacking descriptions, so that these gaps can then be filled systematically.
BaGLAMa and GLAMorous
These two provide an overview on how files from a given category on Wikimedia Commons are being used across Wikimedia projects, along with aggregated pageview stats (cf. Tool testing reports for January and February 2012). Both use the Wikipedia pageview stats tool to gather pageview data, which sits on yet another server and has been only intermittently accessible in recent days. Having its database exposed via Wikimedia Labs would help the GLAM tools run more smoothly (details). Hourly view stats are available here and have been used to generate weekly stats from 2008 onwards (example).
Applying BaGLAMa and GLAMorous to the Commons category Open access (publishing) yields the following: BaGLAMa for May 2013 (WebCite copy) indicates 39 million visits across 207 Wikimedia projects to a total of 45k article pages that use images or media from this category, whereas GLAMorous in early July (WebCite copy) indicates a total of 19218 files in that category, 5111 of which have been used a total of 93839 times across 297 Wikimedia projects.
In theory, both tools should yield the same number of Wikimedia projects (perhaps give or take a few to account for the different times of scanning), but in practice, BaGLAMa scans fewer Wikimedia projects (for example, Wikivoyage is not yet included). I am also not entirely sure about what those 94k image usages from GLAMorous mean in the context of BaGLAMa's 45k article pages, since a mean of two images from that category per page that has any image from that category seems rather high for wikis other than outreach.
Finally, it seems that some datasets have gone missing in BaGLAMa. For instance, the stats for December 2011 till June 2012 are much lower (currently) than they were reported in February 2013.
In brief
- Europeana GLAMTools publishes Wikimedia Recommendations
- A proposal has been made for refining the gallery environment. Unfortunately, it does nothing to address the problem that multimedia files of certain sizes do not provide a link through to the respective file page on Commons (examples), just as is currently the case with the multimedia gallery in the Open Access report.
- Wikipedia pageview stats are covered in the German newspaper SPIEGEL Online
July's GLAM events
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