GLAM/Newsletter/June 2021/Single
African Librarians Week 2021
#1Lib1Ref
Organised in both English and French, the week-long virtual campaign engaged the African library community to help fill key gaps in African content on Wikipedia by adding missing references to articles about Africa on the online encyclopedia. This year, we focused on the theme; “Learning in Africa“ - as Africans we recognize that learning takes place within classroom walls and within community created systems and networks that pass on information from one generation to another.
The contest itself ended on 5th June with volunteers making Wikipedia more reliable at least 4,200 times over and contributing at least 712 images. You can check out the statistics here
CEE Spring Campaign in Albania and Kosovo
CEE Spring Campaign in Albania and Kosovo
For two months in a row, March 21-May 31, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group participated in the Central and Eastern European Campaign. This collaboration brought up 10 categories regarding information about culture, traditions, history, society, geography and people from Albania and Kosovo. At the very beginning, we announced the launch of this campaign on our social media to let people know about the topics, countries, timeline and participation in the Central and Eastern European contest. In order to keep people updated and informed, we kept posting on social media every week about the weekly topic and countries. Also, we posted some of the articles that our Wikimedians had translated to support our audience's understanding in the meantime.
Therefore, Albanian Wikimedians created 105 articles and edited 139 articles.
You can check out the detailed information on here.
Social Media channels: wikimediashqip.org, @sqwikimediansug, FB/sqwikimediansUG, ig/sqwikimedians_ug
A course on opening cultural collections
Cultura para Abrir: A course on opening cultural collections
On 7th June we launched our first virtual course on policies of open access, intellectual property and the potencial of working with Wikimedia projects with heritage, aimed at workers from cultural institutions. More than 600 professionals from Argentina and other latinamerican countries have signed on, involving diverse institutions such as libraries, museums, cultural centers, reserach institutions, historical places and archives.
This course's programme is divided in four thematic units that include a review of concepts such as open access and free licences, open glam iniciatives involving wikimedia projects, intelectual property limitations and opportunities, resources on digitization, preservation and metadata production. At the end of the course, participants are encouraged to write a short project adopting some open access practices around collections preserved by the cultural institution where they work, do reserach or study.
We are very enthusiastic about the results of this first cultural course organized by Wikimedia Argentina and we hope to share them with you very soon.
Edit-a-thons with Wiki Women Design
Sessions of Wiki Women Design
Wiki Women Design is a year-long project of the Vlaams Architectuurinstituut, Wikimedia Belgium, and many other partners in GLAM. The goal is writing about (often less known) women who have left their mark on Belgium's design heritage: (interior) architects, designers, artists, policy makers, researchers, editors, etc. For this project, our partner institutions have each organized writing sessions focused on the women in their own fields of research, regions, and collections.
- On 15 May 2021 we were hosted by the Museum voor Kunst en Geschiedenis Brussel. This session was focused on women designers reperesented by the museum in its collection or through research, as well as on historic and contemporary lace designers.
- On 20 May 2021 we were hosted by the Vlaams Architectuurinstituut, for a session focusing on women in Belgian architecture landscape.
- On 21 May 2021 we were hosted by the University of Hasselt (via video conferencing). The focus on this session lay on designers from the Limburg region.
- On 16 June 2021 we were hosted by the Design Museum Gent, where participants edited articles on contemporary Belgian designers.
- On 21 June 2021 we were hosted by the AR-TUR, Centrum voor architectuur, stedelijkheid en landschap in de Kempen. This session's subjects were designers from the Kempen region.
- On 28 June 2021 we were hosted by the Fashion Museum Hasselt to write Belgian women in the fashion, textile and shoe industry onto Wikipedia.
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Art & History Museum Brussels
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Flanders Architecture Institute
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Individual coaching in Gent
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Session overview in Turnhout
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Special guest Yvette Lauwaert (in the middle)
A metadata roundtripping model for museums
Wiki Movimento Brasil members have worked on a technical guide for metadata roundtripping, establishing a semi-automated circuit for bringing content from databases of cultural institutions to Wikimedia projects and also from Wikimedia projects to local databases.
The WMB roundtripping proposal is a byproduct of the Paulista Museum's digital dissemination initiative within Wikimedia environments, launched in 2017. The enrichment of Wikimedia projects with the use of images of objects and works from the collection in Wikipedia entries in several languages is a direct result of the activities of this partnership. The gearing question of this development is how to bring back to the museum metadata added and collaboratively worked within Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons and better the feeding of Wikimedia projects with relevant content coming from this museum. The workflow of this GLAM-Wiki partnership in 2019 was documented in a recent research paper.
A first version of the technical guide for roundtripping, detailing development to be done, was submitted to the Museu Paulista director. This document will orient a technical team within the museum to develop their local databases, based on a technology called Tainacan, and support a research team that is assessing the vision of metadata roundtripping. This work was financed by the University of São Paulo Foundation and the Bank of Brazil Foundation.
In the past months, WMB has held two Wikidata Labs on roundtripping:
- Wikidata Lab XXIX, in May, presented metadata roundtripping circuits already developed in the Wikimedia community;
- Wikidata Lab XXX, in June, was a discussion of metadata roundtripping from the main developer of museum databases in Brazil, with a technology called Tainacan.
Preliminary investigations indicate that almost all items coming from the Museu Paulista collection (~35K) have been contributed to in Wikimedia projects. Around 17% of these contributions were metadata correction.
European Archaeology Days; Edit-a-thon in Romanity Museum
European Archaeology Days at the Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse
On this Saturday 19th June, we celebrated not only the European Archaeology Days at the Musée Saint-Raymond but also the return to presential editathon and that was a big relief for all of us! The pleasure of meeting again since the last event in March 2020 that we had to organize online because of the containment, was great. We were 10 contributors gathered in the mediation room of the museum : members of the Wikimedia local group, new contributors, members of he museum staff and our colleague Justine Vincent from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) that was coorganizing the event.
In order to invite people who were far away, ArkéoTopia suggested to conduct a simultaneous workshop online on Discord which brought together five additional persons.
The purpose was to enrich data and resources about archaeological sites on Wikimedia platforms (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wiktionnary) from bibliographical and online resources that had been prepared in advance. The contributions were rich and varied as shown by the dashboard.
The results are very positive. The day was rich in sharing knowledge, experiences, advices and friendliness, values that are dear to us, especially in these troubled times.
The appointment is already made for 2022, for a workshop during the next exhibition of the Musée Saint-Raymond, on the topic of Mithra’s cult.
More on the Wikiproject page
Edit-a-thon in Romanity Museum, Nîmes
Since 2016, Mise à jour has been organizing in the Rhone Delta and its surroundings edit-a-thons related to cultural and environmental heritage. The edit-a-thon took place on Thursday 10 and Friday 11 June 2021.
The purpose was to enrich data and resources about Roman heritage on Wikimedia platforms (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wiktionnary) from bibliographical and online resources that had been prepared in advance. The contributions were rich and varied as shown by the dashboard.
More on the Wikiproject page
GLAM with Harmattan Guinée 15 June 2021 in Conakry
Context
In order to involve editors and writers in the improvement of wiki and especially the biographies of Guinean writers, the User Group Wikimedia Guinea in collaboration with the publishing house Harmattan Guinea did four hours of training on the discovery of Wikipedia.
Participants in the activity
The training brought together 9 participants:
- 7 new contributors
- Ayssatou (talk · contribs)
- mamadygarry (talk · contribs)
- Mohamed Lamine Gazza (talk · contribs)
- 2 existing contributors
For this first workshop, we discovered and created a Wikipedia account for the participants as a prelude to the next session.
Results
The majority have made a first modification and are preparing for the next session.
Festival and edit-a-thon dedicated to the world of archives
Archivissima, the new routes of archives
Archivissima is the most important festival dedicated to the world of archives in Italy. This Year Wikimedia Italia was present in various containers, including the final conference organized by the Polo Dell'900, the biggest italian cultural center dedicated to the '900, in collaboration with Archivissima and the Italian National Archival Association (ANAI). This is the only festival in Italy dedicated to the promotion and enhancement of archival heritage and this year was held from 4th to 9th June, the International Day of Archives. "Generation" was the theme of the 2021 edition, and was explored through different media, involving experts in archival sciences, writers, actors and journalists.
The event was an opportunity to host experiences that at national and international level have developed projects of proactive use of wiki ecosystems to facilitate processes of access to and participation in data and information. Starting from concrete experiences, the conference aimed indeed to propose a comparison on the advantages and opportunities of the entry of archives into the world of free and open data and on the development of the Wikimedia ecosystem as a challenge to enter as contributors of quality content in the world of free knowledge.
On 9th June, during the final event “Nuove rotte. Gli archivi alla prova della conoscenza libera”, the president of Wikimedia Italia, Iolanda Pensa, presented also the results of some projects such as Wikidata and Wiki Loves Monuments, continuously active to collect and aggregate data open to all, freely accessible, usable and shareable.
Do all-nighter at the Archivio Ricordi
On 4th June 2021, Wikimedia Italia and Archivio Storico Ricordi participate at the Night of the Archives, organized throughout Italy on the occasion of the festival Archivissima, with an edit-a-thon on music magazines. All the volunteers already active on Wikimedia platforms, but also those who want to start contributing on Wikisource and Wikidata, were invited to do all-nighter at the Archivio Ricordi, to help make the magazines of the archive available online. The edit-a-thon was held entirely online, starting at 7:00 pm and ending at 10:00 pm. The event was also live on the Youtube channel of Wikimedia Italia.
In 2020, thanks to the help of a Wikimedian in residence at the Archivio Storico Ricordi, it was possible to make available on Wikisource the numbers of the Gazzetta Musicale in Milan ranging from 1842 to 1902, together with several issues of Rivista Minima, Musica e Musicisti, Ars et Labor and other magazines published by the publishing house Ricordi. Now that the scans of these historical documents are on the Wikisource platform, there was the need of the patient help of many volunteers to make them truly usable by everyone. To do this, we need to check automatic transcripts, correct errors, and then ensure that the digital text is identical to the original. A very accurate work, which will make it possible to consult decades of documents from all over the world.
The will of the event was to make this materials available, accessible and editable on Wikimedia platforms. This is an effective example of collaboration for knowledge sharing and free access to knowledge, that will benefit not only Italian scholars, but the entire global community.
Training at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam; training for Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean has concluded
Introductory Training Sessions at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam
In 2019, the six-year programme Disclosing Architecture began improving the visibility and accessibility of the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, funded by a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Under the umbrella of Disclosing Architecture, projects involving linked open data (LOD) and Wikimedia are in development. In these, a major goal is to create durable connections between the collection, linked open data and the end user. The implementation of DERA, which enables the enrichment of the collection by third parties, is an important pillar in this.
Wikimedia and the Wikimedia Community are logical partners in this process. To prepare our colleagues, a series of introductory training sessions on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikipedia was held in June at Het Nieuwe Instituut in collaboration with WMNL and two Wikimedia volunteers. Attendees were shown how Wikimedia projects work and were given examples of how to integrate Wikimedia into their own workflow.
Next, we will host more focused training sessions on editing and Wikitools such as ISA so that Het Nieuwe Instituut staff members can become more competent and confident in editing Wikimedia and assisting in content donations.
Het Nieuwe Instituut’s project page was also launched in June. Here we will post regular updates on Wikimedia projects and wish lists. For more information, you can email wikimediahetnieuweinstituut.nl or contact Het Nieuwe Instituut. Content donations will be the next step. We are currently preparing several sets on the work of Theo van Doesburg and also Women in Design.
Wikimedia training for Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean has concluded
On June 26, the last session of Wikimedia Nederland's Wikimedia training for Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean has taken place. With this final practical session, the three-month masterclass series has concluded.
Nearly 40 participants from Suriname, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and the Netherlands followed this training. Some attendees are staff of smaller or larger GLAM institutions; quite a few of the participants are also researchers, writers or teachers. A diverse group of trainers and guest speakers introduced the course participants to various Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource) and showed them practical applications of the potential of these projects.
In the next months, Wikimedia Nederland will check in with several course participants to talk about follow-up projects, building upon various interesting ideas and topics that have emerged during this course.
The course's project page provides an overview of the program and contains recordings of presentations. In the Commons category, you can also find recordings and additional supporting materials.
Making artists visible
Christchurch Art Gallery edit-a-thon
On Saturday 19 June the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū hosted an Art+Feminism edit-a-thon in its library/archives. Tim Jones the Gallery's librarian has been a keen supporter of Wikimedia projects in the past, and helped create a Mix'n'Match catalog for the Wikidata property Find NZ Artists ID. This edit-a-thon was instigated by art historian Harriet Maher, who attended as a newbie editor and created articles for Rose Zeller and Merris Hillard. Ratso56 used OpenRefine to create a Wikipedia table of all New Zealand artists in the Gallery's collection, a great spur for future editing events.
There were five in-person editors and five helping remotely; being able to check in on the remote editors using Zoom was a real help, and we were able to send photos of sources from the artist files on request. Over the course of the afternoon the group created ten new articles and improved eight more, and located photos of several local female artists to add to infoboxes. The edit-a-thon tied in with the West Coast Task Force's artist project: Giantflightlessbirds had come over from the West Coast to look for reliable sources in the Gallery's newspaper clippings and exhibition catalogues.
Wikidata development and culture of Rudnik and Takovo region
Cultural heritage on Wikidata
From June 15 to 30, the thematic activity Cultural Heritage on Wikidata lasted, during which Training course on editing Wikidata was held. This activity was attended by 9 editors who made 986 changes to 267 items, while 9 items were made. As far as 203 references have been added to Wikidata. The results can be seen on а Dashboard.
Wikipedian in residence at Museum of Rudnik and Takovo region
The two-month long Wikipedian in residence project started on 1st of June at the Museum of the Rudnik and Takovo Region. During the first month of the project, 30 new articles were written, while 45 were supplemented and as many as 87 were illustrated. As many as 236 files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
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Božidar Prodanović, Self-portrait, oil on canvas
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Log cabin church in Pranjani near Gornji Milanovac
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Part of the permanent exhibition „Second Serbian Uprising and serbian revolution 1804-1839”
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Dr Milomir Glišić, Dušan D. Ilić, Aleksandar Lazarević, Radmilo Lale Mandić, Miroslav Laf Marković, Miodrag Ristić - Stari Milanovac, 2003.
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A long robe - Kaftan
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Isidor Đuković - People of Rudnik and Takovo in the liberation wars of Serbia 1912-1918 2005.
Museums writing challenge and Viquimarató Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas
Museums writing challenge
For the second consecutive year, during June Wikimedia España organised a writing challenge to edit articles about museums with the aim of increasing the existing content on Wikipedia about these institutions that work for the conservation and dissemination of heritage. We accepted articles on museums from any part of the world and in any language, and for those who had problems choosing what to edit, we offered suggestions of existing articles in other wikipedias, such as English, French, Italian, Catalan and Galician. Also, in order to be considered valid, they had to meet a series of requirements, such as a minimum size, a minimum number of words or not being mere lists. A total of 21 people participated and 267 articles were edited, of which 258 were in Spanish, 3 in English, 5 in Catalan and 1 in German.
Viquimarató Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas
On 5 June, an editathon on the figure of Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas took place at the Benicalap library (Valencia), as part of the commemoration of the appointment of the writer as Writer of the Year by the Valencian Academy of Language. The event was organised by Amical Wikimedia, the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, the Col·legi Oficial de Bibliotecaris i Documentalistes de la Comunitat Valenciana and Wikimedia España, and 12 people took part in it. During the event, 11 articles were published (8 of them new) about the writer and her work, including 4 in Catalan, 2 in Spanish, 1 in Ukrainian, 1 in French, 1 in Chinese, 1 in Portuguese, and 1 in English.
Free music; Kulturarv som gymnasiearbete; Statistics Sweden – now as open data; KTH library training
Free music
To summarize and document the learnings and outcome of our free music project a report (in Swedish) has been published. As reported here earlier some 5000 files have been uploaded to Commons (both images, audio files and sheet music), connected to Wikidata items and improved with SDC, we have worked close with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency and the volunteer community to create articles about local folk music and to add music recordings to the articles. For out future projects in the area of free music we want to work more with creating new recordings, and are happy to hear from the rest of the GLAM community about your experience in this field.
Kulturarv som gymnasiearbete
Within the project of students writing Wikipedia articles on different topics connected to cultural history, our last round has gotten some external attention. One of the students, M lofbom, was given a cultural scholarship from Forskarrum Nordanå, a meeting place for local history research and story telling in Skellefteå, for the article she wrote about the history of IOGT in her home town.
For the next round of the project, we have expanded the collaboration to include the Swedish Centre for Business History. This is an NGO managing archives for major Swedish companies, making it available to the general public. This will improve the possibilities for the project even further.
Statistics Sweden – now as open data
As of July 1st, Statistics Sweden changes the license of the data they publish to CC0. The data includes information about many aspects of Swedish society, such as schools, geodata, the labor market and other areas. It is now easier to re-use, including on Wikidata! Wikimedia Sverige has been working for a long time to spread awareness of open licenses and encourage public agencies and other actors to share their resources, and we have met with Statistics Sweden to introduce Wikidata to them.
KTH library training
The library at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Sweden has an ambition to help the researchers and PhD students to spread their knowledge and research on Wikipedia. Therefore, the librarians asked for Wikimedia Sverige to educate them in what they might need to support the researchers. We addressed both the ideological foundations of Wikipedia as well as the practical skills and common problems. A major focus was on how to use Wikipedia to spread knowledge without entering a conflict of interest and sustain a neutral point of view. We look forward to seeing more research from sources connected to KTH being shared on Wikipedia in the future!
Diversity in GLAM Program
GLAM-on-Tour at Enter Museum
Discovering the history of Radio, Computer and Consumer Electronics, the ENTER Museum located in the German-speaking canton of Solothurn, displays a unique collection in Switzerland reaching from the first radio station to the computers of the present day. After more than one and a half year, it was possible to organize a GLAM-on-Tour event from July 1 to 4, 2021, onsite and in-person. The Enter Museum together with Wikimedia CH and the help of sternenjaeger welcomed up to 20 participants offering a diverse program such as a speech and presentation of the collection from the Museums Director, a museums tour and the visit of the external archival warehouse. During the four days and the edit-a-thon sessions, valuable content about the Enter Museum, its history and its treasures was added in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. For further information about the GLAM-on-Tour event as well as the program and the results please visit the project page. The uploaded media files can be found in the following Wikimedia Commons category and a little self-made video under this link.
OpenGLAM Symposium with Memoriav
Wikimedia CH announces a new partnership with Memoriav, Switzerland's national network for the preservation of the country's audiovisual cultural heritage. The association was founded in 1995 by the following institutions:
- Swiss National Library, Bern
- Swiss Federal Archives, Bern
- Swiss Film Archive, Lausanne
- Swiss National Sound Archives, Lugano
- SRG SSR idée suisse, Bern
- Federal Office for Communication, Biel
On June 24, 2021 and under the lead of Memoriav we jointly organized an online symposium focussing on the potential and limits of Open GLAM for Swiss memory institutions with audiovisual holdings and collections with a dedicated theme 'The audiovisual heritage and open GLAM? Networking and sharing image and sound documents in the digital space', offering simoultanious translations in French and German for the lectures and workshops. With up to 115 participants, the symposium generated a lot of interest. The day was structured in interventions with different speakers around the main topics 'Open Rights, Open Policies, Open Infrastructures and Open Tools'. For additional information about the symposium please consult the Memoriav online program on their website.
Coordination Meeting with Swiss GLAM Partners
In Switzerland we implemented quarterly coordination meetings with our Swiss GLAM partners with the aim of fostering the networking factor between Swiss memory institutions and share experiences and knowledge regarding the Wikimedia projects and ongoing activities of Wikimedia CH and the Wikimedia Movement in general. This year's second meeting took place on June 23, 2021 with the highlights of a new member, the 'Centre d'iconographie de la Bibliothèque de Genève' as well as the presentation of two master thesis form two students of the University of Applied Sciences in Chur, one with the focus on Wikidata and the other on Wikimedia Commons for GLAM institutions. Sandra Rumiz presented her master thesis about Company Archives in Wikimedia projects herself generating interest, positive feedback and new project ideas leading to an inspiring discussion between our Swiss GLAM Partner Network. The next meeting will take place in September 2021.
Awareness Campaign for International Archives Week 2021
Once more Wikimedia CH launched together with Wikimedia Austria, Germany and the Swiss Association of Archivists, the awareness campaign to support the International Archives Week 2021. This year's International Archives Week took place from June 7 to June 11, 2021 and focused on the topic "Empowering Archives". With this cross-border joint activity we aim to motivate GLAM professionals and our volunteers to support us in improving and completing the presence of Archives on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Interested in more information? Visit our project page.
Wikipedia for Museums in Uganda
Hosted by the Uganda Society Library, Friday 21 - Saturday 22 were 2 days of learning from museum curators and archaeologists as they honoured an invitation from the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda to jointly celebrate International Museum Day 2021.
Under the theme “The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine” a discussion revealed alot of truths and gaps in practice in relation to how museums and archives in Uganda were responding to the situation presented by COVID-19 and relating to the Open Knowledge Movement. Curators revealed that most museums and archives were not making use of images themselves and neither was the public accessing them. Of interest to note that Uganda has only 4 regional museums supported by the government while the rest are private which explains their relation to the Open Knowledge Movement.
With at least 11 editors,activities included editing on Wikipedia for new and existing editors in addition to dealing with images on Wikimedia and the Creative Commons Licences. The use of QRPedia to enhance the visibility of their respective collections was also dealt with. With contributions to Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, we were able to get 20 articles and 18 uploads respectively.
Below are some images generously contributed by participants :
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Church of Uganda Archives, Uganda
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The Karamoja Regional Museum, Moroto, Uganda
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Kabale Regional Museum, Kabale, Uganda
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A bust of Hamu Mukasa displayed at the Uganda Museum
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A traditional Kikiga stool, Kabale Regional Museum
British Library and Khalili Collections
British Library
June was the fourth month of my residency. A lot of action took place internally at the Library, with staff talks and meetings, while we began to draw together the threads of some of our initial projects and work with Dominic Kane on supporting his placement.
Placements
- Dominic’s placement working on the India Office Records has progressed very well. By the end of June, we hope to have uploaded three sets of IOR lists: the Project Page contains more details.
- Dominic blogged about the practical application of Wikidata skills on the Digital Scholarship blog.
- We were very grateful to Jason Evans for his help and support in getting these resources up online. Diolch yn fawr iawn!
- A four-session season of Library internal presentation Wikimedia Wednesdays culminated on Wednesday 30th June with speakers from the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship project in Canada. Prior to this, talks on Indigenizing Wikipedia and the Bengali Books project were well received and attended.
Projects
- Work on the IFLA Wikidata Group continues to move towards the group becoming a Special Interest Group: the group presented our case and listened to presentations from other parts of IFLA at a large meeting on the 22nd of June, after a planning meeting on the 8th.
Khalili Collections
The bulk upload of images related to Islamic Art and the Hajj - totalling more than a thousand new images - is still in process. I have removed duplicate images and done most of the conversion of the data set into Quickstatements format, which will allow me to create the Wikidata representation of the collections, then do the Commons upload. Some higher-resolution versions of previously-uploaded images were uploaded this month, by both the MartinPoulter and MartinPoulter_(KC_WIR) accounts, as well as fifteen new images.
- Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World was promoted to Good Article: the third Good Article to come from this project.
- Anis Al-Hujjaj is a new article about a 17th century Persian work of literature which describes a Hajj pilgrimage from India to Arabia. There were Did You Know hooks for this article and for Khalili Collection of Islamic Art on the front page of English Wikipedia, bringing the total number of DYKs from this project to 18.
- A volunteer translated most of the Anis Al-Hujjaj article into Persian: the 28th new article to come from this project.
University of Edinburgh Library
Our Wikimedia intern Josh spent much of June learning more about the Wikimedia projects and exploring how other organisations have engaged with them. We created a survey for people working with Wikimedia at GLAMS (https://forms.office.com/r/N4fWuZQM0E) which to date has had 17 responses. Josh will be in touch with respondents throughout July to set up interviews to further discuss how cultural heritage organisations can engage with Wikimedia.
We also ran our second Wikimedia Community of Interest meeting, this time focussing on Wikipedia and the 1Lib1Ref campaign. The meeting was attended by 12 people, all of whom added at least one citation to Wikipedia! The next WCOI meeting is in early July and will focus on Wikisource.
#1Lib1Ref in Ukrainian Wikipedia
#1Lib1Ref 2021
From 15 May to 5 June for the first time Wikimedia Ukraine organized a separate challenge within the worldwide initiative #1Lib1Ref. We invited Ukrainian librarians and wiki community to join librarians across the world and add missing references to articles, helping make the encyclopedia more reliable and useful.
To guide participants through the rules of both the initiative and Wikipedia, we:
- held two webinars,
- shared two presentations with instructions,
- checked edits made by the participants and provided feedback,
- were ready to answer questions online.
The organizing team included five volunteers and two Wikimedia Ukraine's managers.
Librarians in Ukraine have access to a lot of rare handbooks and catalogues, which combined with Wikipedia’s tools and #1Lib1Ref’s mission can make Wikipedia stronger than ever! Librarians are one of the biggest target audiences of Ukrainian GLAM, so we are glad we used the opportunity to attract new users and help them to gain experience with our help.
As a result, some of the achievements of 1Lib1Ref 2021 in Ukraine include:
- 90 librarians participated in the webinars live, and webinars received over 250 views on YouTube later,
- 40 participants joined the initiative on Ukrainian Wikipedia; 34 of them made over 5 edits,
- 690 articles are improved as a result.
Sincerely – Wikimedia Ukraine
Meetup/CCCCWI; Vaccine Safety Wikipedia Edit-a-thon; WikiWednesday Salon; San Diego Wiknic; Black Lunch Table / Black visual artists
Meetup/CCCCWI
The CCCC Wikipedia Initiative (CCCCWI) held some workshops in June, Meetup/CCCCWI
Vaccine Safety Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
KNoW Science, Wikimedia DC, and Wikimedia Mexico held a workshop, Vaccine Safety Wikipedia Edit-a-thon June 12, 2021
WikiWednesday Salon
Wikimedia New York City held a salon, NYC/June 2021
San Diego Wiknic
San Diego Wikimedians User Group held a Wiknic on Vacation Isle, San Diego, San Diego/June 2021 Wiknic
Black Lunch Table / Black visual artists
Black Lunch Table held an online workshop, Black Lunch Table/online June2021
Play, experiment and cross borders at Hack4OpenGLAM
Hack4OpenGLAM co-creation event is arranged for the second time during the Creative Commons Global Summit 20–24 September. We are inviting Wikimedians and open knowledge advocates, GLAM professionals and community archivists, digital creators and scholars, as well as platform and tool creators to learn and work together for the benefit of Open Access to cultural heritage.
Knowledge equity
This year we focus on knowledge equity – Highlighting knowledge of individuals, communities, and cultures who have been left out of the spotlight of history, decolonizing cultural historical collections, and acknowledging responsible ways of sharing information online openly.
Register
You can register to Hack4OpenGLAM with your project, collection, tool, platform, idea, challenge or just yourself. Register now!
You can participate in many ways
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Arrange a workshop The hackathon is for doing and learning together. The event kicks off with a day of workshops, discussions, and project pitches. If you wish to run a workshop, register your idea and start discussing it on the community platform. This way, the workshop program can be collaboratively prepared.
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Start a project A project can be as sketchy as an idea or a topic, or as detailed as an already existing project. It can be a call-to-action around a task or a challenge to solve a problem. The projects are not expected to be technical, but they can be. Newcomers and experts are equally welcome. We encourage all participants to engage in the discussions around the projects as early as possible.
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Join with your GLAM and your collections Showcase your open collections for the participants and the world. But most importantly, join the activities yourself to learn and co-create with open cultural heritage.
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Present tools, technologies and platforms Bring the tool or service you have developed, promote the use of your open platform or volunteer to offer your skills to help collaborative work. You can prepare small how-to-workshops, for example.
The work starts already
Community platform Collaboration has already started on the community platform and it continues throughout the hackathon in September. Participating projects get dedicated channels where they can start working together and growing communities around their projects! | |
Weekly meetups Starting 8 July we will chat about Hack4OpenGLAM every Thursday. Join us on the call on Thursdays at 1 pm UTC. | |
Dashboard Hack4OpenGLAM Dashboard introduces the people and the projects at the event. It is a matchmaking place for the participants and a showcase of open content and projects. The dashboard shows the progression of the projects in real-time and preserves the results after the event. | |
The hackathon starts and ends with a live event The first day of the hackathon (20 September) is dedicated to workshops, discussions, and project pitches that take place on the conference platform. After three days of independent hacking on the community platform, the crowd will again convene for the live Final Gala (24 September). |
Opportunities
We are looking for two energetic facilitators and regional ambassadors from around the world to the organizing team.
The facilitators participate in facilitating the collaborative work and meetings on the community platform in August and September before the hackathon. During the hackathon they participate in hosting the live program and facilitating idea generation and matchmaking with the participants on the community platform. They can additionally guide volunteers to their support roles.
The regional ambassadors engage GLAMs and participants in their area to join Hack4OpenGLAM, and help to communicate about the event in different areas and languages. It is also possible to be an ambassador within a specific thematic area globally.
Read more on the Hack4OpenGLAM website.
Contact
Hack4OpenGLAM is produced by AvoinGLAM / Creative Commons Finland in collaboration with the OpenGLAM Platform at Creative Commons, and supported by a Conference Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.
OpenRefine starts Structured Data on Commons development and is searching for two developers
OpenRefine is a power tool to clean messy data, popular in a diverse range of communities. It has been serving the needs of journalists, librarians, Wikimedians and scientists for more than 10 years, and is taught in many curricula and workshops around the world.
OpenRefine is quite actively used on Wikidata. In addition, thanks to a Project Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, OpenRefine will, between September 2021 and August 2022, be extended with structured data functionalities for Wikimedia Commons. This code extension will make it possible to batch edit structured data of existing files on Wikimedia Commons, and to batch upload new Wikimedia Commons files with structured data from the start.
In order to develop the abovementioned features, OpenRefine has two Junior Developer job openings (paid contractor positions; part-time, fully remote). Obviously, Wikimedia and/or GLAM developers are strongly encouraged to apply:
- Junior Developer - Wikimedia Development (6 months, from September 2021 till February 2022)
- Junior Developer - OpenRefine Development (8 months, from November 2021 till June 2022)
Conferences and Structured data modeling
Conferences and presentations
Wikimania 2021
June usually is a very active month for conferences, especially in the open knowledge movement. Around the Wikimedia community is not different, even in a completely online environment.
In 2021, Wikimania is happening remotely from August 13 to 17. Interested participants submitted their session proposals from May 27 until June 20.
As the last few years, one of the tracks from this year's program is Education & GLAM: "Initiatives and projects of the last 20 years focused on the use and access of Wikimedia projects in educational spaces at all levels and working with GLAM institutions."
Some users shared some ideas about how they thought the GLAM track should be made, with topics such as State of GLAM-Wiki in 2021, Structured Data on Commons, Tools and tech development for GLAM, Underrepresented knowledge, and Suggesting that the Wikimedia culture can enhance the prospects for world peace by encouraging advocacy and research organizations.
The GLAM & Culture team at the Foundation is very excited about the final list of GLAM-related submissions and has also applied for participation in three sessions:
- State of GLAM-Wiki in 2021
- Structured Data on Commons
- Alternative text to images
The announcement with the sessions chosen to form the program will be published between July 5 and 9. Check out some sessions marked as public through this link.
Creative Commons Global Summit 2021
In 2021, Creative Commons is also representing the open movement with an online version of its Creative Commons Global Summit.
One of the conference’s topics is around GLAMs, as CC has just launched its new Open GLAM Program. During the summit, the GLAM track sessions should address: "Improving and expanding open access to cultural heritage."
The deadline for proposals was extended to July 6. The GLAM & Culture team at the Foundation has proposed two sessions (one about Wikisource and another about GLAMs and Wikimedia). The team has also been invited to the session about the new CC Open GLAM program and for the Hack4OpenGLAM opening, on June 29, with a presentation about Knowledge Equity.
The Hack4OpenGLAM is being organized by AvoinGLAM and Creative Commons Finland, in collaboration with CC's OpenGLAM Platform, and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
During the opening, there were also presentations about other GLAM hackathons, a look back at Hack4OpenGLAM 2020, and an explanation about what’s in it for GLAMs in this hackathon. For more information about the Hack4OpenGLAM, check last year’s project dashboard.
Arctic Knot Conference 2021
In June, the Arctic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2021 took place online on June 24 and 25. The objective of the event was to discuss the "future of indigenous and underrepresented languages and their presence and use on the Wikimedia projects".
There were presentations about many different topics during the conference and, on Friday, a special session only about Wikisource, with three tracks: Wikisource presentation, Digitizing rare texts with Wikisource, and Wikisource workshop. The video with all three is available on the Wikimedia Norge YouTube channel here.
Satdeep Gill, from the GLAM & Culture team, hosted the "Digitizing rare texts with Wikisource" panel, in which there was conversation about experiences of a few different Wikimedia communities in digitizing rare texts on Wikisource: the Balinese community digitizing manuscripts from people's houses, and the Bengali Wikisource community collaborating with the British Library to organize a proofread-a-thon to transcribe 19th century and early 20th century texts from the library's collection.
2021 LD4 Conference on Linked Data
With the theme "Building Connections Together", the 2021 LD4 Conference on Linked Data is set to happen online from July 19 to 23.
This is the second edition of the conference and it aims to: "Focus on concrete ways that linked data impacts GLAM institutions and will share pathways that allow others to participate in linked data. By bringing together a broad range of perspectives, the conference seeks to create a community of practice for linked data in cultural heritage institutions."
The WMF GLAM & Culture team will also be presented at this conference. Giovanna Fontenelle is presenting a tutorial about Structured Data on Commons for GLAM institutions. The session will happen on July 19.
You can see the full program here or register for free on this page.
DPLA's structured data modeling
The GLAM & Culture team would also like to highlight the Structured data on Commons modeling proposed by Dominic Byrd-McDevitt, for the Digital Public Library of America. On June 1st, DPLA had its grant approved and it’s ready to apply structured data to its collections available on Commons.
For that, the institution shared some ideas it had concerning data modeling for its files, in fields such as described at URL (P973), title (P1476), copyright status (P6216), collection (P195), and a few other. DPLA also raised some questions and concerns on the page. As part of the team and advisor for the project, GFontenelle (WMF) suggested some answers on the talk page. If you would like to read or share your ideas about the topic, see Commons talk:Digital Public Library of America/Modeling.
July's GLAM events
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1 Orientation session for English-speaking participants in the Wikipedia in African Libraries Course
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3 Orientation session for French-speaking participants in the Wikipedia in African Libraries Course
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8 WikiJournal Open Meeting (2:00 PM UTC)
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10 Deuxième atelier de contribution sur les articles qui retracent l'histoire des 130 ans de la Côte d'Ivoire dans la région du sud-comoé Organisé par Glam-wiki et son partenaire le Musée contemporain Adama Toungara d'Abobo
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