GLAM/Newsletter/June 2026/Single
Tools, tech, and Wikimania
Hello GLAM Wiki community!
On 23 June, we hosted our monthly Global Call, packed with great presentations and discussions — and for the first time, with simultaneous interpretation in French, Arabic, and Swahili! 🎉
Quick reminder: you can suggest agenda topics or request interpretation (or anything else!) at any time using the forms on the Meta-wiki pages.
Here's what we covered this month; watch the recording now!
- 🇫🇷 Wikimania Hackathon & Team Challenges — a preview of what's coming up in Paris later this July.
- 🏥 GLAM Tool Hospital — a brand-new community portal dedicated to maintaining the essential tools and infrastructure that keep the GLAM ecosystem running. Go take a look!
- 🕶️ VR Heritage App from Pakistan — a really cool demo showing how virtual reality is being used to bring heritage to life.
- 📊 Event Registration Tool — a handy way to track engagement and impact across Wikimedia movement activities.
What's next?
Our next Global Call is set for 28 July, right after Wikimania. If you're heading to Wikimania in person, keep an eye out for the many GLAM-related sessions — you can filter for them in the Eventyay schedule. And don't miss the Community Meetup on 23 July at 13:30 local time; hope to see you there: https://wikimedia.eventyay.com/wm/wikimania2026/talk/B9EPAT/
New digitization partner
We signed a digitization agreement with the Municipality of Coronda
On June 24 and 25, the Wikimedia Argentina Digitization Project team visited the city of Coronda, Santa Fe, where they carried out training and collaborative work sessions with the "José Manuel Maciel" Municipal Museum.
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Wikimedia Argentina provided equipment for the digitization of collections, including scanners and technical tools that allow for the advancement of the digital preservation of the collection safeguarded by the Museum and the Municipality.
International Museum Day Edit-a-thon and Workshop held in Dinajpur, Bangladesh
Museum Day 2026: Dinajpur Offline Edit-a-thon
An offline edit-a-thon was successfully held on May 18, 2026, in Dinajpur District, Bangladesh. Wikimedia Bangladesh helped to organize this event. The main reason for this program was to celebrate International Museum Day. The event started at 10:00 AM at the Cultural Academy of Ethnic Minorities in Dinajpur. For the last four years, we have been organizing online and offline events for Museum Day. This year, our event was the third offline activity that focused completely on local museums in northern Bangladesh.
Local Wikimedians came from different parts of the Dinajpur district to join the program. At first, they talked about their regular work and responsibilities on the Bengali Wikipedia. A total of six people attended the event. Among them, five were regular contributors and one was an active Wikipedia reader. The participants were Anup Sadi, Dolon Prova, Tushar Shuvra Basak, Manik Soren, and Md Tasmim Hasan. Everyone was very friendly and shared their personal editing stories during the meeting.
Preserving Local History and Fostering Future Collaborations
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After the introduction, the article-writing workshop officially started. The day-long event ended successfully at 4:00 PM. In this short time, participants worked hard and created eight new museum articles. Experienced editor Anup Sadi also took a useful training class for the new users. He taught them how to edit articles, translate from English, and fix machine translation errors. He also discussed important GLAM topics to make the new editors more confident in their writing.
The seminar room of the Cultural Academy was the perfect location for us. It gave the participants a great chance to see the preserved folk museum. We took many photos of the historical objects and uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons. This activity helped everyone gain practical knowledge about local history. After the event, we discussed future plans. The director of the academy was very happy with our work. He promised to help Wikimedia Bangladesh with any future programs at this venue.
Postal Mission on Wikimedia
The Postal Museum is on Commons!
What do you do when a museum is threatened with closure and a unique collection is at risk of being dispersed? You mobilize. Quickly. Like the January gourmet adventure, again.
On June 27 and June 28, 2026, a French-Belgian team of Wikimedia volunteers visited the Musée des Postes restantes in Hermalle-sous-Huy (province of Liège). Their mission (again): to digitally preserve the museum's post heritage before it was too late. Costumes, caps, seals, postal supplies... 669 objects were photographed in a total of 1,280 photos. Want to see all images on Wikimedia Commons? Then click here (work in progress!).
The digitization was organized in a matter of weeks, with support from Wikimedia Belgium and Wikimedia France.
In the year that Wikipedia celebrates its 25th anniversary, Postal Mission demonstrates (again) what Wikimedia has stood for for a quarter of a century: preserving knowledge and cultural heritage and sharing it freely — for everyone.
Empowering Institutions through Wikisource Education and GLAM Capacity Building
New Wikisource Mini-Course Explores Criminal History and Paleography
A exciting new open-educational resource is now live within the Wiki ecosystem. The mini-course "Manuscritos no tribunal: paleografia aplicada a processos criminais de Campinas" (Manuscripts in Court: Paleography Applied to Criminal Lawsuits from Campinas) has been officially launched.
This initiative is the result of a powerful collaboration between the Centro de Memória Unicamp (CMU), Wikimedia Brasil, and Professor Alícia Duhá Lose (AN/UFBA). Hosted on Wikiversity, the course bridges the gap between archival science and the digital humanities, training community members and researchers to transcribe complex historical documents using Wikisource. By focusing on historical criminal records from the region of Campinas, the project not only preserves vital heritage but also equips volunteers with the paleographic skills needed to make digitized manuscripts fully searchable and accessible.
- Check out the project details on the CMU GLAM Page.
- Access the course modules directly on the Wikiversity Course Page.
July Workshop Cycle: Disseminating GLAM Collections on Wikimedia Platforms
To kick off July 2026, Wikimedia Brasil is hosting a comprehensive, free training series tailored for cultural heritage professionals, researchers, and Wikimedians: the "Ciclo de oficinas Difusão de Acervos GLAM em Plataformas Wikimedia" (Workshop Cycle: Disseminating GLAM Collections on Wikimedia Platforms).
The program runs across three consecutive Tuesdays (July 7, 14, and 21, 2026), from 14:00 to 17:00 BRT. The sessions are designed to offer both theoretical foundations and hands-on technical training, guiding participants through the strategic integration of cultural collections into Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. By lower the technical barriers for institutions, this capacity-building cycle aims to accelerate the open-access movement in Brazil and ensure local histories achieve global reach.
- Learn more about the schedule on the Wikipedia Event Page.
- External institutions and interested participants can sign up via Registration Form.
Bridging the gap between labs and Wikipedia: continuing cooperation with FZU
Editathons and excursions
Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences was one of the leading partners of Wikimedia Czech Republic for years. In 2026 this cooperation expanded into several new dimensions, which boosted their role in GLAM programme as well as educational activities.
We are developing a long-term cooperation with the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU) which was initiated in 2023.
The Wikigap edit-a-thon Women in Science was held at the Czech Academy of Sciences headquarters, following successful previous editions in 2023 and 2024. The event was accompanied by a guided tour of the historical building (originally constructed in the 1860s for a savings bank) and an exhibition on Czech dialects in the Science and Art Gallery. This year, FZU Wikipedian Sandwort expanded the red list by adding more than 120 prominent female scientists from various scientific fields in Czechia.
The second edition of Science Month on Wikipedia provided another great opportunity for an edit-a-thon in a scientific environment. In May, we visited one of the FZU facilities, where participants enjoyed a guided tour of the scanning electron microscope laboratory with commentary on research and production of photovoltaic panels. A second group had the opportunity to explore the entire 1920s complex, which features beautiful Art Deco elements.
Both events brought together scientists, Wikipedians, and students, fostering a two-way learning experience - academics learned more about Wikimedia projects, while the general public had a unique opportunity to see where cutting-edge research takes place.
One lesson emerging from GLAM collaborations is that even a relatively small collection of openly licensed images can achieve substantial public reach when used effectively. For example, just 32 images contributed by FZU and subsequently incorporated into Wikipedia articles are now accounting for more than 30,000 page views in a single month.
This also highlights an important point for GLAM partners: uploading images is only the first step. The greater challenge - and where the true impact lies - is identifying relevant articles where these images improve readers’ understanding of the topic. Careful matching of visual material with relevant content can significantly increase both visibility and educational value.
During both Wikigap and Science Month, participants made use of the Czech Academy of Sciences Photobank which releases all its photos under CC BY-SA 4.0 license - thanks to previous efforts of Wikipedian Chmee2.
Another example of this cooperation is that more FZU employees are now contributing to Wikimedia projects directly. A notable instance is the discovery image of the first Czech comet detected in the southern hemisphere. FZU also continues to release more materials on Wikimedia Commons, such as the educational comics about nanoworld (in english).
From Museum Celebrations to Archival Documentation
After wrapping up a busy and exciting month of celebrating International Museum Day in May؛ our GLAM team- Wikimedia Egypt, smoothly shifted gears toward archival documentation. We wanted to focus on something truly authentic and unique belonging to our heritage for our next step, which brought us to a good collaboration with Bibliotheca Alexandrina to work on the Egyptian Postal Stamps project.
May Highlights
May was packed with activities for us, all focused on bringing more eyes to Egyptian heritage through digital documentation, community editing, and field visits.
Virtual Seminar: We hosted a fantastic two hour virtual seminar titled "Spotlight on Egyptian Museums: Between Archaeological Vision and Digital Documentation." We invited guest speakers specializing in Museology, Near Eastern studies, and digital heritage, and it was great to see so many of our core team members, Wikimedia User Group members and volunteers join the discussion.
The Edit-a-thon: To fill the gaps on Wikipedia, we launched the "Egyptian Museums" Edit-a-thon, which was running from May 18 to June 10. Our main goal was to create articles for the many local museums that completely lacked an online presence.
Museum Visits: Team members also got out into the field! We visited the Museum of Islamic Art to attend their International Museum Day seminar and took 144 high-quality photos of the artifacts for Wikimedia Commons. We also made a crucial visit to the Museum of the Egyptian National Library and Archives, a place that didn't have a Wikipedia article or any images on Commons yet and immediately added it to our edit-a-thon wishlist.
June Focus
International Archives Day & The Amiri Stamps Workshop
Building on that momentum, we celebrated International Archives Day on June 9 by diving straight into practical archiving work.
Our team organized a hands-on workshop on Wikimedia Commons focused entirely on digitizing historical Egyptian postal stamps, specifically the Amiri "official" category. It was a huge success, and we managed to upload 89 rare stamp files to Commons, making a piece of Egypt’s unique and visual history freely accessible to the world.
More Info
For more information about our core team members and our activities.
Northern Wikimedist meetup in Oulu
Northern Wikimedist meetup in Oulu
As part of Oulu's European Capital of Culture year, Wikimedia Finland, Wikimedia Eesti, the Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group, and Anarâškielâ servi ry organized the Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting in Oulu on 6–7 June. Event was held in Tuirakas, the community space of the Tuira district. There were 24 on-site participants from nine countries, plus a few more who arrived in the city after the event but couldn't make it to the meeting itself. The event featured discussions on AI, copyright, GLAM, minority language work, Wikimedia editor trends, and affiliate work in general. The Nordic and Baltic chapters also presented their current activities.
The event continued with the OKNorth meetup, a more policy-focused gathering organized by the Nordic Open Knowledge Network and Nordic Creative Commons affiliates. On Sunday, there was an evening program at the Finland-Swedish culture center Luckan. On Monday, an Open Culture Fair was held at the Oulu Main Library as part of the Oulu Löyly culture hackathon. In the evening, the State Awards for Public Information were conferred on seven recipients, one of which was the Finnish Wikimedia community.
The program concluded on Tuesday with a presentation and discussion on the Finnish Wikipedia's public art documentation project, held at the Oulu Museum of Art. In 2024 and 2025, the project focused on documenting public artworks in the Oulu European Capital of Culture region and recorded information about the works in Wikidata. Since public artworks are constantly being added and removed, the meeting continued with photographing works in Oulu's European Capital of Culture area that did not yet have photographs.
State Award for Public Information given to Finnish Wikipedians
The Finnish Wikimedia community was honored with a State Award for Public Information for its broad, volunteer-driven work on free knowledge. In its citation, the evaluation committee noted that over Wikipedia's 25 years, tens of thousands of Finnish Wikipedians people of all ages, backgrounds, and worldviews, from amateurs to top scientists have collaboratively and neutrally built the Finnish- and Swedish-language Wikipedias, as well as the Northern Sámi and Inari Sámi editions, and that their contributions have also enriched the English Wikipedia and other language versions. According to the committee, by writing about subjects familiar and important to Finns, the community has helped shape how the rest of the world sees Finland. Finnish Wikimedia community were very honored to receive the award.
- Ministry of Education and Culture, 8.6.2026, State Award for Public Information conferred to seven contributors to community-relevant information
#1lib1ref Recap and International Archives Week
#1lib1ref: A record number of references in France!
This #1lib1ref session set a new record, with more than 4,000 references added. Many institutions across France took part. A total of 130 people participated, either in teams or individually.
International Archives Week
“International Archives Week” (June 8–14, 2026), organized jointly by 16 institutions in France (departmental archives, municipal archives, national archives, and archival services in higher education), was a success:
- Contributions and introductory workshops (held internally or open to the public) brought together at least 70 contributors,
- More than 3,300 media files were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: signatures of notable figures, postcards and old photographs, leaflets and posters, handwritten documents, and architectural plans and drawings
- 7 new articles were created on Wikipedia, over 1,000 pages were edited, and 217 references were added.
All of these efforts support the open access to archival content and the dissemination of historical heritage! More informations here.
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Photograph of Mrs. Cantrel in the album of exhibitors and subscribers at the 1867 World's Fair. -
Postcard from Sablet (Vaucluse, France). -
Signed by Julien Havet. -
Map of Faubourg Saint-Germain (Paris, France).
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Heritage and Community Action
Medieval Architecture of Padua Comes to Wikipedia
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A Wikimedia training programme linked to the post-classical archaeology course at the University of Padua has successfully concluded, involving 29 students under the supervision of Professor Alejandra Chavarría Arnau and Wikimedia tutor Marco Chemello.
After introductory sessions on Wikipedia's pillars, copyright, and sourcing, students worked in small groups to research, draft, and improve articles about Padua's medieval architectural heritage. Their contributions were reviewed before being published on Wikipedia.
The project resulted in the creation of 6 new articles and the expansion of 9 existing ones, covering medieval palaces, churches, towers, gates, and other historic buildings in Padua. Students also uploaded more than 100 photographs and historical images to Wikimedia Commons, helping to document the city's architectural heritage.
Beyond improving Wikimedia projects, the initiative gave students the opportunity to share academic research with a wider public, demonstrating how universities can contribute to open knowledge while supporting public access to cultural heritage.
Ukraine Through Wikimedia: Exhibition and Writing Contest
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This spring, a series of Wikimedia initiatives highlighted Ukraine's cultural heritage, combining online participation with public outreach.
The photographic exhibition Wounded but Resilient: Ukraine in Photos was first presented in Trento, later in Bergamo and then moved to Milan. Organized by Wikimedia volunteers in collaboration with Wikimedia Ukraine, the association Ucraina Più – Milan, and other local Ukrainian associations, the exhibition features photographs from the Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, and Wiki Loves Folklore competitions, documenting Ukraine's landscapes, monuments, traditions, and the impact of the ongoing war on its cultural and natural heritage. The Milan edition of the exhibition was hosted at ARCI Provinciale and benefited from the patronage of the Consulate General of Ukraine in Milan and ARCI.
To accompany the Milan exhibition, a two-week writing contest invited contributors to create and improve Wikipedia articles about Ukraine and Ukrainian culture. The initiative involved 28 participants, who created or substantially expanded 213 articles covering a wide range of topics related to the country's history, culture, and heritage.
Supported by Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia Italia, these initiatives demonstrate how Wikimedia projects can help preserve and share knowledge about cultural heritage while bringing together volunteers, cultural organizations, and local communities.
Open GLAM in Puebla
From June 10 to 12, the second edition of the Hackatón BAM BUAP (Libraries, Archives, and Museums Hackathon) took place at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Mexico. The event was organised by the Faculty of Visual and Audiovisual Arts (ARPA) and the General Directorate of Libraries (DGB) at the Central University Library, with the financial support from Wikimedia CH.
Strengthening the Open GLAM Programme at BUAP
The opening night on June 10 was used to get the participants acquainted with the core ideas behind Open GLAM and the hackathon methodology. Beat Estermann and Sandra Palacios presented the plan on how to strengthen the Open GLAM Programme at BUAP: The existing two pillars of the Open GLAM Programme, the annual hackathon and the CultureFLOW method are to be complemented by a WikiClub and by an Open GLAM Competence Network: While the WikiClub is oriented towards encouraging university-wide contributions to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, the Open GLAM Competence Network is intended as a community of practice among local heritage institutions and service providers, offering mutual assistance to local institutions in adopting and implementing open data and open access policies. These four pillars will be complemented by a Wiki Loves Collective Memories campaign to channel the outreach efforts and sharing of know-how both on an international and on a national level.
Outreach Among Heritage Institutions Around the World
In the run-up of this year’s hackathon, heritage institutions with Mexico-related holdings in a variety of countries were invited to provide data and to submit a hackathon challenge. Two institutions decided to give it a go:
- Museum Rietberg (City of Zurich) uploaded high-resolution photographs of 681 pre-Columbian artifacts from the Anne-Marie und Caspar Reinhart Collection, while publishing their metadata on Wikidata, thus providing a nice showcase for data publication that can serve as an example to other ethnographic museums in the future.
- The Wereldmuseum (Dutch National Museum of World Cultures) pointed the hackathon participants to an interesting textile collection with valuable items of traditional handicraft in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, neighbouring Oaxaca and further States, some of them representative of rare pre-Columbian techniques.
Apart from these very specific suggestions, the hackathon participants were pointed to the online catalogues of approx. 40 heritage institutions with Mexico-related holdings in Europe and the Americas that make content available under free copyright licenses or at least grant open access to their collection catalogues. The Wikidata-based monitoring of institutions, initiated at the occasion of this year’s hackathon, will serve as a basis for further outreach efforts to heritage institutions around the world. The goal is to promote open access to collections with a focus on ethical sharing, especially among institutions whose holdings are international in scope and therefore of special value to a variety of communities worldwide.
Highlights from this Year’s Hackathon Projects
During the two hackathon days, the 68 participants, mostly from computational and artistic backgrounds, worked in 12 groups on an interesting kaleidoscope of projects, covering the following aspects:
- Exploring the Large Diaspora of Mexican Cultural Artifacts
Wereldmuseum: Portrait of a Tlaxcalan man (around 1898)
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- Four teams worked on the development of online applications for the exploration of Mexico-related heritage artifacts in collections around the world: Amatohtli (the term signifies “map” in Nahuatl) is an app presenting a collection from various perspectives, including games. The team managed to develop a fully-fledged prototype running on real data from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons (visit this link and click on “Colección” to start exploring the 681 objects in the Anne-Marie und Caspar-Reinhart Collection). Three other teams proposed interesting extensions or variations on the same theme.
- Another team elaborated a concept for the implementation of an expert sourcing campaign to enhance and complement the catalogue entries of approx. 200 items from the textile collection gathered by Irmgard Weitlaner and Bodil Christensen during their travels in Mexico in the 20th century. Several domain experts have been located, and photographs of the collection items have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the Wereldmuseum. In addition to complementing the object metadata, the domain experts will be invited to contribute their know-how to improve related Wikipedia articles.
- And finally, one team tackled the challenge entitled “Through the Eyes of Strangers”, which takes the short biographies of several anthropologists / ethnologists who visited Mexico during the 19th and 20th century as a starting point to study their attitudes and perspectives on the people and cultures which they encountered. As has been observed by various hackathon participants, the differences in character, attitude, and methodological approaches among the “visitors” from abroad are striking. The idea is to present an artistic treatment of the different portraits in the context of an application showing the itineraries and places visited, alongside the objects and/or information collected.
- A Wiki Club to Help Fill the Contributor Gap
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- The initial members of the Wiki Club used the hackathon to get organised and to plan their activities throughout the rest of the year. A series of activities were listed that new contributors could engage in. One of them, the completion of Wikidata entries about Mexican museums based on the official database of the Ministry of Culture, was tackled by another project team whose members got acquainted with Wikidata and OpenRefine in order to be able to conduct mass data ingests. A possible starting point for contributions to Wikipedia are the above-mentioned biographies about anthropologists and archaeologists who visited Mexico and left their traces in various heritage collections. A first example is the newly created article about the Austrian-Dutch physician and amateur archaeologist Hans Feriz.
- One of the key goals of the Wiki Club is to recruit new active contributors from Mexico in order to help fill the contributor gap. Currently, in comparison to the speakers of other major European languages, speakers of Spanish and Portuguese are among the least likely to contribute to Wikipedia (Spanish Wikipedia only has 7.5 active editors per million speakers, compared to 26 for English, 40 for German, 17.5 for French, or 10 for Russian). Furthermore, among the Spanish speakers, Mexicans are among the least likely to contribute to Wikipedia (Mexico only counts 5 active contributors per million inhabitants, compared to 45 for Spain, 17 for Argentina, 7 for Colombia, or 13 per million speakers of Spanish worldwide).
- Sources: Wikimedia Statistics; Most Spoken Languages in the World (Berlitz); List of countries and territories where Spanish is an official language (English Wikipedia). The Wikipedia Statistics are for May 2026. Note that there are important discrepancies in the official Wikipedia Statistics between the total number of active editors of Spanish Wikipedia (4200 editors with at least 5 edits per month) and the number of active editors of Spanish Wikipedia per country (totalling 6830 editors with at least 5 edits per month).
- Chatty Mascots and Relatable Organisational Identities to Capture the Attention of Gen Z
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- The Historical Archive of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), which was founded in 1587 as Colegio del Espíritu Santo and thus ranks among the oldest institutions of higher education in the Americas, is looking for a brand mascot that is appealing to the younger generations and can be used across a variety of online offers and communication campaigns to raise awareness about the archive’s holdings. Two hackathon teams responded to the challenge, proposing the mascots “MUMUR” (a savant-looking elf) and “MINO” (alluding to the Roman goddess Minerva, featured in the university’s coat of arms) respectively. The latter team also reflected on how the character could be used in the context of a chatbot, which would translate the information contained in a knowledge base in order to engage younger users in a colloquial interaction about topics related to the university’s history.
Calaverita model of the Umbrales team - A third visual identity, a Calaverita (a Día de Muertos style skeleton) travelling the world in the search of Mexico-related heritage holdings, was proposed by the project team “Umbrales” – it may be used in connection with one of the apps featuring Mexico-related artifacts from heritage holdings in other countries or as the mascot of the Wiki Loves Collective Memories campaign in Mexico.
The video recordings of the final project presentations can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
Interview with Olaf Janssen, Wikimedia coordinator of the KB, National library of the Netherlands
Interview with Olaf Janssen, Wikimedia coordinator of the KB, National library of the Netherlands
On 19 June 2026, Dutch Wikipedia turned 25. To celebrate, we spoke to Olaf Janssen, Wikimedia coordinator at the KB, National library of the Netherlands. He tells us about the difference between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, the importance of community and a card game about birds.
Read the interview.
BAU at Auckland Museum, Otago Uni Library Life and the NZBSI WiR is complete
BAU at Auckland Museum
Despite the dark winter mornings, Auckland Museum librarians and Wikimedian in Residence have been meeting bright and early every week for Wiki Wednesday. This is a dedicated time, before library open hours, for the team to work on enriching and improving Wikipedia articles, contributing to the Women in Red project. SecretLibrarian, Pearlwhisper, Thewickerwoman and Winnieswikiworld also took part in the 1Lib1Ref Australasia 2026 campaign during June, doing their bit by adding references to pages about New Zealand women.
Library life at the University of Otago
Tamsin Braisher (User:DrThneed) wrote an article describing her outreach work at the University of Otago, which featured in the June 2026 issue of Library Life. Tamsin is based in the university library's engagement team, and has been working with staff and students at the university to understand how they can engage with Wikipedia and other Wiki projects.
A lot of Tamsin's work aims to improve the understanding of how Wikipedia is put together and how to use it properly. Alongside editing training and working with staff to improve Wikipedia pages directly, she has run polls to find out what teachers had told students about using Wikipedia, and made an activity where you have to sort Wikipedia features like neutral point of view or warning banners into whether those features increase trust or not. The article is freely readable online, check it out!.
Tamsin has also been working on Wikidata and Wikipedia pages relating to the anniversary of an important New Zealand institution, the Dunedin Teacher Training College, which was the first teacher training college in the country. The College is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
Completion of the Bioeconomy Science Institute Wikimedian in Residence
The Wikimedian in Residence undertaken by Siobhan Leachman Ambrosia10 came to an end on the 30th of June 2026. As part of this WiR an engagement strategy was published and submitted to the Bioeconomy Science Institute (BSI).
A final report summarising the work undertaken, the documentation produced and the training provided during this residency has also been submitted both to the Bioeconomy Science Institute and to Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.
In summary WiR was very successful and met the aims given at the outset of this project. The BSI now has a clear strategic approach for contributing biodiversity data and media to Wikimedia platforms and understands the value of ongoing engagement.
The WiR developed and established sustainable workflows to integrate Wikimedia content creation into specimen digitisation and data mobilisation processes and created opportunities to improve the efficiency and support the ongoing publication of biodiversity data and images to Wikimedia platforms.
Finally the WiR helped foster staff capability and engagement with Wiki. Staff participated in targeted training and discussions that increased their understanding of the Wikimedia ecosystem, the value and impact of data reuse through Wikimedia platforms as well as the potential for Wikimedia to improve access to and reuse of BSI's expert knowledge as well as BSI's biodiversity collection images and data.
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The NZBSI Wiki Strategy document. -
The final report to WANZ on the BSI WiR 2025-2026.
Collaboration with the Botanical garden at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje
As part of its efforts to establish new partnerships with cultural, educational, and scientific institutions, Wikimedia MKD held a working meeting with the person responsible for the Botanical Garden in Skopje at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje. The meeting focused on exploring opportunities for collaboration and identifying activities that could contribute to the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge related to botany, biodiversity, and the natural heritage of Macedonia through Wikimedia projects.
During the discussion, representatives of both institutions exchanged ideas on potential joint initiatives, including content creation and improvement on Wikimedia platforms, photographic documentation of plant species and collections, as well as activities aimed at engaging volunteers and experts in sharing free knowledge. Particular attention was given to opportunities for increasing the visibility of the Botanical Garden and its valuable resources through Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia projects.
As a result of the meeting, an agreement was reached to establish cooperation between Wikimedia MKD and the Botanical Garden. The partnership will be implemented over the coming months through a series of coordinated activities, with further planning and communication taking place as specific initiatives are developed. This collaboration represents an important step toward strengthening the connection between Wikimedia projects and scientific institutions, while supporting the broader goal of making reliable and freely accessible knowledge available to the public.
Poland Report: New Partnerships, Conferences, and Wikimedians in Residence
Open Heritage and GLAM-Wiki Collaboration at the National Museum in Kraków Conference
On 12 May, Agata Stadnicka, Wikimedian in Residence at the Princes Czartoryski Library, a branch of the National Museum in Kraków, presented at the conference "New Technologies = New Competencies? Perspectives for Workforce Development in the Cultural Sector", organized by the National Museum in Kraków as part of the Musedu+ project on developing digital competencies in cultural institutions.
In her presentation, "Open Heritage: Cultural Institutions and Their Collaboration with Wikimedia Polska," she introduced the GLAM-Wiki partnership model, highlighting the benefits of collaborative projects and the role of a Wikimedian in Residence in supporting the open sharing of collections and knowledge. Drawing on the experience of the National Museum in Kraków, she presented practical examples of how Wikimedia projects can increase the accessibility and visibility of cultural heritage.
Agata's presentation demonstrated that Wikimedia projects can serve as effective tools for supporting the digital transformation of cultural institutions, strengthening professional competencies, and expanding public access to cultural heritage collections and knowledge.
Another Meeting of the Polish Wikimedians in Residence Network
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On 23 June, members of the growing network of Polish Wikimedians in Residence met online for another peer-learning session facilitated by Kamila Neuman, Open Culture Manager at Wikimedia Polska. The regular meetings provide a space for exchanging experiences, discussing common challenges, and developing good practices for Wikimedia residencies in cultural institutions.
One of the main topics was the upcoming Open Knowledge: Wikimedia & Research in the CEE Region conference. Katarzyna Makowska, Open Science Manager at Wikimedia Polska, introduced opportunities to contribute to the GLAM track, prompting a discussion on potential presentations showcasing the experiences and impact of Wikimedia collaborations with cultural institutions.
Participants also shared examples of ongoing residency activities, exchanged good practices, and discussed ways to better document and communicate their work through GLAM-Wiki project pages and expert blog posts. These regular meetings continue to strengthen the growing community of practice for Wikimedians in Residence in Poland and support the development of shared approaches to GLAM-Wiki partnerships.
GLAM 4.0 – New Technologies and the Digital Transformation of Cultural Institutions
On 26 June, Kamila Neuman, Open Culture Manager at Wikimedia Polska, participated in the national conference GLAM 4.0 – New Technologies in Cultural Institutions, organized by the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw and the University Museum. The conference brought together representatives of museums, libraries, archives, academia, and the technology sector to discuss the digital transformation of cultural institutions.
The programme explored topics including artificial intelligence, data management, digital documentation, and new approaches to providing access to and interpreting cultural heritage. Of particular interest from a GLAM-Wiki perspective was Dr Marcin Roszkowski’s presentation on integrating GLAM institutions with the Wikidata knowledge graph as part of the digital transformation of cultural heritage.
The event also provided an opportunity to exchange experiences with representatives of cultural institutions from across Poland. It is particularly encouraging to see Wikimedia projects, including Wikidata, becoming an increasingly visible part of discussions on the digital transformation of the GLAM sector. This demonstrates the growing recognition of open data as a key component in improving interoperability, expanding access, and creating sustainable connections between cultural heritage resources.
Wrocław University Library Launches a GLAM-Wiki Partnership
In June, Wrocław University Library and Wikimedia Polska announced the start of a new GLAM-Wiki partnership. The collaboration was first introduced during the Mostem.pl Festival in Wrocław, where Wikimedia Polska was a partner and discussions focused on the role of memory institutions in advancing open models for sharing knowledge and cultural heritage.
The new partnership aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of the library's collections across Wikimedia projects while expanding open access to cultural heritage. Planned activities include community transcription of historical materials, publishing sources through Wikisource, and enriching heritage data in Wikidata.
The collaboration will help make the library's collections more widely available to researchers, educators, and the general public, with the first joint activities scheduled to begin in the coming months.
Opening the Doors of Serbian Heritage: Wikimedia Serbia’s Recent GLAM and Wikidata Successes
Wikimedia Serbia has wrapped up a highly successful series of GLAM and Wikidata initiatives aimed at digitizing, structuring, and liberating the rich cultural and historical heritage of Serbia. Through two impactful museum residencies and a targeted data competition, local history and global genius have been transformed into freely accessible digital goods.
Preserving Banat’s History: Wikipedian in Residence at the National Museum of Pančevo
During May 2026, an intensive one-month Wikipedian in Residence program was successfully completed at the National Museum of Pančevo. Experienced editor Nikolina Šepić focused on digitizing museum documentation, photographing exhibits, and expanding content across Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.
The residency achieved remarkable quantitative results, yielding 164 new articles, 20 improved articles, and 164 newly created or enriched Wikidata items. Additionally, 570 media files were liberated and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, including 272 files owned directly by the National Museum of Pančevo. The newly available content spans the museum's departments of archaeology, ethnology, history, and fine arts. Global audiences can now explore detailed articles on local archaeological sites, historical assets like the flag of the Serbian Vojvodina, and legacy collections of regional artists.
Commemorating Innovation: Wikipedian in Residence at the Nikola Tesla Museum
In parallel, Wikimedia Serbia expanded its GLAM footprint through another vital residency program at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade. This residency focused on bringing the legacy of one of humanity's greatest inventors into the open knowledge ecosystem. By digitizing archive materials, personal correspondence, technical documents, and historical photographs, the project has ensured that Tesla's monumental scientific and personal history is comprehensively integrated into the Wikimedia projects, making his genius a truly universal, public good.
Structuring Museum Data: International Museum Day Wikidata Competition
To celebrate International Museum Day 2026, Wikimedia Serbia organized a specialized Wikidata Competition aimed at semantic networking and improving metadata for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Over the course of the event, 3 dedicated editors actively participated in creating and enriching data structures. Their efforts resulted in 43 items written or improved on Wikidata. These structured entities now feature precise metadata, geographic coordinates, and official identifiers, significantly boosting the discoverability and interconnectedness of local and international cultural institutions within the global semantic web.
Through these combined efforts, Wikimedia Serbia continues to bridge the gap between traditional cultural repositories and the open web, ensuring that local history and world-changing heritage are just a click away for everyone.
GLAM Labs Futures 2026
Wikimedia Spain at GLAM Labs Futures 2026
Wikimedia Spain took part in GLAM Labs Futures 2026, an international event held on 25 and 26 June at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, which brought together professionals and researchers from galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) to discuss the future of innovation labs in the field of digital heritage.
Representing Wikimedia Spain were Gustavo Candela, who was part of the organising team for the event (University of Alicante and a member of the Wikimedia Spain Board of Directors), and Rubén Ojeda (project manager at Wikimedia Spain), both of whom spoke at various sessions.
The event began with a key question that shaped the course of the sessions: how can GLAM Labs remain relevant and sustainable in a context characterised by artificial intelligence, data infrastructure and resource constraints?
The event took place at a pivotal moment for initiatives of this kind, characterised by advances in artificial intelligence, the consolidation of new data infrastructures and the need to rethink the sustainability of digital cultural projects.
A programme featuring leading international voices
The programme brought together some of the leading international voices in the fields of GLAM Labs, digital research and open knowledge infrastructures, cementing the event’s status as a key forum in this field.
The keynote sessions were led by Melissa Terras (University of Edinburgh) and Tim Sherratt (historian and hacker), two key figures in the field of digital humanities, cultural data and experimentation with digital collections.
Alongside them, the event was attended by leading international figures such as Abigail Potter (Library of Congress, USA), Alba Irollo (Europeana), Katrine Hofmann (Royal Library of Denmark), Mahendra Mahey (University of Tallinn), Olga Holownia (Internet Preservation Consortium) and Sally Chambers (DARIAH-EU and the British Library), amongst others, who offered different perspectives on the development of cultural laboratories in Europe and the Americas.
Digital Heritage Laboratories in Transition
Over the course of the two days, the debate highlighted that GLAM Labs are currently undergoing a process of redefinition. These spaces, which in many cases began as experimental initiatives, have established themselves as hubs linking research, technology and cultural heritage, but now face the challenge of ensuring their long-term sustainability.
Sustainability was one of the central themes of the programme. The discussions addressed the need to explore new organisational models, funding strategies and ways of integrating the laboratories into the permanent structures of cultural institutions, thereby avoiding their dependence on temporary projects.
Data, artificial intelligence and cultural infrastructure
Another key focus of the event was the impact of data infrastructures and artificial intelligence on the cultural heritage sector.
The sessions examined how open science initiatives, European cultural heritage data hubs and technological platforms are transforming the way in which digital collections are described, linked and reused. In this context, GLAM Labs are emerging as key spaces for experimenting with these technologies and translating them into practices that are accessible to cultural institutions.
Open science, participation and the commons of knowledge
The programme also addressed the relationship between digital heritage, citizen science and the knowledge commons. Discussions centred on the importance of encouraging public participation in cultural projects, promoting open access to knowledge and strengthening communities around cultural data.
These reflections reinforce the role of GLAM Labs as infrastructures that can contribute to more open, collaborative and sustainable models of knowledge production and reuse.
Learning from mistakes in innovation processes
Among the sessions was “Learning from failure: When Labs go wrong”, which focused on projects that failed to achieve the expected results despite their technical or conceptual soundness.
The session highlighted the value of learning from mistakes as a fundamental part of institutional innovation processes, particularly in contexts where experimentation forms part of the projects’ very design.
Wikimedia Spain’s involvement
Wikimedia Spain took part in a session dedicated to rethinking the concept of the GLAM Lab, its limitations and its opportunities in the current context.
The debate centred on a key question: when a cultural institution shares its data on Wikidata, is it returning knowledge to the public or helping to fuel new technological infrastructures based on artificial intelligence?
This reflection helped to open up a conversation about the role of free knowledge platforms within the GLAM ecosystem and the importance of ensuring that open data translates into access, re-use and the social return of knowledge.
An ecosystem undergoing redefinition
GLAM Labs Futures 2026 showcased a well-established international community currently undergoing a period of strategic review. Digital heritage labs are no longer seen merely as spaces for technical experimentation, but as cultural infrastructures with organisational, social and political implications.
The challenge arising in this context is not only technological, but also institutional: how to sustain these spaces, how to integrate them securely into cultural structures, and how to ensure their long-term impact.
At Wikimedia Spain, we particularly value participation in this type of international gathering, which enables us to continue strengthening dialogue between communities, institutions and open projects centred on free knowledge and digital heritage.
Finnish-Swedish cooperation
Oulu Löyly
Wikimedia Sverige was a partner for Oulu Löyly, a think and do festival in northern Finland with a theme of heritage and culture. Jan Ainali joined in on a discussion about Heritage at risk and Connor Benedict led a panel on Resilience. The CommonsDB project was showcased on the open culture fair.
Exhibition, International Archives Week Panel
Exhibition
The exhibition Artistic Intelligence at the Glaab Gallery in Berne shows three artistic approaches for deconstructing machines and turning the development into humanity.
Each artist selected a theme around intelligence production and pointed out an important aspect.
Fake News
The artist María Linares worked with the faces of authoritarian politicians. She prompted their faces with Bias reflecting their different appearances depending on skin and hair colour. To develop deep fakes with a tool that is based on social Bias is done within a few minutes. Boundaries are shifted and truth appears negotiable.
Mapping the skin
The artist Cornelia Roessler worked with the mapping of skins. The skin is the interface to the outside world. She layered different skins on top of each other. The so created pattern becomes a prototype for a fabric. The work shows how we all are vulnerable through our skin. Sharing experiences makes us stronger together.
Social Conditions
The work “Taking Over” by Sandra Becker reflects how robots take all our space. When recording the robot everyone jumped away – out of fear or as a perceived necessity because the robot looks like a dog. At this stage it seems sweet but considering that robots are used in the military there is a huge danger to the development of giving technology more space than humans and nature. To keep humans in the centre we need to have barriers for machines.
All artworks can be found on Wiki Commons.
The banana sculpture with three videos adds a surreal element to the space making the message lighter. The banana unites all three positions to one sculpture.
Machines cannot breathe. They do not feel emotions. Their input comes from all the knowledge that ever was created on earth in more than two thousand years. Artistic practice can shape intelligence in a way of shaping humanity.
The project was part of the activities for celebrating 25 years of Wikipedia. It was the beginning of the International Archives Week reflecting archives that were developed by artists.
International Archives Week Panel
The theme given by the International Council of Archives was on justice in archives. From transitional justice and lived experience to community empowerment the theme is rather complex. Looking into non-sovereign contexts and focussing on shared heritage our panel presented four perspectives. At first the different definitions on justice have been presented. The second perspective showed how archiving works and what questions are coming up during the process. Explaing the way of decionmaking and reflecting underrepresented groups was leading to the next perspective of creating personal archives. Working with and in archives has knowledge suprises and a lot to discover for oneself.
The recording can be watched here.
Ninth Good Article from Khalili partnership
Khalili Foundation
There are six new articles with connections to the Khalili Collections this month, and an additional 15 million image views due to images on the front page of English Wikipedia.
I added a new article on the Mughal calligrapher Amanat Khan Shirazi, mentioning his Quran manuscript that is in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. There were already short articles in Persian and in German, but this is much more comprehensive and was written from scratch rather than a translation. The article passed Did You Know review, and is yet to be scheduled for the front page.
The English Wikipedia article on Yabu Meizan passed Good Article review, becoming the ninth GA from this project. Only about half a percent of articles have the GA badge, which is awarded after a detailed review that examines neutrality, sourcing, and other criteria. Two volunteers were involved in the review process, which identified some places where sourcing could be improved and more detail could be added. After I made the requested improvements, the article passed review and was added to the showcase in the Art & architecture section. A volunteer translated a short summary of the Yabu Meizan article into Persian.
Palermo Quran and Isfahan Quran both appeared in the Did You Know? section of the English Wikipedia's home page, with images. This resulted in just under 15 million image views. The attention resulted in some translations: Palermo Quran was translated into Turkish and Spanish, while Isfahan Quran was translated into Persian and Spanish. I wrote a news item for the Khalili Foundation about my improvements to several Quran-related Wikipedia articles.
I "translated" the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Simple English. This involved lots of careful re-writing, first using the Hemingway tool to identify sentences that were not Simple English (nearly all of them), then re-writing, then checking again with Hemingway, then doing further passes to shorten sentences and use more simple words. This is the 104th new article created by this partnership and the second in Simple English. As well as adding Sadiq's photographs to his own article, I added them to the Simple English article about the Masjid al-Haram.
Other articles where Khalili Collections images have been added (not a complete list): Names of God in Islam (English), Samarkand Kufic Quran (Slovene).
Martin Poulter and Waqas Ahmed attended Wikipedia's 25th birthday party in London, where Martin was presented with a Silver Jubilee award "for outstanding contribution to open knowledge", presented by Jimmy Wales. This award is for Martin's wiki career since 2011, including volunteer work, his post at the Bodleian Libraries, and present work with the Khalili Foundation.
The Commons Analytics server reports 3,476,711 image views for June. This excludes the views for the two images that spent 24 hours on the front page.
Philadelphia WikiSalon
Philadelphia WikiSocial
The Philadelphia WikiSalon held an in-person social event at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia at 219 S. 6th Street, Philadelphia, on June 13, 2026. People at the Athenaeum gave a great behind-the scenes tour. We moved over to Madis Coffee Roasters afterwards for coffee and conversation. Attendees took photos and later improved related articles such as Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Isaiah Lukens, and Roger W. Moss Jr..
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Isaiah Lukens (1779-1846), Athenaeum portrait -
Plaque commemorating Roger W. Moss Jr.'s service as executive director at the Athenæum -
Color palette for H.W. Johns' Liquid Asbestos Paints on display at the Athaneæum -
Articles of Association of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia -
Library and reading room of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia -
Brice Peterson explains the chess collection -
Brice Peterson shows historical Athenaeum membership documents -
Wikimedians at Madis Coffee Roasters
_Athenaeum_portrait.jpg)
Updates on work by BHLWiki Working Group members
BHL Transition news
As part of the transition away from the Smithsonian, the BHL servers have now been physically moved from the Smithsonian to the Field Museum. For more information on this move see the BHL blog.
Quarterly BHL Identifiers needing review
The quarterly BHL Identifiers needing review report has recently been released. It contains possible issues and errors both in Wikidata and in the BHL catalogue including BHL Authors having more than one Wikidata identifier in the BHL catalogue, Wikidata identifier associated with more than one BHL author, Wikidata identifier in BHL but corresponding BHL Author ID not in Wikidata, BHL Title has more than one Wikidata identifier and Wikidata identifier associated with more than one BHL title.
Both Wikidata editors and BHL affiliated cataloguers are working through these issues but please feel free to lend a hand! This will be a work in progress.
BHL in the Guardian
A recent article in the Guardian newspaper about BHL. It covers the current funding issues for BHL.
Is the sauna still hot?
Sauna & sun
Oulu Löyly was the newest iteration of open cultural heritage -related workshops AvoinGLAM has created. The work started with events organized together with Finnish heritage institutions in the series of Hack4FI – Hack Your Heritage hackathons in 2012–2018.
Covid-19 stopped the 2020 Hack4FI only a day before the launch, giving rise instead to Hack4OpenGLAM online hackathons in the context of the Creative Commons Global Online Summits in 2020–2021.
AI Sauna in 2024 started the current sauna-related tradition. It gathered open knowledge advocates, Wikimedia developers, Finnish cultural heritage institutions and researchers to discuss the effect of AI on open cultural knowledge while also exploring the possibilities offered by it.
Oulu Löyly tapped again to the physical power of sauna and sun to bring people together, this time asking how the heritage of even the smallest and most vulnerable communities can survive and remain accessible in the current technological and political climate.
What went in
These themes and topics nurtured our collaborative work:
Culture as a global public good
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Brigitte Vézina -
Matti Hakamäki -
Sanna Marttila
The underpinning policy question was how culture can be established as a foundational dimension of society. What conditions are needed to ensure that access to cultural heritage, participation in cultural life, and the benefits of knowledge remain open, inclusive, and sustainably safeguarded over time?
Brigitte Vézina (Creative Commons) focused her talk Closing the gap in equitable access to heritage on the barriers that prevent access to public domain heritage online — legal restrictions, paywalls, and cultural heritage laws being misused to extend copyright. She called for international policy action through UNESCO around the Open Heritage Statement, framing openness as a structural principle for cultural heritage governance.
Matti Hakamäki (Finnish Folk Music Institute) in his presentation The Culture Goal – From Necessity to Reality on Culture2030Goal made a complementary argument: that without a dedicated culture goal in the post-2030 UN sustainability framework, other goals on climate, poverty, and social equity cannot be fully achieved, because all of them require shifts in cultural behaviour to succeed.
These perspectives were further grounded in the discussion hosted by Sanna Marttila (IT University of Copenhagen), that drew out practical questions of access, participation, and the responsibilities of institutions, governments, and technology companies toward culture as a public good.
Heritage at risk
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Mikael Hiltunen -
Jan Ainali -
Renata Ávila
Mikael Hiltunen (Hanaholmen) in his keynote presented the Hanaholmen Heritage program and conference, a Nordic–Baltic policy initiative on cultural heritage preparedness in the face of conflict, hybrid threats, and geopolitical disruption. He argued for recognizing cultural heritage as critical infrastructure, expanding digitisation as both a preservation and counter-disinformation tool, and establishing a shared Nordic-Baltic cloud for storing heritage materials.
The framing was extended by Jan Ainali (Wikimedia Sweden) in a discussion connecting preparedness to open infrastructures and volunteer-driven documentation efforts such as Wiki Loves Monuments — and raising the risk that digitization without open licensing simply creates new silos.
The pre-event conversation chaired online by Renata Ávila (Open Knowledge Foundation) echoed similar concerns. It explored the Knowledge as Critical Digital Infrastructure initiative by Open Knowledge Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation, and framed open knowledge and the digital commons as essential infrastructure for democratic resilience in the context of geopolitical instability, platform dependency, and AI-related risks. The discussion is further documented by Renata in Open Knowledge and Critical Infrastructure: a Nordic Conversation.
Sovereign governance of digital heritage
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Connor Benedict -
Tove Ørsted, Daniel Antal, Deepesha Burse, and Connor Benedict
The panel discussion hosted by Connor Benedict (Content Partnerships Hub) on community resilience opened with examples of heritage brought into the open:
- Tove Ørsted (Aalto University) introduced the university’s century of architectural measurement drawings, now digitised and used to rebuild burnt homes and churches.
- Daniel Antal (Reprex / Wikimedia Hungary) presented his work connecting Livonian, Udmort, and other small Finno-Ugric communities to materials held about them in Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian collections.
- Deepesha Burse (Wikimedia Deutschland) shared her work helping a Nigerian community document election violence on a Wikibase instance.
The panel asked who decides what gets saved — often already determined without communities knowing, with materials sitting in outside institutions, described in foreign languages, and out of reach for those they concern. Visibility alone is not enough: data must be structured, usable, and governable by communities themselves.
On AI, there was broad agreement that generative systems flatten cultural nuance and put under-represented knowledge at particular risk, making community control over reuse, backed by provenance and structured data, the most promising direction on offer.
Sofie Veramme (Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed) was interviewed for the Oulu Löyly podcast by Niina Holappa ahead of the event. Her core argument is that data about communities must come from those communities, and that people need to understand what happens to their data online — including the ability to change, opt out, or remove it. She references the FAIR and CARE principles as practical frameworks for this, and highlights the tension between the static nature of data and the living, changing nature of intangible heritage. The podcast will be continued and published later this year.
Equipping the cultural commons
Oulu Löyly brought together a set of initiatives around a shared vision: that open, federated infrastructure could form the foundation of a genuine cultural commons, where even small and under-resourced communities can contribute their heritage materials on equal terms. The Open Culture Fair highlighted initiatives ranging from tech to artwork demonstrations and workshops.
Jouni Tuominen (University of Helsinki) presented the ECHOES European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) and the ECHOLOT EU project. Together with Europeana, the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage, and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), ECCCH represents Europe's growing infrastructure for discovering, sharing, and collaborating around cultural heritage data — connecting heritage institutions, researchers, and communities across borders.
Deepesha Burse (Wikimedia Deutschland) presented Wikibase and the broader Wikimedia ecosystem — Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons — a globally maintained open infrastructure for linked data, images, and knowledge, freely available for anyone to build upon.
The ECHOLOT project brings these two worlds into direct connection through a federated model: institutions and communities can maintain their own interoperable knowledge bases while contributing to a shared network, without surrendering control or depending on a centralised system, and publish simultaneously to Europeana and Wikimedia platforms with provenance and rights metadata embedded.
Jan Ainali offered a live demo of CommonsDB for making the rights status of materials verifiable and trustworthy as they travel across systems.
Johan Kylander presented Finland's national long-term digital preservation services at CSC — Finland's IT Center for Science. Such infrastructure represents a further opportunity for communities: the computing capacity for sovereign, community-accessible hosting already exists, but bringing it within reach of smaller actors requires political willingness to fund it as shared public infrastructure.
Beyond the infrastructure initiatives, the Open Culture Fair also featured a rich mix of projects, workshops, and demonstrations. Connor Benedict presented the Wikimedia Content Partnerships Hub. Vertti Luostarinen showed Layers in the Peace Machine, an immersive installation at Oulu City Hall using open-source AI and community memories. Lù Chén shared her work pluralising the Nokia Design Archive through social remembering. Hanna Sipos facilitated a workshop on the valuation of AI art. Ewen Chardronnet presented Makery's publications on art, science, and technology. Andrew Paterson hosted the first in-person meeting of the Open Latitudes network, and Matti Hakamäki conducted a hands-on session on Culture as Sustainable Development Goal 18.
North is OK
Oulu Löyly brought new energy to Nordic and Baltic collaboration. It marked the launch of OK North, a new initiative bringing together open knowledge organizations from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, and Sweden to collaborate and share resources.
The event also coincided with the Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting 2026, and brought the participants together for a joint webinar and meetup.
To top it all off, at the opening of Oulu Löyly, Wikimedia Finland announced that Finnish Wikipedians had been honored with the State Award for Public Information. Congratulations, Finnish Wikipedia!
👉 Read the Finland report about the Northern Europe Wikimedia meetup.
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Sauna raft Kesän sauna at the Oulu Sauna Festival
Think & do with mind & body
The first day of the Open Culture Fair with talks, demos and workshops concluded at the Oulu Sauna Festival where more than ten temporary saunas lined the Oulu River.
The sunny Northern evening featured a rich program of activities, including Naked Truth sauna dialogues, a format that combines the friendly, equal, and respectful atmosphere of the sauna with the Erätauko method for constructive dialogue. The format was envisioned for Tartu's European Capital of Culture program in 2025 as a Finnish-Estonian collaboration.
What came out
Next morning, the participants of the Think & Do organized in groups based on shared concerns about heritage at risk. Each group then worked to agree on a shared mission statement and agreed on the output.
The Oral-to-Written project addressed how fluent speakers of Saami and other under-resourced languages can contribute knowledge without needing to be fluent writers, surfacing language trauma, trust, and technical barriers as equally important as infrastructure.
The May the Source Be With You group took up the reuse question directly, proposing transparency mechanisms — provenance, attribution, and bot identification — so that communities and institutions can trace how their openly shared materials are used, including by AI systems. Open cultural heritage depends on infrastructure that communities can actually use.
The SPECS for Low-Tech Infra for Communities project examined how small community organizations can build and sustain archives with low-cost, low-threshold tools — mapping practical “slots” of infrastructure rather than imposing institutional systems.
The ORLA — the Open Resource & Learning Assistant group created a self-assessment tool to help institutions identify their next steps toward open access. The working prototype was built using Claude.
ORLA combines the self-assessment tool with an AI-powered bot that guides users toward relevant resources and can help generate a project plan for moving from closed to open collections. The self-assessment works independently without additional services, while the bot requires an API key. Both are available on GitHub.
Open Latitudes is an ongoing one-year transdisciplinary network exploring solar-human relations across the Nordic and Baltic region, connected to the Liepāja 2027 European Capital of Culture program. The network brings together organizations working with local archives, community art, open knowledge, and environmental themes — including Pikene på Brøn from Norway, Imagining Godzilla from Finland, Makery from France, and a knitwear design project by Kerolaina Bula from Latvia. The case example at Oulu Löyly asked how open knowledge and heritage can be part of contemporary and hybrid arts production, with each partner exploring connections to Wikimedia platforms and Creative Commons licensing.
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May the Source Be With You implementation journey -
What? – So what? – Now what? -
SPECS for Low-Tech Infra for Communities documentation -
ORLA questionnaire
Our recommendations
We have pulled together a set of recommendations that are hosted in the original version of the blog post in the Open Knowledge Finland blog. They encapsulate what was discussed but may be refined over time to better reflect all discussions.
🛡️ Treat open knowledge as critical infrastructure
📚 Support culture and heritage in order to nurture resilient societies
🤝 Build sustained translocal cooperation
🕸️ Design federated, interoperable knowledge systems
☁️ Invest in sovereign, open cloud infrastructure
📝 Secure heritage custodians flexible reuse rights
⚖️ Strengthen culture's place in global policy
Documentation
All presentations and work is documented on the Documentation page. It includes
- Talks and discussions with links to presentations and recordings. The captions of the recordings have been proofread, so they can be watched in other languages as well.
- Think & Do projects with links to slides, recordings of the presentation, project pages on wiki and additional resources.
- The recordings are published on AvoinGLAM’s YouTube channel. Subscribe to stay updated!
- Openly licensed photos may be added to the joint Google photo album or a Wikimedia Commons category.
- The Pinboard and the podcast are works-in-progress. There was not enough time to create a representative collection of works highlighting these questions on the Pinboard or interview enough people to produce the podcast series. We intend to continue work with them outside the event documentation. They will be linked from the Documentation page when the time is right, and the podcast videos will feature on AvoinGLAM’s YouTube page.
Thank you!
Oulu Löyly was organized by AvoinGLAM and Open Knowledge Finland in partnership with Creative Commons, Wikimedia Finland, Wikimedia Eesti, Wikimedia Sverige, Wikitongues, and Anarâškielâ servi.
Special shoutout to the team who made the event happen: Sophea, Juliaana, Niina, Joy, Liisi, Marja, Tea, Teemu, Tochi, Tove, and Susanna and the Oulu2026 volunteers!
The Nordic Council of Ministers supports the OK North network initiative and its partners OpenDenmark, Creative Commons Norway, Open Knowledge Estonia, Open Knowledge Sweden ja Creative Commons Sweden from the Demos program.
Thank you for collaboration, Open Knowledge Foundation, Oulu Central Library Saari, Oulu Sauna Festival, Cafe Tarina, Luckan Uleåborg and Green Soul Catering.
The event was made possible with support from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Oulu Löyly was part of the official program of Oulu2026 – Cultural Capital of Europe and the International Archives Week.
#oululoyly #oululöyly #oulu2026 #IAW2026
New articles
This is the twentieth monthly report of the ongoing work to improve the representation of the UNESCO Memory of the World international register on Wikimedia projects. This is supported and fully funded by the Khalili Foundation, with the involvement of UNESCO and Wikimedia UK.
I have done some work this month updating and improving the draft paper about the MoW open data set. That work is ongoing.
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New articles
- Mongolian Wikipedia now has a short overview article of the Memory of the World programme.
- Slovene: Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk
- Afrikaans Nebra Sky Disk
View statistics
The Massviews tool reports 3,222,478 views in June on English Wikipedia pages that link to the Memory of the World International Register.
Image view statistics: the Commons Analytics server reports 149,661,281 views of images related to the register. Due to imperfect image tagging, this is only roughly accurate.
July's GLAM events
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