GLAM/Newsletter/March 2025/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume XV, Issue III, March 2025

Albania report • Argentina report • Belgium report • Brazil report • Czech Republic report • France report • Italy report • Netherlands report • New Zealand report • Nigeria report • Poland report • Switzerland report • UK report • USA report • Biodiversity Heritage Library report • Memory of the World report • Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report • Calendar

WikiGap in Albania 2025, and essential initiatives for free knowledge

By Vyolltsa

WikiGap Tirana in 2025

For the 8th year, on March 4, 2025, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group (WoALUG) organized the WikiGap Tirana bringing together 10 participants to improve the representation of women on Albanian Wikipedia. This year, contributors wrote and expanded articles about Albanian women from the 1920s to the 1940s highlighting their historical impact.

This event was organized in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Albania and the General Directorate of Archives in Tirana allowing contributors to have access to historical material and information to enrich the articles. We had the honor to have the Swedish Ambassador, Niklas Ström along with two guest speakers to speak about the gender gap in society.

The guest speakers: Etleva Sheshi, Director of the Gender Equality Department at the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, and Ines Leskaj, Executive Director of the Albanian Women Empowerment Network, spoke about gender equality policies in Albania and discussed the importance of closing the gender gap in knowledge representation.

Participants learned how to edit Wikipedia and created and improved articles to increase the presence of women in Albanian history on the platform.

I edit Wikipedia 2025: Improving articles on the Albanian Wikipedia

The I Edit Wikipedia 2025 campaign brought together a group of contributors to increase content quality on Albanian Wikipedia both from Albania and Kosovo. 12 editors were encouraged to edit and improve 73 and created 2 new articles, focusing on topics related to Wikipedia editing and content improvement.

To train new contributors, we invited the community to participate in three online meetings to learn basic editing practices. These meetings aimed to support newcomers, increase engagement, and encourage them to increase the quality of articles.

By reviewing, expanding, and adding references, participants strengthened the reliability of Albanian Wikipedia as a valuable knowledge platform.

Social media

We have a public channel on WhatsApp of Albanian Language if you want to join and discuss Wikimedia projects.

If you want to see more about our activities, you can:

Like our Facebook page, follow us on formerly Twitter or X or Instagram.

Archives and Human Rights activities

By Angie Cervellera

Archivos en Vigilia

Wikimedia Argentina and Archivo Histórico de Universidad de La Plata, in collaboration with Wikimedia Brasil and Wikimedia Mexico, launched for the 5th consecutive year "Archivos en Vigilia" activity. This initiative reaffirms the political and cultural value of archives in society and their key role in safeguarding human rights.

During the month of March, professionals, researchers, and activists participated in panels, discussions, and workshops about open access to information and the release of documents related to dictatorships in Argentina and Latin America. Afterwards, they received personalized technical and policy support until March 23, the date on which all the documents were finally released under open licencies.

The total number of files uploaded in this edition is 283, totaling 545 documents, including administrative records such as files, resolutions, and judgments; photographs of current archives and memorial spaces; and photographs from 1960 to 1980 in Argentina.

As regards regional participation, Wikimedia Brazil, in partnership with the National Archives of Brazil, shared a collection of approximately 232 documents related to the period of the Brazilian dictatorship: the BR DFANSBS IE collection of the Center for Foreign Information (CIEX), covering the years 1966 to 1985. The CIEX was an intelligence service linked to the National Information Service, whose existence was only confirmed in 2007. Wikimedia Mexico, through one of their partners, shared 107 documents that were used by the Mexican government in the investigations of the Historical Clarification Mechanism (MEH) of the Truth Commission, and in the preparation of the report "Fue el Estado 1965-1990." This report focused on 11 groups of victims of serious human rights violations, including the case of José Francisco Rivera Carvajal and the Tecla Parra family, which were uploaded via Archivos en Vigilia campaign.

We thank a lot our regional partners as well as the local ones who made this possible: Archivo Histórico from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (directed by Laura Casareto, who co-organizes this activity), Archivo Histórico from Liceo V. Mercante Zulma Totis, Historical Documental Heritage area from Colegio Nacional, Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Espacio de Memoria "Escuelita de Famailla" and Shailili Zamora Aray (who shared pictures taken inside the Casa de la Memoria in Sáenz Peña, Chaco).

We invite you to spread the word through this video, so more and more people can be part of Archivos en Vigilia next year!

International Women's Day, Wikipedia officially recognised as Digital Public Good and invitation for the General Assembly

By Caren Vervaeke

News from Wikimedia Belgium.

Successful Wikipedia writing sessions in honour of International Women's Day

On 10 and 11 March 2025, several heritage organisations and enthusiastic volunteers in Flanders participated in Wikipedia writing sessions on the occasion of International Women's Day. These initiatives were aimed at increasing the visibility of women on Wikipedia. Currently, less than a quarter of biographical articles are about women.

Some highlights of the sessions:

Antwerp (Museum Plantin-Moretus): The Letterenhuis organised a session aimed at bringing more women out of the shadows of history.
Library of Bruges: on women and heritage in Bruges or West Flanders.
Ghent (meemoo): Participants wrote about various women to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia.
Ghent (Industriemuseum): The focus was on female business leaders, engineers or technicians who did not make it into the history books despite their influential role.
Leuven (KADOC-KU Leuven): In collaboration with CEMPER, the focus was on women in music and performing arts.
Erfgoedcel Waasland, City Archive Sint-Niklaas and Bibliotheca Wasiana: The focus was on highlighting women in local history, from beguines to artists and resistance women.

These joint efforts have led to a significant enrichment of Wikipedia with articles on influential women, making their contributions to society more visible.

Results
Location	# added pages	# editors	# recent edits
Antwerp	11	22	633
Bruges	9	11	36
Ghent (meemoo)	12	11	224
Ghent (Industriemuseum)	3	6	35
Leuven	33	21	453
Sint-Niklaas	22	15	357

Want to read more about these results? You can do so here!

We thank all participants and organisations for their efforts and look forward to future initiatives to further strengthen the representation of women in our digital knowledge resources.

And last but not least, we also give you a look behind the scenes.

Example page of an article.
Group photo of the volunteers and organisation in Sint-Niklaas.
Museum Plantin-Moretus.
Sint-Niklaas.
Women in Industry.

Wikipedia officially recognised as Digital Public Good

Did you know that Wikipedia is now recognised as an official Digital Public Good? An important milestone: the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a UN-backed initiative, has added Wikipedia to the Register of Digital Public Goods. This means Wikipedia is recognised worldwide as an open-source solution that contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Wikipedia plays a crucial role in promoting knowledge and inclusiveness and officially contributes to the following SDGs:

SDG 4 - Quality education
SDG 5 - Gender equality
SDG 10 - Reduced inequality
SDG 16 - Peace, justice and strong institutions
SDG 17 - Partnerships for the goals

This recognition underlines the importance of free knowledge for all and motivates us to continue building an inclusive, accessible and reliable source of information.

Read more about how this recognition strengthens our work and increases Wikipedia's impact worldwide here!

Wikimedia Belgium General Assembly

Dear members and supporters,

We cordially invite you to the General Assembly of Wikimedia Belgium on Saturday the 10th of May 2025, from 14:00 to 18:00, at Amazone in Brussels.

During this meeting, we look back on the past year, discuss future projects and strategic plans, and have the opportunity for questions and ideas. This is an excellent opportunity to help think about the future of our association and connect with other members. Confirming your presence is mandatory.

Every Book Its Reader is coming

By Sandra Soster & Juliana Cunha

As we told in our April 2023 and April 2024 reports, Every Book Its Reader (#EveryBookItsReader) is a global campaign to increase quality content about books and writers in Wikimedia platforms, specially Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. The campaign name is the third of the Ranganathan’s five laws of library science. In Brazil, the campaign is organized by Lilian Viana (Library of FMS/USP) and Stela Madruga (Library of IME/USP), with Wikimedia Brasil's support.

In celebration of the month of books, for this 2025's edition, we gathered this campaign and the first day of community meetings throughout Brazil. On April 5th, we will bring together people in some municipalities across the country. Libraries, cultural centers, museums and cafés will welcome experienced Wikipedians and newcomers to celebrate writers and their works.

See the results from recent years:

Year	Active editors	Articles created	Articles edited	Bytes added
2023	14	26	1,043	349,875
2024	200	252	21,9K	19,2M

Workshop "Unraveling Wikibase, Empowering Library Collection Management"

On March 27, Wikimedia Brasil, Wikimedia Portugal, and the NOVA SBE Library to showcase the potential of Wikibase in transforming how libraries can manage and share their data online. The online workshop highlighted the power of Wikibase in library collection management and also data visualization. The workshop was aimed at librarians, archivists, information professionals, and others interested in open data and semantic technologies.

Éder Porto (Wikimedia Brazil) presented the Theoretical Foundations of Wikidata and Wikibase, while Daniel Gonçalves (NOVA SBE) shared the Practical Case of the NOVA SBE Library, which already uses Wikibase to manage its collections.

See the slides presented during the workshop (only in Portuguese), WMB's Wikimedia and Libraries Campaign, and WMB's Lusophone GLAM Campaign.

New partnership with Museu da Imagem e do Som do Rio de Janeiro

We have signed one new GLAM partnership in the city of Rio de Janeiro: the "Museu da Imagem e do Som do Rio de Janeiro" (Museum of Image and Sound of Rio de Janeiro, MIS-RJ) has become a GLAM partner of Wikimedia Brasil.

MIS-RJ was inaugurated on September 3, 1965, as part of the celebrations for the IV Centenary of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The institution pioneered a new genre of audiovisual museum, which soon inspired similar institutions across other Brazilian cities. In addition to establishing itself as a center for music and image documentation, MIS-RJ became an avant-garde cultural hub during the 1960s and 1970s, serving as a meeting point for new ideas, behaviors, and movements.

Through this partnership, the museum will share part of its collection under free licenses. Together, we will promote edit-a-thons, photowalks, and other activities aimed at expanding knowledge about this collection on Wikimedia platforms.

See the Museu da Imagem e do Som do Rio de Janeiro's GLAM page.

New partnership with Federação Brasileira de Associações de Bibliotecários, Cientistas de Informação e Instituições

In March, we also signed one new GLAM partnership with Federação Brasileira de Associações de Bibliotecários, Cientistas de Informação e Instituições (Brazilian Federation of Associations of Librarians, Information Scientists and Institutions, FEBAB), a national institution founded in 1959, whose mission is to defend and promote the development of professions related to libraries in Brazil. This partnership will enable the upload of batches of reliable metadata about Brazilian libraries of various types, as well as expand the dissemination of wiki-related activities among FEBAB’s member associations.

This partnership represents a highlight of the efforts initiated by Wikimedia Brazil at the beginning of 2023 with the creation of the WMB Library Strategic Committee, to expand and improve its performance in terms of GLAM partnerships with librarians in Brazilian territory, as we presented in our April 2023 report.

See the Federação Brasileira de Associações de Bibliotecários, Cientistas de Informação e Instituições's GLAM page and WMB's Wikimedia and Libraries Campaign.

Location of plants of Maranhão

*Caryocar brasiliense* (known as Pequi), one of the species of plants with taxon range uploaded.

As we told in our report of January, 2025 is the year of the State of Maranhão on Wikimedia platforms. Part of the GLAM activities related to this campaign is improve information on State fauna, flora, cultural institutions, events and heritage on Wikidata. In March we've uploaded metadata on 12,294 locations of 4,589 species of plants to Wikidata. The Wikidata Q identifiers already existed, but the majority of them did not have values for taxon range (P9714).

Most of the species in this batch were located in Carolina (796), São Luís (601), Loreto (521), Balsas (488), Caxias (338), Estreito (337), Mirador (310), Barra do Corda (309), Grajaú (279), Santa Luzia (208). The batch was composed of 2,437 Fabaceae, 766 Poaceae, 438 Bignoniaceae, 423 Cyperaceae, 392 Asteraceae, 364 Rubiaceae, 360 Euphorbiaceae, 321 Apocynaceae, 310 Annonaceae, 293 Myrtaceae.

See the Wiki Loves Maranhão campaign.

Archivos en vigília

In 2024, as presented in our report, Wikimedia Brasil joined the campaign Archivos en vigília: por la Verdad, los Derechos y el Acceso a la información organized by Wikimedia Argentina with the Archivo Histórico UNLP (La Plata University) to advocate for the opening of archives, specially related to Memory and Democracy, because on the March 24th (the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice) in allusion to the victims of military dictatorship. The campaign was composed of one online panel and one upload activity.

In 2025, we keep this important partnership. For this campaign, our GLAM partner National Archives shared a fund of documents related to the period of Brazilian dictatorship: BR DFANBSB IE - Centro de Informações do Exterior. Wikimedia Brasil uploaded 232 archives from 1966 to 1985.

Among them we would like to talk about international relationship between Brasil and Argentina:

Above you may see one piece of news uploaded for this campaign where you may read:

“

In January 1969, the ORGANIZATION OF FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLES OF LATIN AMERICA (OAPAL), based in Montreal, Canada, sent a message of congratulations to the government of Fidel Castro on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

The organization expressed “its confidence that the Cuban Revolution will once again show the path that the exploited and oppressed peoples of the Latin American continent must follow to put an end to the oppression of North American imperialism and its native puppet exploiters.”

”

The Centro de Informações do Exterior (CIEX or Ciex), whose archive has been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, was an intelligence service of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, linked to the National Information Service. It was created in 1966 during the Castelo Branco administration. CIEX was so secretive that it did not appear in the official structure of the Government. Its existence was only confirmed in 2007, during President Lula’s second term. Until 1975, CIEX operated under the guise of the Foreign Policy Documentation Advisory Office (ADOC), in Room 410 on the fourth floor of Annex I of the Itamaraty Palace. It was dismantled with the end of the dictatorship in 1985.

Each uploaded file is a PDF document containing various pieces of news classified as "confidential" by the Brazilian government during the country’s military dictatorship. The files include OCR, making it possible to search their contents.

See Centro de Informações do Exterior Fund and all the media uploded from National Archives.

Africa Hour

In the end of February, Wiki in Africa gathered speakers from Switzerland, Brazil (Wikimedia Brasil's GLAM and Culture Manager), Cameroon, and Nigeria to talk about decolonizing knowledge on Wikipedia. Participants emphasized the role of collaborative projects in giving visibility to lesser-known stories, including oral traditions and regional cultural practices. Digitization efforts, local content creation, and the documentation of traditional knowledge were identified as key strategies to preserve and share perspectives still underrepresented online. One of the main takeaways was the importance of strengthening connections between GLAM institutions and Wiki projects to expand access to the vast cultural heritage that remains largely offline. The conversation highlighted how platforms like Wikipedia can help local communities tell their own stories, promoting a more accurate representation of traditions, memories, and knowledge that have historically been marginalized by Eurocentric narratives.

See the video on Wiki in Africa's Youtube channel and WMB's Lusophone GLAM Campaign.

Former GLAM-Wiki Manager

BTW: April 2025 marks my final month as Wikimedia Brasil’s GLAM and Culture Manager.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to every member of the WMB team and to all our institutional partners for the invaluable exchanges and collaborative efforts over these past years in a role that, as some have kindly said, seemed tailor-made for me.

Over the course of three years, we established 40 new partnerships across 10 Brazilian states, facilitated the upload of hundreds of thousands of items, and created countless meaningful and memorable moments.

I remain convinced that GLAM and Wiki are a perfect match. I leave this position with enduring admiration for the GLAM-Wiki ecosystem and sincere affection for each and every one of WMB’s GLAM partners.

Although stepping down from this role, I will continue contributing as a volunteer—serving as a Portuguese Wikipedia administrator, a heavy user of Wikimedia Commons, and a dedicated contributor to both Wikidata and Wikisource.

Let us remain steadfast in our mission to preserve and disseminate every fragment, voice, and nuance of our country’s stories, cultures, and collective memory.

See you around the Wiki universe.

New Horizons of Czech GLAM Partnerships in 2025

By Pavel Bednařík

Czech Television and Czech Radio to become partners od WMCZ projects

Czech Television and Czech Radio are going through substantial discussion regarding their status as public service media and financial support. Partnership with Wikimedia Czech Republic opened at the end of 2024 and flourishing in 2025 help them to advocate their crucial role. Project extinguished bells, which evolved from Czech Radio research, is bringing 90 exclusive sounds of church bells vanished during WWII available through Wikimedia Commons. This project is a new start for our future cooperation, which opens up topic, such as selected shows available under CC licences or photos of personalities related to history and current positions in Czech Radio. Czech Television becomes partner for even more crucial partnership, which will be discussed as part of Wiki Loves Broadcast initiative during spring 2025.

Archivist Forum 2025

By Xavier Cailleau WMFr

Archivist Forum 2025

We took part in the national forum of archivists held every 3 years. This year's edition, which attracted almost 1,000 participants, took place last Friday in Rennes, and was an opportunity to present the Label Culture Libre and the open content initiative from the Archives de Vaucluse. The latter have opened their collections under a free license and are now contributing to Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. They are the first departmental archives to be awarded the Culture Libre label!

With this type of presentation, we hope to encourage as many archive services in France as possible to implement open content and collaborative digital policies.

Ten winners of Wikimedia Italia 2025 GLAM call

By Marta Arosio

The ten selected projects stand out for their diversity and their significant contribution to the preservation and sharing of culture through digital resources. Among them are initiatives focused on digitizing scientific materials, historical archives, period documents, theatrical heritage, astronomical content, and promoting local history.

The historical educational charts of Sapienza

The Museum of Comparative Anatomy “G.B. Grassi” at Sapienza University of Rome will digitalize and upload to Wikimedia Commons one hundred scientific educational charts from its collection. Hand-drawn between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these charts were essential teaching tools for natural sciences. This project represents a key step in preserving and enhancing the accessibility of this documentary heritage.

Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa

The Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa holds over one million specimens across zoology, mineralogy, and paleontology collections, many stored in areas not open to the public. The project aims to enhance this heritage by making images with captions of selected specimens available under open access licenses. A professional photographic campaign will support the initiative. In 2024, Wikimedia Italia had already funded a project by the same museum, which enabled the 3D scanning of more than 50 models of modern and fossil cetacean skeletons, displayed in the Whale Gallery and other zoological and paleontological exhibits. These digitized files now receive over 2 million views per month.

The entomological treasures of the Lanzo Valleys

Another scientific project comes from the “Arnaldo Tazzetti” Alpine Civic Museum in Usseglio (TO), which will digitize a large butterfly collection from the Lanzo Valleys and other mountain areas. Comprising around 1,300 specimens, the collection is of great value for biodiversity studies. The images will be published on Wikimedia Commons and integrated into relevant Wikipedia articles. In 2024, the museum also began a local flora study campaign, creating a herbarium of notable botanical and conservation interest, which will likewise be digitized and shared online.

The cartographic heritage of the CNR Library

The Central Library of the National Research Council (CNR) houses a significant cartographic collection, including geomorphological, bathymetric, magnetometric, and hydrogeological maps, as well as maps on seismic activity, precipitation, and biodiversity. The project aims to digitize these materials and make them available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.

Open Astronomy in La Spezia

The Astrofili Spezzini Association (AAS), owner of Osservatorio astronomico Monte Viseggi proposed “Open Astronomy: Free Knowledge for All,” a project dedicated to creating and distributing astronomical content under free licenses. The initiative will enrich Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata with high-quality scientific materials produced by the “Luciano Zannoni” Astronomical Observatory, located on Mount Viseggi.

The Memory of the Resistance – Feltrinelli Archive

On the occasion of the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation, the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation has launched a project to promote the consultation and reading of sources on the Resistance via the Foundation’s website. The initiative includes the full digitization of the Libero Cavalli Archive, which contains over two thousand documents related to the Matteotti Brigades during World War II.

The historical treasure of Alatri

The municipality of Alatri is launching a project to digitize 81 parchments dating from the 13th to 17th centuries, including key documents of local history. Among them is a copy of the parchment statute from 1585–1586. Once digitized, the materials will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, and Wikidata, contributing to the growth of freely accessible historical sources.

The opera heritage of Teatro Regio in Turin

Another key focus of the call is theatrical heritage. The Teatro Regio Foundation of Turin is digitizing its collection of set and costume design sketches. This collection documents the history of Italian opera from 1969 to the present day and will be shared online, providing theatre historians, enthusiasts, and researchers with new insights. A “Wiki-Story,” a documentary-style virtual tour of the Theatre’s archives, will also be created to invite audiences to explore the newly published content.

The culture and traditions of Bari

Since 1995, the Centro Studi Baresi (CSB) has incorporated the Alfredo Giovine Study Center, the Archive of Barese Folk Traditions (A.T.P.B.), and the Section of Apulian Musical Culture, becoming a major hub for collecting and preserving documents and oral/written records on the history, language, and traditions of Bari and Apulia. Since 2018, CSB has collaborated with Wikimedia Italia to publish materials related to Barese history and language online. With its current project, the center plans to acquire the necessary equipment to speed up the digitization and publication process on Wikipedia and Wikimedia platforms, ensuring the preservation and public access to this material.

The legacy of Pietro Gori in Rosignano Marittimo

The Civic Archaeological Museum of Rosignano Marittimo houses the Pietro Gori Archive, containing 832 volumes, including books, drawings, paintings, photographs, memorabilia, magazines, and documents related to the anarchist. On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of his birth (1865–1911), which will be celebrated in Rosignano Marittimo from August 11 to 14, 2025, the municipality aims to promote and enhance this heritage. One of the archive’s most valuable items is the rare journal Criminalogia moderna, published by Gori in Buenos Aires (1898–1901), which addressed topics such as law, sociology, anthropology, and forensic medicine. The Gori Archive is likely the only one in the world with a complete collection of this journal, while online references appear only in Argentina’s National Library “Mariano Moreno” in Buenos Aires, which lacks some of the issues preserved in Rosignano. The project will digitize all 20 issues of the journal to ensure their preservation and online dissemination.

International Womensday; New Wikimedian in Residence at Maastricht University

By Mx Lucy & Romaine

International Womensday

As part of the program for International Women's day the Dutch Gendergap workgroup organised a diverse program on the 8th of March 2025. Host for this event was ‘Nationaal Archief’ (the Dutch national archive). The event was in collaboration with Netwerk Archieven Design en Digitale Cultuur (Network archives design and digital culture).

We organised two parallel sessions:

The workshop Wikipedia for activists. Intersectional feminist Laurier, an active Wikipedian for many years, gave a short introduction into the workings behind the scenes of Wikipedia and what the role of an activist could be. A packed room of interested activists engaged in lively discussions and afterwards worked on Wikipedia articles of their choice.

In the other room the session on fashion and textiles took place. Connoisseurs of Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia alike enjoyed a brief introduction by all round Wikimedian Sandra Fauconnier after which each participant worked on their favorite wikiproject around the subject of textiles and fashion with the assistance of an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers. We look back on a great day on which we collectively closed the gender gap a little bit more.

New Wikimedian in Residence at Maastricht University

In April 2025 Maastricht University has appointed a Wikimedian in Residence (WiR++) who will be working on making more materials from the university available on the various Wikimedia platforms.

The university, founded in 1976, is an international university with many students from abroad and is seen in the Netherlands as an innovative university. Of every five projects that have been carried out with Wikimedia at universities in the Netherlands, four have been due to the efforts of Maastricht University. Since 2014 various activities at the University have been organised. First it began with two Wikipedia users who organised some Wikipedia workshops for the students and the staff, in the years after it was followed by various courses organised by teachers from the university who got guidance and support from various experienced Wikipedia editors. Most of the Wikipedia courses were also supported by the university library, including access to the (special) collections and training and support in finding sources. It has resulted in various Wikipedia articles, but also that more than 3700 images have been donated by the university library which got uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. So far, at three of the six faculties Wikipedia courses have been organised. Now the university takes the collaboration another step further.

It was about a year ago that I was looking for a new challenge what I wanted to do for (paid) work. While I was talking with various people about it, the idea of becoming a Wikimedian in Residence grew and the university where I have supported the various projects in the past decade felt like a good place to do so. The next step was to find the right person to help me bring this idea to reality, as the university is a big organisation I have no experience navigating through. One of the teachers I had worked with in earlier years appeared to be a perfect match. Over the course of multiple months we had several meetings where I explained my ideas of what I would like to do, and he proposed the idea internally at various departments. The idea was welcomed with much enthusiasm, and after budget was found and getting information from Wikipedian in Residence Olaf Janssen at the Royal Library in The Hague, I wrote my own job description where I have put the various things I would like to do.

Some may have noticed that at the end of the function label there are two plusses, this has two reasons. It is my impression that a university can be a bureaucratic organisation in what people easily can get boxed in by other people's expectations and hierarchical structures. Such limitations I would like to avoid as much as possible, being able to think outside the box, to break through internal barriers and to transcend departments. A second reason is that I also have ambitions that are not related to Wikimedia which I want to keep some space for. To accommodate the work I want to do, we have looked at where my main workplace will be from where I can collaborate with the various departments of the university. We have located two departments where I will be settling, of which one of them is the university library. The library often has served in the past 10 years as central hub from where various projects with Wikimedia have been organised.

In the past ten years the largest group of projects with Wikimedia, were Wikipedia assignments done by students: students pick a subject to write about, go search for sources, and based on these sources they write or expand an article, and by doing so they learn to apply academic principles like citing sources. In the future I will keep providing support for these assignments in my new role. Also I will keep uploading files to Commons from the collections with the intention to approach this more structurally. Further I will be making public domain texts available through Wikisource, working on linked open data of the collections, give training and workshops to university staff, and more. I also hope to have in this role more easier access to quality sources for my Wikipedia articles.

During the process of getting this position it was occasionally a struggle, but also university staff loves stroopwafels and those kept them (and the process) running. As said, a crucial role was for the teacher who helped me, I thank him for his fantastic support to make my idea become reality.

What's on at Auckland Museum, and International Women's Day at University of Otago

By Winnieswikiworld & DrThneed

What's on at Auckland Museum

Auckland Museum’s Wikimedian in Residence (User:Winnieswikiworld) has interviewed with a number of New Zealand news outlets about Auckland Museum’s work and engagement with the Wikimedia movement.

RNZ Lates with Emile Donovan about what a Wikimedian in Residence does.
The Post, Wikimedians, unite: The people ensuring NZ’s stories are on Wikipedia by Sapeer Mayron
bFM, as part of their Various Artists with Beth & Sofia segment.

The event programme for the 2025 Auckland Writers Festival has been released, sharing that as part of the Kōrero Corner, User:Winnieswikiworld and User:Dactylantha will be leading a ‘Wikipedia Edit-a-thon – Aotearoa New Zealand Authors Edition’. This event aims to teach participants how to improve articles, add references and even photograph authors and make Wikimedia Commons uploads for their Wikipedia articles. Check out the event details here.

User:Winnieswikiworld has been training Auckland Museum Collection Access Librarians how to edit Wikipedia and how they can utilise resources in the Research Library to add citations and information to Wikipedia. After a Wikipedia 101 training session, the librarians set up their user pages and started to make their first edits!

Auckland Museum has uploaded over 2,100 images from the Auckland Museum Henry Winkelmann Collection to Wikimedia Commons, with 187 images from the collection being used in Wikipedia articles!

International Women's Day at University of Otago

In celebration of International Women’s Day, sixty-four Wikipedia articles on notable women in science have been recently updated, thanks to a small group of mostly-new editors in Ōtepoti Dunedin. On 7 March DrThneed led a group of staff and students at the University of Otago through the basics of editing Wikipedia, with the goal of improving the coverage of women mathematicians, statisticians, physicists. The group spent the morning learning about updating and improving content, researching reliable sources, uploading photos, and adding citations. The edit-a-thon was hosted by the GEMS in STEM at the University of Otago. This marks the first event of hopefully many more at the University.

Another positive outcome of the event was the trial of a behind-the-scenes helper, dubbed the WikiPixie, a role filled by Giantflightlessbirds. While the on-site organiser has their hands full answering questions, the WikiPixie provides remote support by keeping track of the edits as they happen, posting on talk pages to welcome newbies, provide feedback and support, along with monitoring the dashboard and event page.

That afternoon, Radio New Zealand’s Jesse Mulligan got in touch with Tamsin to find out more about the event, her efforts to improve Wikipedia content, and the Women in Red project. You can listen here: "Correcting history, one edit at a time"

GLAM in Africa, a Nigerian narrative in knowledge decolonization a case study of Benin City

By Lutarchitecture

Report on Activities in the African GLAM Space

Through several Wiki projects focused on conserving and disseminating knowledge from the continent's many cultures, the African GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector has continued to develop. The 43rd episode of WikiAfrica Hour, which addressed the topic of decolonizing knowledge on Wikipedia, was one of the pivotal points in this development. Speakers from Switzerland, Brazil, Cameroon, and Nigeria participated in this significant conversation, each contributing their own viewpoints on the prospects and difficulties of knowledge decolonization within the Wikimedia ecosystem. One of the main conclusions from the discussion was the need to fortify ties between GLAM institutions and Wiki projects throughout Africa. Many African museums, libraries, and cultural institutions house vast amounts of knowledge, but much of this content remains inaccessible online. The discussion examined how Wikipedia and other Wiki projects can serve as powerful tools in enabling Africans to tell their own stories, ensuring that local histories, traditions, and perspectives are accurately represented in global digital knowledge repositories. Speakers emphasized the importance of moving away from historically Eurocentric narratives and toward more inclusive, African-centred content to make knowledge more representative and equitable. These organizations can digitize their archives and make them publicly accessible to a worldwide audience by collaborating with Wikimedia projects. This would guarantee that African histories are written by the people who know them best. The conversation also covered how GLAM can give voice to underrepresented stories. Numerous African tales have historically been either left out or inaccurately depicted in popular historical accounts. Contributors are actively attempting to close this gap by recording oral traditions, lesser-known historical individuals, and regional cultural practices through projects like Wiki Loves Africa, AfroCine, and the Open Heritage movement. By giving communities the ability to decide how their stories are shared and presented, these initiatives aim to empower them in addition to conserving history. Projects like oral history projects, digitization of traditional knowledge, and local content creation offer complementary avenues for ensuring that diverse African narratives are recorded and disseminated, and cooperation between academic institutions, cultural institutions, and Wikimedia communities was identified as a key strategy in accomplishing these goals. Off-wiki projects were also emphasized as being essential in supporting decolonization efforts beyond Wikipedia. All things considered, WikiAfrica Hour's 43rd edition provided a forum for lively conversations about decolonizing knowledge and enhancing GLAM institutions' connections with Wikimedia initiatives in Africa. The discussion reaffirmed the notion that online resources such as Wikipedia can be extremely important in correcting historical injustices and guaranteeing that African knowledge is maintained and disseminated by its possessors. To promote a more inclusive and representative digital environment going forward, Wikimedia communities and GLAM institutions must maintain their engagement to strengthen Africa's voice in international knowledge-sharing forums.

For Nigeria, using Benin City as a case study, it was expedient that oral testimonies be given more support, and then partnership with local cultural institutions and press, to help document the oral traditions to readable articles so that they can be cited to enhance validity and reliability. A need for checkmating originality and authenticity of the oral testimonies was a major discourse and the need to verify that the testify or orator has ties to the Heritage or cultural matter being discussed was of great concern affirming that they are locals and have tied to the cultural cum indigenous practice of the place is expedient.

What's up in GLAM in Poland

By Kamila Neuman

Presentation on GLAM-Wiki at the national “Marketing in Culture” Conference

Kamila Neuman, Open Culture Manager at Wikimedia Polska, gave a talk on March 12 in Gdańsk during the nationwide conference Marketing in Culture.

This was the 10th edition of the event, which enjoys great popularity among representatives of cultural institutions from all over Poland.

Kamila presented a talk titled: More than Social Media – How Wikipedia Helps Cultural Institutions Promote Digital Resources, or Everything You Didn't Know About GLAM-Wiki.

Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the internet and yet is often overlooked in the promotional strategies of cultural institutions. But should it be?

During her presentation, Kamila demonstrated why Wikipedia – although not a traditional marketing tool – can be significantly more effective than social media.

Participants learned how cultural institutions can use Wikipedia to increase the visibility of their collections and fulfill their mission by reaching a broader audience.

More than 500 people attended the conference, both in person and online. Kamila’s presentation was a great opportunity to share with a wider audience an often-overlooked but essential insight: Wikipedia can be a more powerful content marketing tool for heritage institutions than popular social media platforms.

Kamila also referenced research conducted by the Swedish Museums Association, which confirms the effectiveness of museum presence on Wikipedia. You can find the link to this research here.

WikiChełmoński – A Preview of the Editing Campaign during Wikimedia conference in Lublin

During the annual Wikimedia conference held at the end of March in Lublin, Marta Tomczak from the the National Museum in Poznań led a workshop titled “WikiChełmoński: Nature Through the Master’s Brush”. The event focused on the work of Józef Chełmoński – one of the most prominent Polish realist painters and a sensitive observer of nature.

Participants took part in a quiz, a sound-based challenge, and exercises on describing artworks within Wikimedia projects. The session offered an inspiring atmosphere and made use of museum resources and multimedia materials.

The workshop also served as a preview of the WikiChełmoński editing campaign, launching on April 9. This initiative is a joint effort by the the National Museum in Poznań, the the National Museum in Krakow and Wikimedia Polska, accompanying exhibitions of Chełmoński’s works in both institutions.

Switzerland report

By Medea7 WMCH

GLAM on Tour Canton's Library Aargau

Librarian Nicolas Sartori is part of the GLAM Wiki Group of WMCH. After several project presentations and with curiosity he was interested to host a GLAM-on-Tour event at the Canton's Library Aargau where he works. The canton's library is located in Aarau which was the Swiss municipal city before Berne. Swiss history has been written and archived in the town near Zurich. The aim of the editathon was to write on specific Aargau history topics as well as on the women from Aargau whose biografies have been disregarded in the past. Nicolas organized it together with Melissa Flück who is responsible for the volunteer programme at the library. For a talk on the history of women scientist Ruth Wiederkehr was invited to talk on personalities from Aargau showing her publications with all the sources she found. The results of the ediatathon can be found here.

GRADE Conference

In March 2025 the GRADE conference in Belgrade addressed questions on the future of Digital Europe. GRADE means Grassroots of Digital Europe. Grassroot movements are deeply democratic movements in the sense that they have no economic purposes. In the early digital days lots of different movements have been growing as also the Wiki movement that might be the biggest one. Women played a marginalized role since the development of persona computing. As viisual movement the Demoscene has been featured that is now regognized as official Unesco cultural heritage. The full programme of the conference is here.

Project Line Matrimoine

Collecting memorials of women is quite difficult as women have been left out from history until the 20th century. Still some women do have memorials that might be difficult to discover but they do exist. With the project line called Matrimoine we focus on women biographies and female memorials. Find the project page here. The artist Frauke Beeck travels through Switzerland and already found 30 women memorials. User:Elena Ternovaja fotographed memorials on women in Basel, you find them here. Writing women biographies is the goal of several Meetups. Neocomensia organized an editathon on the women from Neuchâtel where articles were created in French and German, find here further informations. With the general project line called Matrimoine we focus on women biographies and female memorials. Find the umbrella project page here.

Gold in Bengali and Diversity in Arabic

By MartinPoulter

Khalili Foundation

Most of the time this month has been spent on the UNESCO Memory of the World project, which has a separate monthly report.

The new article Samurai Shokai passed Did You Know review. The DYK hook went live on the front page of English Wikipedia for 24 hours on 24 March, getting 6,633 views on the article.

We have had our first translation into Bengali. Volunteer Kuwu Palak translated the Mahmal article into this language, making it the 68th new article created related to the Khalili Collections and the 16th language into which my English articles have been translated. Less related to this project, but Bengali Wikipedia also has a new article about gold dinars, whose lead image is a Khalili Collections coin uploaded as part of this project. Arabic Wikipedia has a new article on the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity which is a partial translation of an English article that is mostly my work.

The stats server reports 6,127,363 image views in March.

Interfaith Explorers

I added two new pages to the Interfaith Explorers educational website, and made improvements to a few others. The two added pages were links to videos in the Crash Course series (on Judaism and on Islam), each accompanied with a list of links to pages about concepts mentioned in the video. The Crash Course references list includes some sources of free text that can be used in future to improve Interfaith Explorers.

Cairo Genizah

I continued my first, cautious steps in improving the on-wiki representation of Cambridge University Library's Cairo genizah manuscripts. Having created new Wikidata items for the Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection, Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection, and the book The Illustrated Cairo Genizah, I improved the items for Taylor-Schechter 16.320, Kievian Letter, Taylor-Schechter 12.182, and Schechter Letter. One outcome is that when I ask Wikidata for objects in the Taylor-Schecter Collection, is gives me this image gallery which is small but a start.

There was one new image upload this month (above), which shows the presentation of the first Commonwealth Peace Prize to Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammad Ashafa.

Women's History month

By Slowking4

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Wikimedia DC, held a online edit-a-thon, DCCAH WHM Edit-a-thon

USF Women's History Month

Tennessee State University and University of South Florida University and Wikimedia DC, USF Women's History Month Edit-a-thon 2025.

Women in the Artists’ Academy in Rome

National Gallery of Art with support from Wikimedia DC held a Meetup, Updating Art History Edit-a-thon.

Georgetown University Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for Women’s History Month

Georgetown University and Wikimedia DC held a Meetup, Georgetown University Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for Women's History Month 2025

Enhancing the Discoverability of Women’s History

The Smithsonian Institution and Wikimedia DC held an edit-a-thon, SI Enhancing the Discoverability of Women’s History 2025.

SAWHM WMDC edit-a-thon slides

NMWA WHM edit-a-thon

National Museum of Women in the Arts and Wikimedia DC held an edit-a-thon, NMWA WHM edit-a-thon 2025.

DC Preservation League

DC Preservation League and Wikimedia DC held an edit-a-thon, DC Preservation League WHM 2025.

Women's History Month Editing Workshop at the Ebell

Ebell of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Wikimedians held a workshop, Women's History Month Editing Workshop at the Ebell.

Wiki Gala 2025

Wikimedia NYC held a Meetup, Wiki Gala 2025.

Wikicurious Pi Day SXSW

Wikicurious Wikimedians held a Meetup, Wikicurious Pi Day SXSW 2025

Pacita Rudder at SXSW

Editing the Open Data Garden

Farming Concrete, and Wikimedia NYC held a Meetup, Editing the Open Data Garden.

WikiPortraits Studio at SXSW

WikiPortraits held a Studio at SXSW, WikiPortraits Studio at SXSW 2025

Max Gordon at SXSW
Veronika Kindred at SXSW
Rebecca MacKinnon at SXSW

NARWHAL

North American Regional Wiki Hub and Lab held a Meetup, NARWHAL/March 2025

BHL-Wiki Working Group March monthly highlights

By Ambrosia10

Agenda, notes & recording of the March 2025 meeting

The agenda for the meeting can be found at this link. The agenda document gives notes taken during the meeting, action items, as well as the dates of future online meetings and the zoom link to join. Links to the recordings of the previous meetings are also given.

The next BHL wiki working group is anticipated to be held on Monday 21st of April at 18:00 UTC.

Copyright statements

A detailed discussion was had amongst the group concerning copyright statements on BHL files in Wikimedia Commons. The current BHL copyright statement stance for publications on its website was outlined, the history of BHL on Flickr and the copyright statements of images originally uploaded onto that platform and then subsequently uploaded into Wikimedia Commons was explained.

The working group agreed that best practice guidelines around copyright data in Wikimedia Commons for BHL images was needed. JJ Dearborn, the BHL Data Manager, was to add a ticket concerning this piece of work to the working group’s GIThub scrum board. Once the best practice guidelines have been created and agreed to by the group, the intention is to post them to the BHL Meta page and the BHL Wikimedia Commons page.

The group agreed that where editors come across inconsistencies between the copyright statements on BHL and those statements on BHL sourced images in Wikimedia Commons, editors should investigate and update statements where and when we can.

Biodiversity User Group

The group again discussed the creation of a Biodiversity User Group on Wiki. Jake Orlowitz explained that we could easily establish a user group right now but members have to commit to a longer running engagement. Jake and Tiago Lubiana agreed to meet to discuss the potential for Tiago to assist with the administrative tasks needed to establish a user group during his tenure as the BHL Wikimedian in Residence.

BHL Wikimedian in Residence update

Tiago, the BHL Wikimedian in Residence, recently updated the BHL Wiki community on the progress he continues to make in his role. See his biweekly updates at this link.

At this meeting Tiago asked for feedback on a new tool he has created for BHL images. See this link for the tool.

Tiago also shared that the updated BHL creator id dataset has now been placed in the mix’n’match tool under the name Biodiversity Heritage Library Creator. Tiago has also streamed as session showing how to use the tool.

Three outreach events planned

Three outreach events are currently being organised by Giovanna Fontenelle from the Wikimedia Foundation and Tiago, the BHL Wikimedian in residence. These edit-a-thons aim to add images from the South American and African collections of the BHL collection, enriched with Commons structured data, to the Spanish, French and Portuguese Wikipedia. More information on these events can be found via the BHL Meta-Wiki page.

Best practice document for using BHL identifiers

Feedback is requested on this best practice document.

Manuscripts of Mali

By MartinPoulter

This is the sixth 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.

The Register on English Wikipedia

I have improved Memory of the World Register – Asia and the Pacific, Memory of the World Register – Africa, Memory of the World Register – International Organizations, Memory of the World Programme, and Memory of the World Register – Europe and North America. This has involved replacing many broken links and adding missing inscriptions (usually those that were accepted in 2023). The Europe and North America list is now updated, but there are still some locations to add and the numbers in the early part of the article need updating. Before this project, there were 565 links from English Wikipedia to the old site https://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/ (links that are now broken). This has been reduced to 124.

Image uploads

It has been difficult to find images to illustrate the African inscriptions, but this month I made some progress. Three Arabic manuscripts from Mali were inscribed on the international register in 2023. I created Wikidata items for each to represent the author, literary work, and manuscript. The UNESCO International Centre for Documentary Heritage had a public domain image for A reminder to those who do not pay attention to the harms caused by the divergence between believers so I uploaded that. The World Digital Library (hosted by Library of Congress) had a complete digitisation of Book of Healing from internal and external diseases affecting the body. Rather than upload all 506 images to Commons, I chose the ten most visually interesting and added them to a new Commons category with its own infobox. One image from this manuscript had already been uploaded by another user.

New articles by volunteers

Richard Nevell at Wikimedia UK has been in touch with a volunteer who is translating Wikipedia articles. Richard and I created a list of suggestions of articles relating to Memory of the World. This has resulted in a Spanish article on Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk, translated from the English. Thanks to user VeritatisAmans!

The Spanish article is one of nine new articles created by volunteers:

Page views on Wikipedia

This link shows the popularity (views by humans) of English Wikipedia articles about the Memory of the World programme and International Register (not articles about the individual inscriptions). Following the "All languages" links and summing the numbers, we get 19,487 page views.

Creating an OpenRefine Wikimedia Group

By Giovanna Fontenelle (WMF)

OpenRefine asked our team (Culture and Heritage) to publish on This Month in GLAM about a possible development of their engagement with the Wikimedia projects.

In a recent update on their forum and on Meta-Wiki, OpenRefine announced that they are planning to create a Wikimedia user group.

The justification for this decision would be that, even though OR has received funding from the Wikimedia Foundation in the past – including two to work on Structured Data on Commons –, the WMF grants process has changed and will be focusing more on affiliates from now on.

OpenRefine has stated that: “Creating a Wikimedia Group would formalize the relationship that the project has to the wiki-movement, while allowing us access to a much-needed funding stream.”

OpenRefine has been an important tool for Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. It also has a presence on Meta-Wiki, a dedicated Wikimedia Telegram Group, and two WikiLearn courses: one about Wikidata and another one about Wikimedia Commons and Structured Data, translated into several languages.

However, to be eligible, the OR user group need follow the user group creation guidelines. Among the requirements, the group needs, at least, three active Wikimedia editors with a total of 500 or more contributions to a Wikimedia project.

To go through the necessary steps, OpenRefine is sharing a few questions:

Would you support the creation of a Wikimedia OpenRefine Group?
What questions or comments do you have about this proposal or process?
Would you like to be a member of the group if it is founded?

If you are interested, check the update on OpenRefine's forum or on this talk page and share your thoughts on those questions there.

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