GLAM/Newsletter/March 2026/Contents/Italy report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue III, March 2026

Italy report

2026 winners projects

Winners of Wikimedia Italia 2026 GLAM Call

The winners of the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) 2026 call by Wikimedia Italy have been selected.

The nine projects chosen this year stand out for the variety of heritage involved and their focus on open access sharing of diverse materials: from theatrical collections to scientific archives, from LGBTQ+ movement archives to children's comics, and up to the enhancement of local urban and museum heritage.

The GLAM call, promoted by Wikimedia Italy in collaboration with ICOM Italy and Creative Commons Italy, supports projects for the digitization, description, and online publication of cultural content under free licenses. It encourages the dissemination of knowledge and the reuse of heritage on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Since 2021, the call has funded numerous initiatives from cultural institutions across Italy, contributing to the growth of open and verified content on Italian cultural heritage. The evaluation committee found the projects submitted by the following institutions particularly worthy of funding:

Fondazione Rosellini for Popular Literature

The Rosellini Foundation in Senigallia is one of the most important organizations in Italy for the preservation and promotion of Italian comics. Its collection includes the complete archive of Corriere dei Piccoli, one of the most influential magazines in the history of Italian children's publishing. The foundation will start digitizing the early issues of Corrierino, specifically those published between 1908 and 1914, up to the beginning of World War I.

Fondazione Teatro Regio di Torino

Following the project realized for the GLAM 2025 call, which focused on digitizing scenic sketches and costume designs, the Teatro Regio of Turin continues opening its heritage with a new initiative centered on the collection of opera librettos.

The collection includes about 6,000 items, dating from the second half of the 1720s to the second half of the 20th century, including librettos related to historically significant world premieres such as Giacomo Puccini's La bohème. The project plans to digitize, catalog, and publish on Wikimedia Commons 600 librettos from the theater’s collection, providing primary sources for the study and research of opera.

Associazione Comitato Mura di Padova APS

The Associazione Comitato Mura di Padova APS, active for over 50 years in the protection and study of the city's fortifications, collected a number of photographs, maps, and historical documents about the walls and the city's hydrographic system. The walls of Padua are the longest Renaissance walls that have survived to the present day.

The proposed project aims to enhance and make part of this heritage accessible online through Wikimedia platforms, including: the publication on Wikimedia Commons of at least 300 historical photographs; 60 original maps; 1 video and 30 drone images; and the transcription on Wikisource of at least one historical publication no longer under copyright. Participatory activities such as wiki-walks and editathons are also planned.

MOS - Movimento Omosessuale Sardo ODV (Queer Political, Cultural, and Social Association of Sardinia)

The MOS - Movimento Omosessuale Sardo ODV, active since 1992 in Sardinia, deals with queer politics, culture, and socialization. Over the years, it has developed the Marilena Sini LGBTQ+ Documentation Center, one of the few Italian libraries specialized in LGBTQ+ topics, now part of the National Library System since 2022.

MOS’s project aims to recover, catalog, and digitize graphic, photographic, and multimedia materials produced by the association over more than 34 years of activity. More than 500 documents will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, including posters, flyers, videos, and audio from campaigns against homo/transphobia and on HIV/AIDS.

Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia

The Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia, together with the Panizzi Library and the scientific library “C. Livi,” will carry out a project to improve the presence and quality of information about Reggio Emilia’s cultural heritage on Wikimedia projects, through the digitization and publication of content from their collections and archives.

Specifically, the project involves producing and publishing about 200 images related to artworks, artifacts, environments, and museum locations on Wikimedia Commons, complete with metadata. It also includes creating or improving about 20 Wikipedia entries and updating about 100 Wikidata items linked to various materials.

A significant part of the project will be dedicated to evaluating the impact of the activities: data on collection usage—requests and contacts from scholars and researchers, visit data—and Wikipedia page views from 2010 to 2025 will be collected and analyzed to verify whether the increase in open content has contributed to greater knowledge of the collections and, indirectly, to increased onsite visits.

A central part will finally be dedicated to public restitution and community engagement through the organization of two editathons with guided tours open to the public, accompanied by a conference presenting the results achieved.

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – University Library System

On the occasion of the publication of the book La città in scena: 1815-1822, which compiles a searchable chronology of events related to Naples’s early 19th-century musical scene, the University Library System of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore intends to translate the content onto Wikidata.

The goal is to create a structured dataset describing events, places, people, works, and institutional contexts.

The project does not involve digitization of images but focuses on producing high-quality, interconnected, citable, and reusable data that can be used to improve Wikipedia entries and link related information.

Museum Hub of the City of Teramo

The Museum Hub of the City of Teramo, which coordinates the Civic Art Gallery and eleven city sites including archaeological areas and urban monuments, will launch a structured campaign to digitize and enhance its heritage.

The project involves producing high-resolution photographs and two-dimensional and three-dimensional photogrammetric surveys, which will be published on Wikimedia Commons with structured metadata linked to Wikidata and OpenStreetMap.

University of Urbino Carlo Bo – University Library Sector

For an exhibition dedicated to Paolo da Middelburg, scheduled for May 2026 at the San Girolamo University Library, the institution plans to fully reconstruct and digitize the scientific legacy of the “Urbino School.”

The project includes digitizing an important ancient scientific collection, dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, composed of printed volumes and handwritten manuscripts.

The works will be fully published on Wikimedia Commons under free licenses, making texts and manuscripts accessible online that were previously available only on-site.

Special attention will be given to extracting and categorizing scientific illustrations—technical diagrams, woodcuts, and engravings—that can be reused to enrich some encyclopedia entries on Wikipedia.

Italian Institute of Germanic Studies

The project by the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies aims to enhance rare materials belonging to the Giuseppe Gabetti Collection, which documents early 20th-century Greenland explorations and scientific relations between Italy and Nordic countries.

The initiative plans to publish a corpus of images on Wikimedia Commons under free licenses, including maps, plates, photographic documentation, portraits of explorers, geographers, scientists, authorities, and watercolor landscapes, accompanied by descriptive metadata and structured data linked to Wikidata.

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