GLAM/Newsletter/May 2021/Contents/Sweden report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XI, Issue V, May 2021

Sweden report

Working with UN Human Rights; Aftermath to the fiddler competition; Music manuscripts from the 18th century; Digital visions; Should museums work with Wikipedia?; Wikidata project with museums has results

Working with UN Human Rights on identifying missing women human rights defenders

For the second year in a row, Wikimedia Sverige worked together with UN Human Rights to identify women human rights defenders that are missing from Wikipedia for the WikiGap Challenge. UN Human Rights proposed 29 names, which yielded bonus points in the challenge. The articles included a catholic nun in Chad, a Syrian journalist, a Ugandan transgender activist, a Senegalese physician, a Roma economist and a Fijian environmentalist. In total, 337 articles were written in 30 languages about these 29 women.

Aftermath to the fiddler competition in Gesunda 1906

Tommos Kerstis vallåt performed by Carl Gustaf Färje on cowhorn

During the workshop together with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, an article was written about the first fiddler competition in Sweden in 1906. A few weeks later, we found a nice suitable photo on a local history page about Sollerö parish and asked about high-resolution versions of the photo to add to the article.

It was a good contact that also led to a continuation of the story when it was revealed that a memorial stone was erected on the site in 1946. In the uploads from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, there are later recordings with Carl Gustaf Färje who played cowhorn at Måstäpp (the place for the feast) on Sunday 2 July 1946 when the memorial stone was erected. C.G. Färje was not attending the competition 1906 as he was born ten years later, but there were perhaps some other musicians and people who witnessed both of these historical events - it may be something to look further into next time!

Music manuscripts from the 18th century

Another highlight from the collections of the Swedish Performing Arts Agency are the digitized manuscripts by Johan Helmich Roman, a composer who lived between 1694 and 1758 and is sometimes called "the father of Swedish music". We have started uploading them to Wikimedia Commons, and they can be found in this category. Over a hundred music books have been uploaded so far. After uploading them as djvu files, which are easy to download and read, we are also going to upload the individual scans of every page. They have very high quality and resolution, so they will provide added value to researchers who want to take a really close look at every ink stain.

Digital visions

In May the Council of Central Museums hosted a workshop to update and take their visions and goals for digitization further. Participation from Wikimedia Sverige made sure they had important issues like free licenses, structured metadata and free knowledge in their minds at all time and included that on their way forward.

Should museums work with Wikipedia?

At the May edition of the National Heritage Board museum panel discussion all three panelists, Klas Grinell (Göteborgs University/Göteborgs museer och konsthall), Anna Jansson (Nationalmuseum) and Carl Heath (Rise), agreed on that museums should do more to share their collections on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia platforms. The question came up as a report by Aron Ambrosiani (Wikipedian and digital guru at the Nordic Museum) showed that material and collections shared on Wikimedia Commons and used on Wikipedia gives a significant increase in the number of views they get. The discussion about Wikipedia is available on youtube (starting at around 12 minutes), if your Swedish is still working after the 2019 Wikimania.

Wikidata project with museums has results

Wikimedia Sverige has been working together with two museums, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the National Historical Museums, to improve their Wikidata skills and Wikidatafy their authority databases. There are already tangible results of their work: the museum staff requested that a new property be created, National Historical Museums of Sweden agent ID, and have so far added it to over 2,300 items.

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