GLAM/Newsletter/May 2026/Contents/Italy report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue V, May 2026

Italy report

Connecting the Arctic and Sicily through Wikimedia Projects

The Gabetti Collection on Greenland Goes Digital: More Than 200 Historical Documents Online

Among the winners of Wikimedia Italia’s MAB 2026 grant program is the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies (IISG), with a project aimed at enhancing and promoting rare materials preserved in the Giuseppe Gabetti Collection. The collection documents Greenland expeditions in the early twentieth century and the scientific relations between Italy and the Nordic countries.

The project aims to publish on Wikimedia Commons a corpus of images including maps, plates, photographic documentation, portraits of explorers, geographers, scientists, and public authorities, as well as watercolor landscapes. The materials will be accompanied by descriptive metadata and structured data linked to Wikidata.

Two activities connected to the Wikimedia project took place during May:

7 May: a study day on Greenland organized in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome. Part of the event was dedicated to presenting and promoting the Wikimedia project.
25 May: IISG hosted a meeting with Camillo Pellizzari and Alessandro Marchetti, Italian members of DARIAH’s DH Wiki Working Group. The initiative focused on Wikidata and data round-tripping and was open to researchers and scholars affiliated with the Institute.

Below are statements from Dr. Eleonora De Longis, Head of the IISG Library and Historical Archives, and Alessandro Marchetti, Italian member of DARIAH’s DH Wiki Working Group, regarding the events.

“The conference held on 7 May – Global North, Global South, Global Arctic. History and Present Shocks – provided a valuable framework for placing the Wikimedia project of the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies within a broader discussion about the Arctic in the emerging global order. My presentation – The Wikimedia Project and Italy-Arctic Relations – sought to do two things at once: look back a century and look forward toward open access.

Looking back, I showed that the cultural and scientific relationship between Italy and Greenland did not begin with the geopolitical shifts of recent years. It has a history of at least a century, and Giuseppe Gabetti was one of its most significant figures. At the center of the presentation was Lauge Koch’s Map of North Greenland, an impressive eighteen-sheet cartographic work personally dedicated by the Danish geologist to Gabetti in November 1932—just months after the foundation of IISG and at the height of the sovereignty dispute between Denmark and Norway over Eastern Greenland.

Looking forward, I presented the project that IISG and Wikimedia Italia are developing through the MAB 2026–2028 grant: the publication on Wikimedia Commons of a substantial selection from the Gabetti Collection—more than 200 high-resolution files, structured metadata on Wikidata, and further work on OpenStreetMap relating to historical place names.

What emerges is a dual mission. On the one hand, bringing into the digital public domain a largely invisible heritage that tells the story of an extensive network of scientific exchange. On the other, recognizing that those same maps—named in Danish, often omitting Indigenous Inuit toponyms—were also instruments of sovereignty, and that open access can now become a small act of restitution toward the communities represented.

The collaboration with Wikimedia Italia is much more than support: it is a cultural infrastructure for the democratization of knowledge.” Eleonora De Longis

“The presentation delivered together with Camillo Pellizzari stems from work developed over recent years within the activities of Wikimedia Switzerland and DARIAH’s DH Wiki Working Group. It was in this context that we came into contact with the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies, and the initiative was also conceived as an opportunity to give back and express our gratitude for the Institute’s hospitality.

We provided training with particular attention to Wikidata, Wikibase, and so-called data round-tripping, namely the mutual enrichment of data between Wikimedia platforms and external authority files or databases.

The session included both a practical introduction to the Wikimedia ecosystem for cultural heritage—with examples drawn from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons—and reflections on the future of data round-tripping and on the interaction between Wikimedia knowledge graphs and bibliographic and archival authority systems.

Many cultural institutions, libraries, archives, and research projects operate through distributed infrastructures and repositories that are often disconnected from one another. In this context, the experience developed within the Wikimedia ecosystem—including through organizations such as Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia Switzerland—demonstrates how interoperable tools based on Wikidata and Wikibase can provide concrete solutions for connecting heterogeneous datasets, improving metadata quality, and facilitating collaboration among institutions, without necessarily requiring migration to centralized platforms.” Alessandro Marchetti

From WikiVerismo to Wikipedia: an Edit-a-thon on Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Catania

On 28 May, the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania hosted Paper Voices, Digital Voices, a training and editing event dedicated to Wikipedia and collaborative knowledge production.

The initiative grew out of WikiVerismo, a wiki project developed within the Authorial and Digital Philology course taught by Professor Milena Giuffrida. Created as a teaching and research tool focused on Sicilian Verismo authors such as Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Federico De Roberto and Luigi Pirandello, the project provided a natural bridge between academic work on texts and contribution to Wikimedia projects.

The day opened with a seminar led by Giovanni Pennisi, Wikimedia Italia Regional Coordinator, and Giuseppe Arena (University of Catania), introducing participants to Wikipedia's editorial principles, its role in knowledge dissemination, and current discussions around Wikipedia, artificial intelligence and digital literacy. The session highlighted the importance of reliable sources, verifiability and collaborative editing in ensuring high-quality content.

In the afternoon, participants took part in a hands-on edit-a-thon supported by volunteers from the Wikimedians in Sicily community. Students and attendees worked on creating and improving Wikipedia articles related to contemporary Italian literature, gaining practical experience with Wikimedia projects while contributing new content to the encyclopedia.

The event forms part of a broader programme of media and digital literacy activities promoted by the Department of Humanities through projects such as Pirandello Nazionale and Verismo Digitale. It was also included in the University's teacher training programme in Literary Studies, bringing together students, educators and Wikimedia volunteers around a shared goal: improving the representation of literary topics on Wikipedia and strengthening digital skills through collaborative knowledge production.

The organising committee included Milena Giuffrida, Giuseppe Palazzolo, Claudia Cantale, Giuseppe Arena and Giovanni Pennisi.

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