GLAM/Newsletter/September 2016/Contents/Brazil report
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A GLAM ostrich makes the day; Wiki Loves Monuments boost in Brazil
A GLAM ostrich makes the day
One of the images that was uploaded by the User Group Wikimedia in Brazil in the context of a GLAM initiative with the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy in São Paulo (Brazil) was chosen by the community as picture of the day and featured on projects all around the globe on September 28. It shows an ostrich skeleton, prepared by a technique of bone maceration; the picture was taken by Wagner Souza e Silva, a professor at the University of São Paulo, and voluntarily improved by veteran Commons contributor Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton. Images that have been uploaded may be seen at the Commons category on the museum collection. This initiative has the support of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics (RIDC NeuroMat).
The community decision to elect the "GLAM ostrich" as picture of the day gives visibility to a major effort to bring images from the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy to the Commons and other projects. So far, 64 images out of 300 to 400 pictures were uploaded. Uploads have been done in sets of 30 images, a slow pace that is justified by the museum director taking this initiative as an opportunity to review the metadata of each object. The expectation is that uploads will occur every other week. Three UG Wikimedia in Brazil members have been directly involved with this initiative; a volunteer has gone on average five hours a week to the museum to help filling metadata forms and uploading images to the Commons.
Pictures from the museum have started to be used by the community, and this interaction with the broader Wikimedia community has proven to help the museum improve its understanding of the collection. Editors from the English Wikipedia have identified a mistake in the description of one of the objects. What was mistakenly identified as a dehydrated foal by the museum director ended up being identified in an interaction from volunteers and a professor of veterinary anatomy at the University of São Paulo as a minihorse foal, that was donated to the museum several years ago and had never been correctly described. This image has also been nominated for picture of the day.
Images of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy collection have been viewed 1,329,331 times, according to visualization web tool GLAMorgan. In August and July, views rose to 1,252,169 and 1,179,834, respectively.
The GLAM initiative with the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy has sparked media interest. It appeared on reports at the Brazilian Veterinary Anatomy Association, University of São Paulo official newspaper, largest magazine on dogs and cats in Brazil and web portal ARede Educa. A post on this initiative on a Facebook community has had over 1,000 shares and 2,000 likes.
An edit-a-thon at the University of São Paulo Department of Veterinary Anatomy has been associated to this initiative. During the edit-a-thon, 19 editors worked on entries pertaining to veterinary anatomy, with the guidance of a professor from the university. Sixteen of these editors were new to the projects; female participation was 14 out of 19 editors. This edit-a-thon remains one of the outreach activities planned to happen in parallel to uploading images of the museum collection. For instance, a video on the GLAM initiative is being considered of to be shown on a multimedia totem in the museum, which remains one of the most visited public museums in São Paulo.
The success of the GLAM initiative with the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy has been the occasion to spread partnerships with the 60 museums and cultural collections from the University of São Paulo. So far, partnerships with the Museum of Mathematics and the Museum of Education and Games have been established. Meetings with other cultural institutions within the University of São Paulo, the largest university in Latin America, are being scheduled.
Some images from the collection of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy:
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Camel skull -
Dromedary heart -
Goat skeleton -
Pig hand skeleton -
Taxidermized penguin skin -
Fish (diaphanization technique) -
Goat tongue -
Horse hoof -
Dog heart -
Boto skull -
Taxidermized capybara -
Taxidermized toucan
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Wiki Loves Monuments boost in Brazil
September was a month full of good news concerning Wiki Loves Monuments Brazil 2016. Since May, a group of volunteers have been collaborating with the contest, helping with the actualization and expansion of the Brazilian monument lists. Besides the work with the list of the monuments protected by the Brazilian Federal Institute of Cultural Heritage Preservation (IPHAN), the group was dedicated, during the month, to specially gather and organize new information about the monuments located in State of Sao Paulo. Most of them are monuments preserved by the State Council of Cultural Heritage Preservation (CONDEPHAAT) and the City Council of Cultural Heritage Preservation (CONPRESP). This was done as a pilot project for the next years, when Wiki Educação Brasil will try to focus on specific States of Brazil in order to gather more information about local monument lists – leading the contest to a more and more comprehensive profile. In early September, the GLAM project coordinator of Wiki Educação Brasil group, Juliana Monteiro, participated in the first meeting of museums of Great Sao Paulo. The meeting aimed to create a network of cooperation between institutions and professionals, linking them and stablishing a forum for discussing further joint projects. Among the agenda discussed at the event, the coordinator briefly presented the contest and proposed the participation of museums in the Great São Paulo in the dissemination of the competition.
One of the consequences of this action was the strong support from the Sao Paulo State Secretariat of Culture, which contributed greatly to the promotion of competition in the press. As a result of this collaboration, Juliana Monteiro gave an interview to SPTV newscast of Globo Television Network (largest public TV channel in Brazil)[1] and spoke to Radio Educativa of Piracicaba, a city of the State of São Paulo. The Secretariat museums were also encouraged to participate in the dissemination of the contest and, therefore, institutions such as the Museu Casa de Portinari, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and the Casa das Rosas joined the campaign to publicize the event on their social networks. The competition was also reported in the newspapers Estadão and ABC do ABC. In turn, the Wiki Group Educação Brasil also managed to highlight the competition in other big newspapers with circulation in São Paulo, like Estadão. Group members also helped to publicize the contest through social networks like Facebook.
Among other initiatives for the dissemination of the competition, the group of volunteers was able to print and distribute the contest graphic material as folders. On 18 September, the same group realized a photographic walk, which brought together 23 participants. The route covered the area of Liberdade, Sé and Anhangabaú and privileged passage through listed monuments in Wiki Loves Monuments 2016. The aim was to encourage interested persons to photograph the monuments and engage them in the contest. After the Sept 30th, it has begun the selection of the photographs phase.
Aiming at the dissemination and use of the material received not only in the edition of 2016, but also 2015, the Group also has dedicated itself to participate in bids to allow the development of projects focused on dissemination of the images. In this sense, the group submitted a project to a bid of the City of Rio de Janeiro, to conduct a short course on the Wiki projects and an exhibition on the Wiki Loves Monuments Brazil. It also submitted another project to a bid of the National Arts Foundation - FUNARTE that select small exhibition projects to be held in Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, which should also circulate other states.
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Presentation of Wiki Loves Monuments for museum professionals in Sao Paulo
- ↑ http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/sptv-1edicao/videos/t/edicoes/v/concurso-ira-premiar-fotografias-de-locais-tombados-pelo-patrimonio-publico-em-sp/5340131/
- @Joalpe: Were the media files that you are uploading already created before the partnership, or are you working with the Photographer to make the photos? I ask, because this is an almost perfect case study of working with 3D objects at an institution and then building up community engagement and awareness about the media. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
- Hi, @Astinson (WMF): Thanks for you interest. To answer your question directly: both. The photographer --who is a professor of photojournalism at the University of São Paulo-- had already started taking these pictures when we approached him. He still takes pictures of the collection of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy, but he is already aware and very enthusiastic about the idea of having his work uploaded to the Commons. As I reported at the newsletter, this initiative with the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy has opened up the possibility of expanding GLAM projects to at least three other museums at the University of São Paulo, in which we would have to produce the images (Museum of Mathematics, Museum of Geosciences and Museum of Play and Education). I have asked the professor who took the pictures of the collection of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy to give us a conference on how to take great quality pictures. For the continuation of our work, our group will probably request some sort of grant, since we basically lack equipment to take great pictures. The University of São Paulo has at least 65 archives and museums and once the GLAM movement grows more, I will approach each one of them to get involved.
- I was not sure what you meant by 3D images. But curiously with the Museum of Mathematics a professor there is interested --once we produce the images-- to run them in a software of his that makes 2D images have three dimensions. He is the person behind this 3D representation of a famous Brazilian sculpture, that was produced in a museum at the university. This discussion about 3D possibilities is still at a very preliminary stage.
- Community engagement has been very impressive in the case of the Museum of Veterinary Anatomy. I have just mentioned in the report some aspects of this engagement, but there were many more! For instance, we are currently working in a partnership between a professor at the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and community volunteers to write up a specific handout with tips about how to improve content about veterinary anatomy in the projects. This is again at a preliminary state, but we do have a draft in Portuguese and have received with great enthusiasm the handout template from the Wiki Education Foundation, that we were authorized to use.
- Should we write a case about this experience? Not sure how we'd do this. But I also think it is fantastic in many dimensions. To keep on: a student of mine, majoring in Journalism, has contributed massively and voluntarily to improving the entry on the museum on Wikipedia in Portuguese, just because she thought the project was nice and she wanted to get involved. The museum is considering placing QR-codes directed to Wikipedia entries about species that are present in their collections, that would be improved in edit-a-thons to take place in the museum (still at an idealistic stage).
- Thanks again for getting in touch. We've been having great fun with this initiative. --Joalpe (talk) 15:25, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
- Brilliant! I would love a case study; I am trying to bring together different instances of Wikimedia Communities playing fundamental roles in digitizing collections. For example, I recently worked on a case study with Wikimedia Argentina at: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Wikimedia_Argentina_Digitization_Project . This model of case study is based on the model at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Catalonia%27s_Network_of_Public_Libraries . Do you want to email me at astinson
wikimedia.org to get started in a Google doc? Its easier to do initial feedback and editing in a shared document. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
- Brilliant! I would love a case study; I am trying to bring together different instances of Wikimedia Communities playing fundamental roles in digitizing collections. For example, I recently worked on a case study with Wikimedia Argentina at: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Wikimedia_Argentina_Digitization_Project . This model of case study is based on the model at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Catalonia%27s_Network_of_Public_Libraries . Do you want to email me at astinson
