GLAM/Newsletter/September 2011/Single
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New reading feature
Single page view
This edition is the first to give you the option of reading with a "single page view"! We've received quite a lot of requests for there to be a single page view of sorts and have finally put it into practice. As always, we value your feedback so please tell us what you think about this new feature, how it could be improved or what other new things you'd like to see in the comments section below.
Jimmy Wales visits The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
Jimmy Wales visits The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
On Tuesday, September 13, Jimmy Wales visited The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, in what was one of his first tours of a museum that is currently carrying out a Wikimedia partnership. In a discussion with staff, Wales spoke extensively about the importance of museum and Wikipedia partnerships. Specifically, he pointed to the GLAM-Wikimedia movement as important in illustrating what types of collaborations can occur. GLAM-Wikimedia partnerships were described as integral in connecting Wikipedians with museum professionals and serving as a model for global cooperation in sharing and improving information in Wikipedia. He also pointed out the importance of the Wikipedian in Residence model for engaging experts, stating that it can help facilitate cooperation by opening the door to experts and providing the help needed to get started with Wikimedia.
The visit ended with an extensive tour of the museum's exhibits and collections storage. Wales had the opportunity to use QRpedia codes for the first time as he toured each exhibit. He was particularly interested in the ability to connect to the information in Wikipedia while in the exhibit, while pointing out that visitors can once again access this information more fully once they return home. It was also pointed out that the proliferation of mobile access to Wikipedia within museums will make it all the more necessary to improve lead sections of articles to make them more accessible to a wider audience.
Following the visit, Wales gave a keynote lecture to a crowd of around 3,000 at the Connections 2011 ExactTarget Conference in Indianapolis. In answer to a question regarding teacher's perspectives of Wikipedia, he cited The Children's Museum's partnership as an example of an informal learning institution helping to show educators and parents how to best utilize Wikipedia.
Workshop in Coventry
Something Wiki This Way Comes
At the kind invitation of Warwickshire Museum Services, Wikipedian Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) delivered "Something Wiki This Way Comes", a half-day workshop for museum professionals from across Warwickshire and the surrounding region, at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, on 14 September. Using his contributions at Derby Museums' "Backstage Pass" event and his work as outreach ambassador to ARKive as examples, he explained how GLAMs can work with Wikipedia, the advantages to them of releasing text and media under open licences, and the potential of QRpedia to assist them in reaching wider audiences. Feedback was very positive, and has resulted in the event being scheduled for a re-run for East Midlands museum professionals in November.
Monuments, seminars and workshops
September, this year, in France was very busy with Wiki Loves Monuments. Over 25,000 photos were uploaded to Commons as part of the nation's activities.
Catch-up
The chapter took part in a number of GLAM activities this month:
- Earlier this month, Rémi Mathis and Adrienne Alix attended a seminar "Heritage and Web data" in Paris.
- The GLAM working group followed an effort to make links on Wikimedia Commons from the category of people to authority files on library catalogs - referring to the project with the French National Library. The project page for this partnership can be found on Commons.
- In the margins of the Creative Commons Summit in Warsaw (Benji was at the summit, representing Wikimedia France) there was held a study day "open GLAM" to raise Public Domain and open data to the cultural institutions. This inititative includes Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative Commons and Communia. Thinking began to coordinate with the projects who goes align with the association.
- Adrienne Alix, director of programmes, identified the chapter's GLAM projects past, present and future, in order to assess actions and start new projects.
- September 29, Lena and Pierre-Selim, two Wikimedians from Toulouse, conducted a workshop for the staff of the Museum of Toulouse. The workshop was part of a partnership begun last year (Project Phoebus) which has already provided over 700 high quality pictures to Wikimedia Commons. The museum posted a very enthusiastic report on their blog (in French).
Outreach to the Historical Archive of Cologne
- User:Raymond is Raimond Spekking, a Cologne-based Wikipedian and keen photographer. In this report he discusses the on-going partnership with the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln (Historical Archive of Cologne).
Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln
My first contact with the Historical Archive of Cologne was in September 2008 during an open house presentation. Publishing this photograph was forbidden because it shows historic drawings, and the archive was afraid that this would be uploaded to Wikipedia. I sent an e-mail after the visit and asked for an appointment to speak about a cooperation between the archive and Wikipedia.
A few months later, 3 March 2009:
- 13:56: I called the archive but the line was engaged.
- 13:58: The building of the archive collapsed (most of those images were taken by me).
During the following two and a half years, my spouse (Elya) and I attended a lot of cultural meetings/exhibitions/events in Cologne, and spoke about Wikipedia.
In September 2011, a new center for restoration and digitalization was opened. I was invited by the spokesman of the archive to a press conference to announce the initial operation of a brand new freeze drying machine. I took a lot of images.
Following a short talk with the director of the archive and a phone call with its spokesman, they now accept Wikipedia as a partner. I am sure this will be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
The next stop is to convince the town councillors...
Australian Paralympic Committee partnership
History of the Paralympics Movement, Australia
On 18 September, the Australian Paralympic Committee had a Wiki Workshop in Perth. A partial summary of the events can be found on the project's blog. There were three Paralympians who attended, including Elizabeth Edmondon who donated several images to the the project under a creative commons license after the event. This was fantastic from a historical point of view as there are very few Paralympic related images on Commons and used on Wikipedia related to the Paralympics in the 1960s and 1970s. The article on Edmondson on was expanded after the event, and it became a DYK that was featured on the main page on 1 October. In preparation for the event, a guide on editing sport biographies was created and shared on Bookshelf. One of the most unique things to possibly come out of this was the presence of braille language editions of Editing Wikis and Creating an Account. Graham Pearce (Graham Pearce) and Kerrie Engel (Diddy66) were interviewed by 5RPH, an Australian radio station, where they discussed the efforts of the Australian Paralympic Committee to collaboratively write the history of movement on Wikipedia and other WMF projects. There was also a demonstration on who users who are visually impaired edit Wikipedia. One interview can be heard here. In the coming month, the Australian Paralympic Committee plans to make another image donation and a workshop in Brisbane.
October's GLAM events
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