GLAM/Newsletter/September 2015/Contents/Italy report

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue IX, September 2015

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Italy report

Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 Italian edition and photographic archives

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Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 Italian edition

A great amount of work was done this year by Wikimedia Italia staff and volunteers in contacting local authorities and obtaining permissions to freely take picture of monuments. Despite Italian lack of Freedom of Panorama, the 2015 edition of the contest is a big success. Here are some numbers:

947 photographers, the highest number in any participating country.
12,740 photographs.
5149 monuments.
392 institutions involved.
46 guided excursions with volunteers.
Almost 500 participants in the excursions.

To reach this goal, a considerable degree of cooperation with public sector, organizations and professional associations was crucial: from Ministry to Municipalities, from Toscana Foto Festival to Touring Club Italia and WW1 (see below), from ICOM Italia to Federazione Italiana Associazioni Fotografiche (FIAF). Moreover, a dedicated Training Day was organized for new volunteers and photographers interested in the project in June, and two press conferences helped in spreading information about the contest.

Open Data Monuments in Emilia-Romagna

The first regional photographic archive in Italy was presented in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna. The archive, called Open Data Monuments: Emilia-Romagna in Creative Commons, is a joint effort of local administrative institutions, Italian Ministry of Culture, and Wikimedia Italia. Many of the pictures representing the entire territory, and Bologna and Ferrara especially, are in fact the result of past Wiki Loves Monuments editions in this region.

Pictures are all available for the download and promoted for citizens' free reuse, raising at the same time awareness of free licenses meaning and impact.

Bologna - Fontana del Nettuno
Bologna - Piazza Santo Stefano
Bologna - San luca
Ferrara - Museo Della Cattedrale
Ferrara - Castello Estense
Ferrara - Palazzo dei diamanti

Touring Club Archive and World War I

After the first announcement of a new GLAM-wiki project in cooperation with the Touring Club Italiano (TCI) and the WW1 – dentro la Grande Guerra association, a new set of images was uploaded on Commons, in the ongoing uploading process that will bring up to 3,000 images from the TCI historical image archive.

The project is described on Wikipedia in Italian and images are available on Archivio_Touring_La_Grande_Guerra.

The Touring Archive is one of the more interesting (possibly the main) photographic resources for Italian 20th century history. Built up and maintained by the oldest tourism organization in the country, dating back to 1894, it holds iconographic documentation about art, monuments, landscapes and historical events too. The collaboration with Wikimedia Italia is an important opportunity for the Archive to boost the digitization process of its material, and to highlight it for historians and researchers all over the world.

Given the origins of the archive (in many cases, gathered from private donations during decades of Italian history), some of the images show a lack of basic metadata such as exact date and place. To address this issue, an Italian contemporary history project on Wikipedia has been involved in looking for more information and better categorization on Commons. Obviously, every researcher in the world is welcome in this effort!

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