GLAM/Newsletter/September 2018/Contents/UK report
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Botanical illustrations and Wiki Loves Monuments in Scotland
Botanical illustrations
Details of an additional 363 artworks by Ferdinand Bauer from a late 18th-century botanical expedition were added to Wikidata. The data set now includes 2,091 works, including the complete contents of three books that resulted from the expedition. That dataset can be browsed as a map/timeline/species tree through this application, which is still under development and to which improvements have been made this month.
Early in September, Oxford's Museum of the History of Science released 156 images of astrolabes on Commons. This was reported in the previous newsletter. We are inviting other GLAMS with astrolabes to share their catalogue data: astrolabes that are added to Wikidata become visible in Astrolabe Explorer.
Martin met with staff of the Early Modern Letters Online project to show how the Wikidata community are reconciling EMLO person and location identifiers with Wikidata, and to discuss ways to import more of these identifiers.
Wiki Loves Monuments in Scotland
We are delighted to announce that Wiki Loves Monuments has been a resounding success in Scotland this year! In 2017, the ScotWiki community made their first concerted effort to drum up support for the WLM photo competition, resulting in the submission of 2100 photos. This year, we set out to beat those results with a combined Wiki GLAM and Wiki Edu strategy supported by our new WMUK Scotland Programme Coordinator, Sara Thomas.
We first laid the groundwork by introducing the concept of Wiki Loves Monuments in all our advocacy sessions across the library and archives sector, the museum and galleries sector and in HE and FE institutions in the months leading up to the event. We presented the competition as an opportunity to introduce students and GLAM users to concepts of open knowledge, heritage preservation and open licensed media in a fun and easily accessible way. We also did a great deal of work to ensure that all eligible monuments & listed buildings were uploaded into and correctly described on Wikidata, with the generous help of Nav Evans. 27,333 new items and 82,146 referenced statements were added to Wikidata.
Throughout the month of August, we recruited partners to run events and publicise Wiki Loves Monuments on social media. Our partners included the University of Edinburgh and its wikimedian in residence Ewan McAndrew, various libraries engaged with the SLIC GLAM residency, Museum Galleries Scotland as well as local heritage organisations such as Archaeology Scotland, Dig it!, Built Environment Forum Scotland, the Dumfries Historic Buildings Trust, and the Scottish Civic Trust. We produced a Wiki Loves Monuments resource for librarians, which was circulated across all public libraries in Scotland via the Scottish Library and Information Council mailing list. The resource was also adapted for museums and galleries and for local heritage organisations then circulated via our partners. The Scottish Civic Trust also gave us access to publicise Wiki Loves Monuments across all the Doors Open Day events that run throughout the month of September in Scotland.
As a result of this work, we managed to more than double the number of submissions from the previous year, with a grand total of 4374 images entered in the competition for Scotland. This represents a third of the total submissions for the UK, which stands at 13,185 photos.
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