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The GLAM team from Wikimedia Colombia in OpenConLatAm

OpenConLatAm in Colombia

On September 27th and 28th in Bogotá people from many countries visited Colombia to learn, share and participate in the OpenConLatam 2019 that support the open science and open education. The Wikimedia Colombia and the GLAM team ran workshops for librarians and users about Wikipedia as platform for open science and we take this opportunity to strengthen our networks in activities like the do-a-thons on digital humanities, indigenous traditions and the librarian do-a-thon for open science.

In this event Wikimedia Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico participated.


Photographs and events

Sacred Place in Wiki Loves Monuments

Ruins of Kuusisto bishop's castle 2019. The place has been a target of care to preserve the place but also a target of vandalism. (rephoto at Ajapaik)

This year Wikimedia Finland and our partner the Finnish Heritage Agency chose to work with a specific theme, The Sacred Place. The fire of the Notre Dame fresh in memory we complemented data about religious buildings. Looking back in time and across cultures, we also added nearly 5000 archaeological sites to Wikidata, but the competition was essentially open for any sentiments of places experienced as sacred. The competition resulted in 1658 photos from 66 photographers and 220 photos from 26 photographers to the rephotography series. The process opened discussions about safeguarding and respecting fragile cultural sites when data about them is openly available. The discussion also emphasised the need for cultural heritage vocabularies across countries and languages in the Nordic region.

Vallisaari and Kuninkaansaari excursions

Gunpowder magazines at Vallisaari.
Group of photographers walking at Kuninkaansaari. (rephoto at Ajapaik)

As part of Wiki Loves Monuments and Helsinki rephotography project we did two photo excursions to former closed military islands Vallisaari and Kuninkaansaari. The islands belong to the same fortification system as the world heritage site Suomenlinna. Their fortification started in 1554 and increased after the Crimean war in 1854–1855 and in the First World War it was part of Krepost Sveaborg, the imperial Russian system of land and coastal fortifications constructed around Helsinki. After Finland gained its independence in 1917, weaponry of the Defence Forces was stored in Vallisaari until the 21st century. As closed islands with a very small human population, they become the most diverse nature destinations in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

The Finnish Defence Forces gave up the islands in 2008 and Vallisaari and Kuninkaansaari were opened to the public in 2016 and now the islands are developed towards tourism. We have been photographing the islands in previous years and now we made a more focused effort to document the change in the islands with a guided tour on September 14th to Vallisaari and a picnic at Kuninkaansaari on September 28th with 15 people in total.

More info:

September - a month of events

September was a busy month of participating and presenting at events. Sharing is Caring X in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm brought together an entourage of Open GLAM advocates from the museum sector, and Wikimedia projects were brought up repeatedly. Susanna Ånäs presented the Wikidocumentaries project of Open Knowledge Finland.

Using Wikibase was explored at the MyData conference in Helsinki, where Paul-Olivier Dehaye ran a community mapping experiment.

Former WiR Lentokonefani gave a presentation on Heraldry in Wikipedia in Studia Heraldica lecture series by Suomen Heraldinen Seura.

European Heritage Days

European Heritage Days: Rennes

On September 22, wikimedians hold a stand and a workshop at the Champs Libres (Museum of Brittany and library of Rennes) for the European Heritage Days. Like the previous years, we shared the space with OpenStreetMap.

European Heritage Days: Commons

651 photos were taken, uploaded on Commons and categorized in Category:European Heritage Days 2019 in France.

European Heritage Days: Wikipedia and Intangible cultural heritage

On October 4, in Vitré, Marta Severo did a presentation about how to edit Wikipédia and Wikidata on Intangible cultural heritage. The content and data of the two firsts being re-used on the plateform PCI Lab. (Contribuer à l'inventaire national du patrimoine culturel immatériel)


Image donation by Indonesian Air Force

Image donation from Indonesian Air Force

On September 6, 2019, Wikimedia Indonesia and Indonesian Air Force signed a memorandum of understanding with regard to image donation to Wikimedia Commons. The images are the photograph of Dirgantara Mandala Museum's collection: equipments and weapons. The first batch is already on Wikimedia Commons: Category:Museum Dirgantara Mandala.

  • Memorandum of understanding signing
    Memorandum of understanding signing
  • Main entrance of the Monument of Struggle
    Main entrance of the Monument of Struggle
  • Hawker Hunter F4 N-112
    Hawker Hunter F4 N-112
  • Hercules T-310
    Hercules T-310

Padangpanjang magazine digitization

Voleunteers in Padang City continued to scan-a-thon more collection of Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center. More than 7,780 images produced during five days of activities. The images then are being processed before they are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons gradually.

Current collection is available on Category:Scanned from Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center.


Wikimedia Italia Summer School

Wikimedia Italia Summer school

Wikimedia Italia organized the first edition of the "Wikimedia project for GLAMs" summer school, which was held in BASE Milano fro 9th to 13th of September. Sixteeen students followed a full week about Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource and their usese in partnerships with cultural institutions. An edit-a-thon was kept as workshop, here are the results and the project page (in italian).


Open cultural heritage; More libraries in Africa on Wikidata; Global MIL Week 2019 Feature Conference; Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete; Wiki Loves Monuments

Open cultural heritage

2019-09-03 Digisam, Seminarium - Öppet kulturarv

The National Archives and Digisam organized an afternoon about open cultural heritage where representaitves for the Agency for Digital Government, an open data initiative involved in measuring air quality, Wikimedia Sverige and Digisam talked about different aspects of open data and the relation to cultural heritage. Axel Pettersson connected the cultural heritage to Wikidata and different tools developed to improve Wikidata and to reuse data in various ways.

More libraries in Africa on Wikidata

As part of our FindingGLAMs project, Wikimedia Sverige has created over 600 Wikidata items representing libraries in various African countries. The data comes from the Advancing Library Visibility in Africa project and is licensed as CC0.

In total, Wikidata now has items for ca 800 African libraries, which is why we are very excited about this upload – even though there is still a lot to do, it made a real improvement to the really bad coverage.

This SPARQL query shows all the data added: https://w.wiki/97T

Global MIL Week 2019 Feature Conference

Wikimedia Sverige's presentation about open library data at the UNESCO feature conference.

UNESCO's Global MIL Week 2019 Feature Conference took place 24–25 September in Gothenburg, Sweden. The theme was MIL Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered. The participants included educators, librarians, journalists, scholars and other professionals interested in supporting and developing Media and Information Literacy initiatives all around the world. A Wikimedia Sverige staff member was also there to give a presentation about our collaboration with the National Library of Sweden around linked open data. We emphasized the role of the Wikimedia projects in developing citizens' information literacy and critical thinking skills, as they do not merely provide information but encourage active participation. The library collaboration context was especially interesting given the theme of the conference, as libraries have traditionally been on the forefront of providing information access and relevant education to the general public.

Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete

During September the fourth year of Cultural heritage as Secondary school project started as a collaboration between the Nordic Museum and Wikimedia Sverige. Around 30 students will participate and as part of their projects create or improve articles, upload images, add to Wikidata and learn more about the Wikimedia projects. The articles edited in last years project has so far had over 192 000 views.

Wiki Loves Monuments

Detail of punched cards used in a power loom at Växbo Lin.

2 650 images of archaeological monuments, protected buildings, working life museums and listed ships were uploaded through the Swedish part of Wiki Loves Monuments this year. Currently the jury is working hard on judging all the images in order to have a result ready before the end of October.


Oxford, Khalili Collections and Endangered Archives

Oxford

I (Martin) gave a 1.5 hour presentation and discussion for 11 University of Oxford public relations staff, explaining how to get changes made to Wikipedia in accordance with the site's policies and terms. I also took part in the Berlin/Oxford Summer School on Open Research, delivering a two hour training workshop on Wikmedia platforms (including Wikipedia, Wikidata and Scholia) for open science. Due to a combination of factors, this workshop had to be rescheduled at the last minute, and so only two trainees were able to attend, but they got a very personal session in which we improved their work's representation on Wikidata. The slides have been shared in the event's Open Science Framework profile.

A staff member from the Rare Books department of the Bodleian requested a meeting to discuss how to raise awareness about this collection, and I suggested openly licensing the text of lay summaries they have already written.

I have been working on a final evaluative report for my two year project on search-and-discovery for libraries and museums, and separately on a paper about Wikimedia and universities. Both will be available in October.

Enamelled chariot belonging to the Indian Maharaja of Bhavnagar. From the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World

Khalili Collections

Initial work has begun on this new partnership with the Khalili Collections, a superlative set of private collections that includes the world's largest private collection of Islamic art. This involves MartinPoulter in a volunteer capacity. Twenty-one images, crossing the eight collections, have been freely shared and added to Category:Khalili Collection on Commons, with a total of 1,000 to come in future. The partnership has been covered on the Museums Association web site.

Endangered Archives

I also met with a cataloguer from the British Library's Endangered Archives programme (official site) (Wikidata). They have a large collection of images of items (photographs, manuscripts, etc.) from archives in the Global South, especially Africa but also South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. The images are non-free but there is the possibility of describing the items on Wikidata. They have been using OpenRefine on the archive data so are getting Wikidata identifiers for South American personalities depicted in photographs. We had a long discussion and looked at examples of how photographs are modelled on Wikidata, and how the data can be seen in tools such as Reasonator.


Hispanic Heritage and Disability Awareness Month

Smithsonian Digitization Conference

On October 1-3, the Smithsonian Institution held their 2019 Digitization Conference at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Andrew Lih presented about Wikidata and his work with the Smithsonian on the Wiki Art Depiction Explorer and the Wikidata Game employing AI and machine learning with The Metropolitan Museum of Art (read full blog post).

#DisruptWikipedia

Columbia University Libraries and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, disruptwikipedia

MetFashion

Metropolitan Museum, and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, NYC/MetFashion

Disability Awareness Month at the University of Maryland

Wikimedia DC and the University of Maryland held a meetup University of Maryland Disability Awareness Month.


Hispanic Reading Room at the Library of Congress

Wikimedia DC and the Library of Congress held a meetup Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: A Library of Congress Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute/September 2019

National Agricultural Library

United States Department of Agriculture and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, 50 Years in Beltsville, with video here [1]

Virginia Association of Museums at Gari Melchers Home and Studio

Virginia Association of Museums and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Virginia Association of Museums Wikipedia Editing Workshop

Women in U.S. Military History

United States Army Center of Military History and Wikimedia DC held a meetup, Celebrating Women in U.S. Military History Wikipedia Editing Workshop

Supporting newcomers in Wikidata training courses


Help the Movement Learn about Content Campaigns & Supporting newcomers in Wikidata training courses!

Help the Movement Learn about Content Campaigns

This is a republication of the blog post on the Wikimedia Space Blog

If you are active in the international Wikimedia community, there is a good chance that you have participated in one of the movement’s annual campaigns: #1lib1ref, Wiki Loves Monuments, Art+Feminism, CEE Spring, Wikipedia Asian Month, Wiki Loves Africa and so many more short term or long term campaigns. These events inject energy, focus and new content onto Wikimedia projects and are often one of the first activities that helps a group of organizers to come together and form affiliates.

However, if you closely who runs most of the large campaigns in the movement, they frequently include very experienced organizers. These organizers have a very complex set of skills and experiences: understanding of our technical tools, a wide network of organizers in the Movement, understanding of general communications practices, deep insight into our onwiki communities and experience teaching new organizers. Folks with this complex of a wiki-resume are not a large group of people.

Yet at the same time new organizers and contributors to the Wikimedia movement often learn about the movement through campaigns, and more experienced organizers and contributors often “level up” their involvement becoming more deeply invested and learning new skills as they support campaigns. Quite simply campaigns strengthen the movement.


If the movement is serious about its 2030 direction – to become “the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us” – then we need to design more intentional, directed approaches for inviting and supporting new contributors while collaborating better with partner institutions who share our Vision. In my mind, this means that more organizers in the movement need to be able to run content campaigns.

My colleague Satdeep Gill and I have been working the last few months to identify and document the major practices and tools used by campaign organizers in the movement, and with that documentation to draft a framework describing the activities involved in each campaign. With this framework, we hope to be able to write better documentation, better support and orient new campaign organizers, build tools more focused on key stages in campaigns, and, perhaps, one day, support a continuous calendar of campaigns that speak to the many motivations and kinds of content in the Wikimedia movement.

Yet, our framework is still a draft! As with many things in the Wikimedia movement, the expertise and experiences that people have developed running their own contests and campaigns are spread out throughout the movement. We need your help in refining what we have learned so far, to help us make the framework helpful!  

Join the discussion:

Supporting newcomers in Wikidata training courses

Wiki Education Wikidata training module library
Wiki Education Wikidata workshop NYC July 2019

This summer Wiki Education facilitated its first round of Wikidata training courses and an in-person workshop. As Wikidata gains traction in professional GLAM communities, Wiki Education hopes to support professionals who want to incorporate open data practices into their work. The results of these efforts have demonstrated not only support for participants' professional interests but also how their contributions can make Wikidata more representative and equitable for all. In creating these courses for the GLAM community and beyond, our staff at Wiki Education endeavored to design a dedicated, comprehensive, structured Wikidata course to train new editors how to edit Wikidata, regardless of linked data or Wikidata experience.

To create the curriculum, several community members were gracious enough to spend time with with us, helping us distill existing resources (tools, case studies, slides, and trainings), sharing best practices, and imparting pedagogical advice to help build a cohesive and digestible Wikidata curriculum for professional development courses. You can see the finished Wikidata training modules here, which are free and open to everyone.

38 newbies have participated in two paid online courses and one in-person workshop so far. During the workshop, which took place in New York City in July 2019, GLAM professionals (specifically librarians) expressed specific wants and needs they had about Wikidata that will help shape our future curricula. The first six-week long online courses flew by with participants making hundreds of edits. 13/14 of those online participants who took our end-of-course survey say they'll absolutely continue editing. We look forward to seeing how they will incorporate Wikidata into their professional lives. We currently have one course in progress and two starting later this month. To learn more, get involved, or stay updated, visit wikiedu.org/wikidata.



Tie a knot in your handkerchief

By Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing)

Reminders

News

Your reading list

New Tools

  • @Wikidatabot, a Telegram bot that allows you to search for something on Wikidata from Telegram

Technical matters

  • New monolingual code languages are added: TLI (Tlingit), clc (Tsilhqotʹin), alc (Kawésqar), kld (Gamilaraay), peo (Old Persian)
  • Structured Data on Commons: the team is going to develop computer-aided tagging for depicts statements on Commons. You can read the project page and participate on the talk page.
  • Edit summaries coming from the wbeditentity API (for example from the mobile termbox) will be improved from October 2nd (announcement, ticket)


Other news

For all other Wikidata news, new properties, etc, see:


GLAM Manager Role Announced!

GLAM Manager Role Announced!

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Program Manager in GLAM and Culture. The role will be leading the GLAM team and focused on developing a strategy to support the international community of practice working on GLAM-Wiki. Please help us find someone who is qualified and can help us represent the global diversity of institutions and professionals working in the space. Please share the job listing widely. Or share, the our Tweets about it or LinkedIn Posting.


October's GLAM events

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