GLAM/Newsletter/September 2025/Contents/Memory of the World report
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The Memory of the World wiki challenge
This is the twelfth monthly report of the ongoing work to improve the representation of the UNESCO Memory of the World international register on Wikimedia projects. This is supported and fully funded by the Khalili Foundation, with the involvement of UNESCO and Wikimedia UK.
Wiki challenge
The Memory of the World wiki challenge concluded at the end of September. Eight prize-winners are going to be contacted for their postal addresses so they can receive prizes. The challenge resulted in many new articles, listed in the section below. The most drastic changes were to Spanish Wikipedia and Dagbani Wikipedia.
There were edits in the following 43 languages of Wikipedia or Wikidata: Arabic, Akan, Armenian, Asturian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dagbani, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Frafra, German, Greek, Hausa, Indonesian, Irish, Kazakh, Latvian, Low German, Macedonian, Malay, Norwegian, Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tatar, Turkish, Twi, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh.
163 articles had external links added or updated to the Memory of the World international register.
A special shout-out goes to Susanna Ånäs of AvoinGLAM who exempted herself from the challenge and yet still did a great amount of work representing the Memory of the World international register in Finnish Wikipedia.
Clara published an article on the UNESCO website to promote the Wikimedia Challenge, highlighting the rules and conditions of participation. Additionally, she coordinated the production of MoW-branded tote bags, which will serve as prizes for challenge winners.
Progress on the data set
Clara gathered and compiled detailed data on the 2025 inscriptions to the Memory of the World (MoW) Register, including collection size, original language, copyright status, inception date, region, and holding institution for a future upload to Wikidata. Besides, Clara reached out to several nominators and custodians of MoW inscriptions where images or rights authorisations for UNESCO’s use are still missing. This effort not only improves the documentation of new inscriptions but also enhances existing ones, helping to increase their visibility and recognition.
In addition, Clara contributed to several technical improvements of the online MoW Register, resolving issues such as disappearing images, inaccessible nomination files, missing IDs for the 2017 and 2023 Committees, and inconsistencies in the Committee page dates. She also fixed smaller issues in existing registrations.
Susanna Ånäs created a multilingual view of the whole register, using custom templates to render the data set from Wikidata. This uses images, links to Wikipedia articles or Wikimedia Commons categories when they exist, and includes each inscription's link to its entry in the official register. Since this view of the register is Wikidata-driven, it will automatically update as more information and more inscriptions are added. Susanna has already done something similar with registers of intangible cultural heritage, so this work could be adapted into country profiles that showcase intangible as well as documentary heritage.
New articles
- List articles
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: Latin American and the Caribbean
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: International Organizations
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: Europe and North America
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: Africa
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: Asia and the Pacific
- Spanish: Memory of the World Register: Arab States
- Spanish: Memory of the World International Register
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – Latin America and the Caribbean
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – International Organizations
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – Asia and the Pacific
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – Europe and North America
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Ngā Mahara o te Ao
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – Arab States
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Register – Africa
- Dagbani: Memory of the World Programme
- Dagbani: List of Memory of the World Register in Iran
- Tatar: Memory of the World (including a list of the full register, generated from Wikidata)
- Articles about inscriptions
- Arabic: Aceh Annals
- Dagbani: Khitrovo Gospels
- Egyptian Arabic: A Doll's House
- English: Endeavour journal of James Cook
- Finnish: Book of Healing from internal and external diseases affecting the body
- Haitian Creole: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Italian: Baysonghor Shahnameh
- Malay: Huang Di Nei Jing
- Malay: Compendium of Materia Medica
- Persian: Aleppo Codex
- Persian: Biblioteca Malatestiana
- Serbian: Codex Beratinus
- Slovenian: Ram Khamhaeng inscription
- Spanish: Mappa mundi d'Albi
- Spanish: Hikayat Hang Tuah
- Swedish: Karl Tirén's collection of sami yoik
- Welsh: A Doll's House
- Yue Chinese: Treaty of Tordesillas
- Related articles
- Dagbani: Bernard Deacon mentioning Arthur Bernard Deacon (1903-27) collection MS 90-98.
- Dagbani: Polish Library in Paris mentioning Collections of the 19th century of the Polish Historical and Literary Society / Polish Library in Paris / Adam Mickiewicz Museum
- Dagbani: National Archives of Benin mentioning the Colonial Archives
- Slovenian: Wat Pho mentioning the Epigraphic Archives of Wat Pho
Page and image views
The GLAMorgan stats tools says that images related to the MoW International Register had 152.6 million views this month.
