Production Survey (Bookshelf)

These are the results of the Bookshelf Production Survey, conducted among the Wikimedia Chapters in December 2009.

A Survey Introduction is below.

Conclusions

Ease of Print Production
An equal number of chapters will be able to easily prepare and print the Bookshelf materials as chapters who expect to find significant difficulty in doing so. 

Of those who expect to find the materials difficult to produce, some chapters will only be able to produce the materials with the quality and polish envisioned with outside support

Financials
Many Chapters will need financial support to print the materials.

Paper Sizes
The ISO Series A Paper Sizes are the most appropriate choices for us to use for these materials. That may also include the materials for the United States, considering the system will need to work together and that there are also English materials that can be used overseas.

Recommendations
One solution to supporting Chapters in both circumstances may be to offer additional production and financial support. In terms of the production support, the Chapters would still drive the translation and resource gathering efforts (screenshots, etc.) and the WMF would help identify a local technical support team, helping the Chapters to build know-how and capacity for the long term as well as helping the Chapters to produce/print the first generation of Bookshelf materials.

A second recommendation is to ensure that all the materials are able to gracefully degrade to lower fidelity output options. Xerography and output on inkjet and laser printers will be necessary, to temper the management of "stock on hand" materials and to meet the needs of smaller less formal functions -- and PDF printouts from digital distribution mechanisms (peer networks, email lists, download from Chapter sites, etc.). To support this we are hoping to offer 2 "embedded" print versions for each piece built into the files. This should be done easily with Layers.

Thirdly, it seems clear we should pursue the use of Scribus as the Layout Application solution. All materials will also have associated files editable with Inkscape and Gimp.

Questions and Responses

1. What is the name of your Chapter? (free form text field)

1. Brasil
2. CH (not completed)
3. Deutschland
4. France (not completed)
5. Hong Kong
6. Israel
7. Italia
8. Magyarország
9. Nederland (not completed)
10. New York City
11. Polska Association
12. Serbia
13. Suomi
14. Sverige
15. UK

2. Has your chapter produced full color (CMYK) work before?

3. If you could please tell us a little about any previous experiences you've had producing printed materials for your chapter: (free form text field)

• brochures, newspaper, christmas cards
• The chapter, with the assistance of the comunity have created a mobile exhibition: Commons: The Hebrew Wikipedia mobile poster exhibition / w:he:ויקיפדיה:תערוכה
• None given we are a very new chapter.
• I used to do it on my lunches at wor, where I could use Adobe InDesign. Now we use Inkscape, Scribus, OpenOffice and GIMP, but we haven't tried doing it in CMYK now.
• We haven't produced any printed materials ourselves, and it is something that we have talked about only briefly, in particular the possibility of creating business cards.
• We have printed leaflets on both glossy and non-glossy paper, as well as handout materials, business cards and other administrative documents. Usually, it's only black/white and on standard paper, since it's cheapest that way.
• We design and produce leaflets for readers (short info about polish Wikimedia projects), and for contributors (wikimarkup), posters for conferences and workshops, folder (info about polish projects, and Commons, and Wikispecies), folder about WMPL, biulletin (8-12 pages), bookmark
• Labels, Business cards
• Whenever we have to communicate to an offline audience about a specific event organized by the Brazilian movement, like unconferences and workshops, we feel the need to print invitations, posters, leaflets and hand-outs.
• We have taken existing brochures from Commons/Meta and had them printed/photocopied ourselves - very low budget, mostly black and white. We created a very simple join (membership)/donate page with a cut-off "slip" to fill out one's financial details as well.

4. If your Chapter hasn't produced full color work, how comfortable do you feel about creating materials for print?

5. If your Chapter has produced printed work before, how was it printed?

Comments

• I'm not really sure, as

1. I wasn't involved in the printing itself

2. I don't know the terminology

• We usually work with a printer company so I'm not sure what the method of printing was, but I'm sure it wasn't any of the above lithographic systems. Small number of not so important materials we print on a laser printer (in colour or black&white).
• Photocopying
• Basic digital printing (from a commercial printer)

6. Did your Chapter create this piece internally, or did you work with a designer or printer to create it? (Check all that apply)

7. If your Chapter created print materials on its own before, what page layout software did it use for this?

Comments

• Inkscape
• Inkscape (Open Source vector graphic program - SVG). When we worked with a designer he used Adobe InDesign, and we got the PDF. I don't know what software is used by a printer when he prepares a printed version of the Biulletin, we get only the final PDF version.
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Photoshop
• We haven't created material, but an internal survey of members has shown that we don't really have access to Adobe InDesign. (We have limited access to Quark Xpress; and full access to the other three programs.)

8. What is your chapter's position on the use of open source software for developing and maintaining print materials?

Comments

• We will use the best software available, as long as there is no monetary cost.

9. What types of printed pieces has your Chapter created?

10. What paper size standards are you comfortable with?

Comments

• It would probably be most hassle free if we used ISO standard sizes and not the ANSI series.

11. What are your Chapter's budget considerations for printing materials?

Please describe any other budgetary information that will impact your Chapter's printing options.(free form text field)

• We can try to get a donation anyway, usually we are able to get it if we need to print some materials for our annual conference. The budget depends on current needs, we usually spend about 1500 - 4000 USD a year. If we had a good set of materials we could spend more.
• In 2008 we spended about 1500€
• We have until July 2010 funding available as part of a WMF grant (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_HU/Chapter_Starter_Kit). We could dedicate some funds from an other WMF grant for holding presentations about Wikipedia if the Bookshelf materials could be used to facilitate such presentations and workshops (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_HU/Wikipresentations).

12. What budget would your Chapter be able to provide for this effort?

13. How have you used outreach materials in the past?

Tell us a little more if you can:

• See above re exhibition
• We have used mini-booklet promotional editions of John Broughton's "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual", donated by the publisher, for this purpose.
• We also gave them out at open source/tech and education "fairs"/stalls
• We used the materials we bought and received (keychains, real life barnstars, Wikipedia stickers) as gifts at the Wikimedia Conference Berlin as prizes in an article writing contest and at an AGM for members. Since then we have created some other phisical objects (mugs, pens) but not special outreach material.

14. Please let us know anything else about your outreach needs that we have not covered.

• The information will need be translated to Hebrew - and there are usually problems with the Right -Left transfer (these problems will apply to all languages which write right to left and not just to Hebrew)
• The survey was focused mostly on our own chapter's printing capabilities, something that we will probably not pursue in large scale except for limited purposes like business cards.Since our local language is English, and since shipping is not a major hurdle inside of the United States, it would probably make most sense for us to directly use printed materials from the WMF's printing runs.
• Community of the polish Wictionary is dynamic and push WMPL to promote the project as well. Thus we need materials also for that project. We find contributions to Commons also very important, so materials how to do that would be valuable.
• In 2010 we'll launch an initiative where volunteers with computers and access to wi-fi internet will reach out new users and editors on the street of big cities. For that initiative volunteers will wear customized t-shirts, distribute flyers and stickers and explain to interested individuals a few steps to engage in the movement. Another initiative will be launched together with a well-known Brazilian science magazine that wants to write an article about the profile of wikipedia volunteers in Brazil. We'll collaborate to create and spread a viral video campaign inviting wikipedia volunteers to share by video, according to certain guidelines, their personal story. The videos will be distributed through the web in order to attract new participants to the movement.
• The main problem is that the stuff on Commons/Meta is hard to find, very patchy in coverage (eg missing brochures for projects like Wikinews, Wikisource, practically everything except Wikipedia) and can be very out of date.
• According to my experience localization should be as expensive as creating ex-novo a leaflet/card/whatever
• At the current stage we don't have people with the necessary graphical and printing experience to affect the necessary pre-production on ready materials (we could probably canvas such expertise), thus we would appreciate if the Bookshelf project was alive for a little while after the completion of the English outreach materials to affect basic changes on the templates it creates (inserting the translated text, localised logo and footer and sending it back in the format required by the printing company the chapter is in contact with).

15. Do you have any questions about the Bookshelf Project or materials?

• Is there a timeline for when materials will become available?
• How the materials will be updated? What next?
• I'd like to understand if the Bookshelf Project will focus only on printed materials or it will cover other media, like video and mobile short-messages, too?
• I think it's a great initiative and I'm keen to see how it goes.

Survey Introduction

This survey is designed to help ensure that the Bookshelf Project materials are appropriate for your needs as a Chapter. The Bookshelf materials are mostly print pieces. We will create them in English and we want to be sure that they are designed so that you can easily localize and reproduce them. There are two areas of information that are particularly important for us to understand: what your Chapter's printing capabilities are and what your Chapter's production capabilities are. We are also including some questions about overall Chapter demographics so we can be sensitive to these as well.