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April 2019

Bennylin

Upcoming releases, and GLAM pilot projects

By SandraF

Welcome to the new, and separate, This Month in GLAM report about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC).

The project Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons adds functionalities for structured and machine-readable data to files on Wikimedia Commons, so that they become easier to view, search, edit, organize and re-use. To achieve that, the Commons backend is migrated to Wikibase, the same technology as used for Wikidata.

What is already released, and what is coming?

Already released on SDC: File Captions and Depicts

In early May 2019, you can already add multilingual file captions and Depicts statements on Wikimedia Commons.

An example of structured data added to this photo of the Monument Demba et Dupont, a public sculpture in Dakar, Senegal:

File captions

File pages on Wikimedia Commons now contain a field where you can add - and translate - multilingual file captions that describe the file. The text in these captions is included in Wikimedia Commons' search function.

Depicts statements

File pages now include a 'Structured data' tab. When you click this tab, you can add 'Depicts' information about the things (people, places, species...) that are shown in the file. In this case, the photo shows the war memorial Monument Demba et Dupont in Dakar, Senegal in the foreground (hence marked as 'prominent'). In the background you see Dakar Station.

Depicts of depicts

This is not a screenshot of the same file, but of the Wikidata item Q61483227 that represents the sculpture itself. Many files on Wikimedia Commons can depict this artwork! Do note that, on Wikidata, there is further information on what the sculpture itself depicts (a Senegalese Tirailleur).
It is not necessary to include this information on the file itself. Later this year, the search function on Wikimedia Commons will support 'Depicts of depicts': when a file on Wikimedia Commons depicts a Wikidata item that itself has Depicts statements, those depicted things (people, species, objects...) will be discoverable on Wikimedia Commons too.

Upcoming releases

In the next iterations, the following features will be released on Wikimedia Commons:

  • Add depicts statements in UploadWizard
  • Search depicts statements
  • Depicts qualifiers
  • Other statements than depicts
  • Filter search results
  • Depicts of depicts
  • Depicts and annotations

GLAM pilot projects

At this moment, several community members and GLAM partners are working on the first GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons. You can find the overview of projects here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/GLAM/Projects

This month we highlight the ongoing work on a Wikimedia Commons microcontributions tool: ISA.

ISA is a fun, multilingual, mobile-first 'microcontributions' tool, that makes it easy for (groups of inexperienced) people to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons.

  • With ISA, you can choose a pre-defined set of images on Commons and then ask contributors to 'tag' these with multilingual structured metadata. Points are counted for each contribution, and therefore it is possible to organize 'tagging' or microcontributions competitions or challenges with ISA.
  • ISA is originally built to provide better multilingual and structured descriptions of c:Wiki Loves Africa images. But it is also developed to be useful to all of the Wiki Loves competitions, and eventually for all media files on Wikimedia Commons.
  • ISA is developed as a collaboration between Wiki In Africa, Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons project.
  • What does the name mean? 'Isa' is the chiShona language word for 'put' or 'place', but it can also serve as an acronym for Information Structured Acceleration, Information Structure Additions and more.

Two design mock-ups (please note that this is work in progress!):

  • Mock-up design for the screen where participants will describe images
    Mock-up design for the screen where participants will describe images
  • Mock-up design for the home page of a 'tagging' campaign for campaign managers inside the ISA tool
    Mock-up design for the home page of a 'tagging' campaign for campaign managers inside the ISA tool

Events


May 2019

Bennylin

Updates on development; GLAM pilot projects; Wikimania Hackathon with GLAM focus area

By SandraF

The project Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons adds functionalities for structured and machine-readable data to files on Wikimedia Commons, so that they become easier to view, search, edit, organize and re-use. To achieve that, the Commons backend is migrated to Wikibase, the same technology as used for Wikidata.

Wikimedia Commons updates at the May 2019 Wikimedia Activities Meeting

The May 2019 Wikimedia activities meeting contained several updates about Wikimedia Commons in general.

Development updates

Already live: multilingual captions and Depicts statements

As mentioned in the previous Structured Data on Commons update in This Month in GLAM, it is now possible to add multilingual captions and Depicts statements to files on Wikimedia Commons. This is both possible on the file page, and via UploadWizard. A few demonstrations (animated gifs):

Adding multilingual captions to a file on Wikimedia Commons
Adding a Depicts statement to a file on Wikimedia Commons

Upcoming development

In the next iterations, the following features will be released on Wikimedia Commons:

  • Search depicts statements
  • Depicts qualifiers
  • Other statements than depicts
  • Filter search results
  • Depicts of depicts
  • Depicts and annotations
  • UploadWizard using structured data for Wiki Loves... style campaigns

Highlighted GLAM pilot project: Digitized books and Wikisource

Selection of books to be digitized, described and transcribed

Satdeep Gill (WMF) is working together with a group of Punjabi volunteers on a Structured Data on Commons pilot project to practice the full workflow of digitizing publications, uploading them to Wikimedia Commons, transcribing them on Wikisource, and re-using the data on Wikidata across Wikimedia projects.

The pilot project consists of:

  • Digitization of a small set of out-of-copyright Punjabi books (in the Qisse genre) YesY Done
  • Upload of the digitized files to Wikimedia Commons, in structured data format
  • Upload of the books' metadata (and author data) to Wikidata YesY Done
  • Indexing and transcribing the books on Wikisource
  • Inclusion of the metadata of the books on Wikisource

This pilot project will inspire new thinking and ideas about efficient workflows and re-use of data across Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource. It will also lead to improved documentation about this workflow.

The metadata about the books is available on Wikidata. See this Wikidata query, or the Wikidata-driven list on the project's info page.

How can you help?

  • Feel free to add your name to the participant list!
  • If you are interested in the process of uploading digitized books in structured data to Wikimedia Commons, please mention this on the project's talk page, or e-mail Satdeep (sgill﹫wikimedia.org). Your help is very welcome!
  • If you read and write Punjabi, your help will be welcome later in 2019, when transcribing the books on Wikisource.
  • We are looking for people who are interested in correct data modelling of books on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, and people interested in (tools around) improving the workflows across Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource.

All current GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons are listed at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/GLAM/Projects

GLAM focus area at the Wikimania Hackathon

The Wikimania 2019 Hackathon in Stockholm, August 14-15, 2019, will have GLAM as one of its focus areas. See the dedicated info page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Hackathon/GLAM_focus_area

Wikimedia developers and developers working for cultural institutions are very welcome to join this focus area. Feel free to indicate your interest by signing the dedicated page! Areas to work on include (but are not limited to) Structured Data on Commons, IIIF, upgrades of GLAM-Wiki tools, batch uploads, and more. Feel free to add any topics you want to work on.

We especially welcome developers who work at a cultural institution and who want to experiment with Structured Data on Commons. Do you know (or are you) someone who may be interested and would you be interested some guidance? Feel free to get in touch with Sandra Fauconnier (sfauconnier﹫wikimedia.org).


June 2019

Bennylin

Development updates; GLAM focus area at the Wikimania Hackathon

By SandraF

The project Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons adds functionalities for structured and machine-readable data to files on Wikimedia Commons, so that they become easier to view, search, edit, organize and re-use. To achieve that, the Commons backend is migrated to Wikibase, the same technology as used for Wikidata.

Development updates

Multilingual captions, Depicts statements, and (new!) Depicts qualifiers

As mentioned in previous Structured Data on Commons updates in This Month in GLAM, it is now possible to add multilingual captions and Depicts statements to files on Wikimedia Commons. This is both possible on the file page, and via UploadWizard.

In June 2019, it has also become possible to add qualifiers to Depicts statements, in order to make these more precise. For instance, when describing a scan of an old photograph of Dutch speed skater and cyclist Jaap Eden,

in the 'Structured data' tab of the file page you can now say the file depicts Jaap Eden (d:Q719491), and that he is shown wearing a cap (d:Q6147804) and ice skates (d:Q108640), and has a moustache (d:Q15179):

Upcoming development

In the next iterations, the following features will be released on Wikimedia Commons:

  • Other statements than depicts
  • Search depicts statements
  • Filter search results
  • Depicts of depicts
  • Depicts and annotations
  • UploadWizard using structured data for Wiki Loves... style campaigns

GLAM focus area at the Wikimania Hackathon

The Wikimania 2019 Hackathon in Stockholm, August 14-15, 2019, will have GLAM as one of its focus areas. See the dedicated info page: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Hackathon/GLAM_focus_area

Wikimedia developers and developers working for cultural institutions are very welcome to join this focus area. Feel free to indicate your interest by signing the dedicated page! Support will be available for people working on Structured Data on Commons and on topics related to the FindingGLAMs project by Wikimedia Sweden. Areas to work on include (but are not limited to) IIIF, upgrades of GLAM-Wiki tools, batch uploads, and more. Feel free to add any topics you want to work on.


July 2019

Bennylin

Other statements; Wikimania; blog posts on SDC

By SandraF

New feature release: other statements

It is now possible to add other statements than just Depicts statements to files on Wikimedia Commons. How does this work? See below for a few examples of Wikimedia Commons files described with structured data.

A simple case

This photo of sugar cubes has captions in many different languages:

It has a Depicts statement (it depicts sugar cubes) with a few qualifiers (twelve sugar cubes in the color white). You can see this statement (and others) by clicking on the Structured data tab in the file page.

In addition, the file also has various other statements, indicating the license, creator and quality assessment.

A file showing a two-dimensional artwork

This file is a faithful digital representation of a two-dimensional artwork: Jan Bruegel the Elder's The Last Judgement (1602), collection Statens Museum for Kunst.

To indicate that, it has the following structured data statement, pointing to the Wikidata item for that specific artwork:

How can you help?

The two above examples are among the very first Wikimedia Commons files with structured data. Their structured data is still very incomplete. Just like in the early days of Wikidata, the data model for such files (which fields and properties are needed) is not fully established yet. Especially for GLAM files, a lot of thinking is welcome to build best practices on how to describe them properly with structured data. You can help in the following ways:

  • Experiment and add structured data to existing uploaded files, and think what kind of data (Wikidata properties and items) you need for that
  • Contribute to data modelling discussions. You can check the properties table on Wikimedia Commons to see if the community has already been discussing the kind of data you are interested in. And you can engage on its talk page if you want to discuss and ask questions.
  • Propose properties for Wikimedia Commons. The dedicated page for this is at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Commons; you can see existing Wikidata properties for Wikimedia Commons at this query (click the blue arrow button to run the query): https://w.wiki/6tS.

Structured Data on Commons and GLAM at Wikimania

The following Wikimania sessions will focus on Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons:

Blog posts about Structured Data on Commons

Two blog posts by Keegan explain the first steps in the development process of Structured Data on Commons. More blog posts in this series will follow.


August 2019

Bennylin

Recent presentations, workshops and blog posts

By SandraF

Introductions to Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

Basic features for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons have been deployed (see the July 2019 update of This Month in GLAM). If you are interested in learning about the project's current status, and how to edit structured data, check the following presentations and workshop that were organized in August 2019:

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons workshop, Wikidata Lab XVIII

  • Video recording of workshop (nearly 2 hours)
  • Slides
    Slides

Session about SDC and GLAM pilot projects at Wikimania 2019

  • Video recording
  • Slides (first slide looks broken, but the presentation is viewable)
    Slides (first slide looks broken, but the presentation is viewable)

Other presentations and workshops about SDC

Blog posts about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

The following blog posts by Keegan Peterzell outline the development process behind SDC:

Also check this blog post by Lucas Werkmeister:


October 2019

Bennylin

Getting started, Tool highlights, Blog posts and presentations about SDC

By SandraF

How to get started with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons?

If you are getting started with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons, the recent workshop slides from WikidataCon should give you a quick overview of what's new and how you can edit structured data:

Structured Data on Commons tools

Since several months, it is possible to edit multilingual captions and statements on Wikimedia Commons via UploadWizard and via file pages on Wikimedia Commons. But recently, community members have also started developing various tools with which you can easily add structured data to Commons files. A few highlights below:

The ISA Tool

The ISA Tool is a multilingual, mobile-friendly tool, that makes it easy for anyone - especially beginners! - to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons. You can create 'tagging' campaigns and small competitions in ISA, but you can also use it for your personal workflows. Anyone can do this - no need to be an administrator or a skilled user! ISA is developed by Wiki In Africa and Eugene Egbe in collaboration with Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons team.

You can give ISA a try by adding structured data in the campaign of Quality images supported by a Wikimedia chapter: https://tools.wmflabs.org/isa/campaigns/33

AC/DC

AC/DC ("Add to Commons, Descriptive Claims") is a batch editing tool by Lucas Werkmeister. It allows for complex data modeling of sets of files, either defined by a category or by a Pagepile. This is the only batch tool right now that supports Qualifiers. Installation is simple through the Preferences Gadget menu, and it supports large and small batches of files well. For more, see commons:Help:Gadget-ACDC

  • An example of the AC/DC tool in action
    An example of the AC/DC tool in action

SDC

SDC is a user script developed by Magnus Manske that is similar to HotCat, allowing users to both:

  1. evaluate the existing structured data statements on a file page from a category or search results page and
  2. add a limited set of statements (currently P180 (Depicts) and P195 (Collection)). The tool only adds structured data to files on one page of a category; if a Commons category is exceptionally large and you want to add structured data to many or all files, this is not the tool for you.

PetScan integration with QuickStatements

It is now also possible to use PetScan to add structured data to files on Wikimedia Commons, through integration with QuickStatements. The process works as follows:

  • Do a search on PetScan that produces a list of files as result (example: files in Category:Volkswagen T1) . For creating PetScan results for Commons files, note that:
    • The Wiki needs to be set to “wikimedia” for the project, and “commons” for the language
    • The namespace for files needs to be selected in the second tab.
  • You will then see a small box at the top right of the file list in which you can enter statements to add to those files (example: P180:Q1819861)
  • When clicking 'Start QS', you will be taken to QuickStatements in which you can then run your batch edit.

A link to PetScan from each category is coming to the commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox soon, so creation of the queries should be quite straightforward from that point.

Help welcome with data modeling!

The Wikimedia Commons community is at this moment thinking about the best ways to describe files on Wikimedia Commons with structured data. This is very new territory: there are no established ways yet to, for instance, describe the creators or locations of files.

Please help with this process by participating in the data modeling discussions at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Modeling and its various subpages. Examples and thoughts about GLAM files are especially welcome here.

Blog posts about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

The following blog posts by Keegan Peterzell outline the development process behind SDC:

Also check this blog post by Lucas Werkmeister:

Structured Data on Commons at WikidataCon 2019

Andrew Lih presented about Wikidata Commons contribution strategies for GLAM organizations and SandraF did a hands-on workshop about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

Structured Data is coming to WikiConference North America

There is also a Workshop at WikiConference North America on Friday, November 8.


November 2019

Bennylin

Continued development, documentation, and blog posts

By SandraF

End of Sloan grant, but continued development

On December 31, 2019, the Structured Data on Commons project concludes the development work that was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In the upcoming months, the Structured Data team at the Wikimedia Foundation will continue work on open tasks: computer-aided tagging, support for more datatypes (including dates and geographical coordinates), search, constraints, and a SPARQL query engine for Wikimedia Commons.

New documentation online

The general information page about Structured Data on Commons has been updated with a general how-to, frequently asked questions, and links to various helpful tools. Feel free to edit and improve this page, and ask questions on the talk page!

More documentation about Structured Data on Commons and GLAM will be published in the upcoming weeks.

Blog posts about GLAM pilot projects

By the time of publishing this edition of This Month in GLAM, three blog posts have been published about GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons. Hopefully they are helpful and inspiring!


December 2019

Bennylin

New blog posts

By SandraF

New blog posts about Structured Data on Commons and GLAM

Metadata roundtripping now becomes easier thanks to structured data. Is this something your GLAM partners would be interested in?

In December, a few new blog posts about Structured Data on Commons have been published on Wikimedia Space:

In January, we will continue to work on more documentation. As mentioned in the previous This Month in GLAM edition, the development team also continues development of several key features.


February 2020

Bennylin

Summary of pilot projects, and what's next

By SandraF

Since 2019, files on Wikimedia Commons can be enhanced with multilingual and machine-readable structured data. If Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons is still pretty new to you, here's a very short introduction video (3'30 minutes):

A summary of GLAM pilot projects

In the past year, the WMF GLAM team has mentored GLAM staff and Wikimedia community members in a series of pilot projects, to ‘test’ this new technology, explore its potential, and provide inspiring examples. What does Structured Data on Commons make possible? Which new questions and challenges appear?

Structured data for a very small (art) collection

Wikidata-driven gallery on Wikimedia Commons of the collection of the Jakob Smitsmuseum

Staff from the Belgian organization PACKED vzw (now called meemoo) have imported the collection of the Jakob Smitsmuseum, a small, municipal art museum, to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, in order to experiment with data modeling, and to explore the potential of structured data to make small collections accessible online for the first time.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/04/how-we-helped-a-small-art-museum-to-increase-the-impact-of-its-collections-with-wikimedia-projects-and-structured-data/

Connecting different collections, and linking them to their historical context

Structured data-driven page that displays relationships between objects designed by the Wolfers dynasty, and the drawings that have served as blueprints and designs for them

Another pilot project with PACKED vzw has brought together, and connected, the work of three generations of prominent Belgian silversmiths, exploring the potential of structured data to connect (art) collections around the world and to link them to their broader context. This pilot also highlighted the description of copyright and licenses in structured data.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2020/02/26/connecting-the-work-of-three-generations-of-decorative-artists-with-structured-data/

Describing digitized publications, making data re-usable across wikis

Books in the Punjabi Qisse genre, described with structured data

Wikimedians have described digitized books with structured data, to prepare them for transcription on Wikisource, investigating how Structured Data on Commons can help to avoid data duplication across Wikimedia projects and how it can make cross-wiki workflows more efficient.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/07/how-can-structured-data-on-commons-wikidata-and-wikisource-walk-hand-in-hand-a-pilot-project-with-punjabi-qisse/

A game to easily add structured data through campaigns and contests

At various Wikimedia conferences and on other occasions, people organize mini-challenges with ISA, and so can you!

The ISA Tool is a multilingual, mobile-friendly tool, that makes it easy for anyone - especially beginners! - to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons. You can create 'tagging' campaigns and small competitions in ISA. Anyone can do this - no need to be an administrator or a skilled user! ISA was developed as a Structured Data on Commons and GLAM pilot, by Wiki In Africa and Eugene Egbe in collaboration with Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons team.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/11/26/introducing-isa-a-cool-tool-for-adding-structured-data-on-commons/

The new frontier of data roundtripping

Metadata roundtripping now becomes easier thanks to structured data. Is this something your GLAM partners would be interested in?

Various organizations researched data synchronization and roundtripping with external databases – a feature that many larger GLAM institutions ask for, and for which structured data on Wikimedia projects provides more advanced foundations.

Blog post: https://space.wmflabs.org/2019/12/13/data-roundtripping-a-new-frontier-for-glam-wiki-collaborations/

Open questions and fresh challenges

A concluding blog post summarizes the open questions and fresh challenges that Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons poses for the GLAM-Wiki community - challenges related to data federation and the correct description of creative works and media files that show these works.

  • The difference between data about a creative work and a file showing that work, as described on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons
    The difference between data about a creative work and a file showing that work, as described on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons

What's next?

New GLAM projects that use Structured Data on Commons

In 2020, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides digital assets from DPLA's contributors to Wikimedia Commons, describing the files with structured data. Dominic Byrd-McDevitt (User:Dominic), formerly Wikipedian in Residence at US National Archives and a GLAM-Wiki pioneer, works as a data fellow on this project.

Are you also working on a new project that involves structured data? Make sure to add it to the GLAM page of the Structured Data on Commons portal, and report on it in This Month in GLAM!


June 2021

Bennylin

OpenRefine starts Structured Data on Commons development and is searching for two developers

By SFauconnier
OpenRefine logo: an upright, simplified blue diamond

OpenRefine is a power tool to clean messy data, popular in a diverse range of communities. It has been serving the needs of journalists, librarians, Wikimedians and scientists for more than 10 years, and is taught in many curricula and workshops around the world.

OpenRefine is quite actively used on Wikidata. In addition, thanks to a Project Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, OpenRefine will, between September 2021 and August 2022, be extended with structured data functionalities for Wikimedia Commons. This code extension will make it possible to batch edit structured data of existing files on Wikimedia Commons, and to batch upload new Wikimedia Commons files with structured data from the start.

In order to develop the abovementioned features, OpenRefine has two Junior Developer job openings (paid contractor positions; part-time, fully remote). Obviously, Wikimedia and/or GLAM developers are strongly encouraged to apply:

  1. Junior Developer - Wikimedia Development (6 months, from September 2021 till February 2022)
  2. Junior Developer - OpenRefine Development (8 months, from November 2021 till June 2022)


August 2021

Bennylin

OpenRefine starts SDC development

By SFauconnier

OpenRefine starts Structured Data on Commons development in September 2021!

The OpenRefine team starts development of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC) support in September. This project is funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Project Grant. Eugene Egbe (developer of, among others, the ISA Tool) works as a contractor for this project, and he will develop several Wikimedia-specific functionalities: a Wikimedia Commons reconciliation service and an upload tool. In November, a second developer will come on board who will work more closely on the OpenRefine side.

This project runs until end June 2022; by then, OpenRefine should be enhanced with functionalities to (1) batch edit and (2) upload files with structured data on Wikimedia Commons. We are currently planning to have batch editing functionalities ready by January-February 2022, and batch upload functionalities by June 2022.

Input welcome!

We warmly welcome community feedback in this trajectory. Sandra will soon start reaching out to specific community members who already actively expressed interest in providing input, in testing and piloting new features. If you want to indicate that you'd like to be part of this feedback panel as well, feel free to fill in this form! We value your input!

Follow what we are working on

You can check the planning and milestones of the project, and short monthly reports, on Meta. Notes of the development team meetings are collected in this public Etherpad.

Work on this project will be tracked on Phabricator and on GitHub. Feel free to subscribe to, and participate in the discussions!


September 2021

Bennylin

First steps for Wikimedia Commons reconciliation service

By SFauconnier

OpenRefine and Structured Data on Commons

Software development

The OpenRefine team is developing a Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service.
  • Eugene Egbe started working as a junior developer (contractor) for Wikimedia-specific features in this project. Eugene is experienced in Structured Data on Commons development, as he was also the developer behind the popular ISA Tool. For OpenRefine, Eugene develops the Wikimedia Commons reconciliation service and a batch upload tool.
  • First code has been written for the Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service. This service will allow OpenRefine (and tools outside of OpenRefine) to take a list of file names from Wikimedia Commons and to convert these file names to their corresponding entity identifiers (“M numbers” or M-ids - the Wikimedia Commons equivalent of Q-ids). Next, it will then be possible to retrieve Wikitext and structured data from these files, so that this can be processed further. Code is available on Gerrit and the service itself will be available at https://commonsreconcile.toolforge.org/
  • Antonin has ported the EditGroups tool (which is already quite popular on Wikidata) to Wikimedia Commons: https://editgroups-commons.toolforge.org/. This makes it possible for Commons contributors to undo certain batch edits on Wikimedia Commons, including future 'faulty' batch edits by OpenRefine.

Community outreach


October 2021

Bennylin

A Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service, You Say?

By SFauconnier

In October 2021, the OpenRefine team has continued working on structured data functionalities, with a focus on the Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service. By the end of October, we have started testing the service in OpenRefine itself, and are including and improving upon additional features, including support for various formats of Commons file names, and data extension, including support for all datatypes. The Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service is also available for technical testing at the Reconciliation service test bench.

Why Wikimedia Commons reconciliation? How does it work?

A Wikimedia Commons reconciliation service is necessary groundwork to allow further editing of (structured data of) Wikimedia Commons files in OpenRefine. How does this work?

  1. The reconciliation service takes a list of file names on Wikimedia Commons that are entered in a column in OpenRefine. It then looks up the M-ids (identifiers) for these files. This process is called reconciliation.
  2. The magic happens in the next step, though... after reconciliation, the user can proceed to retrieve wikitext and existing structured data statements from these Commons files. As requested, the wikitext and the structured data for each file will be listed in consecutive (new) columns in OpenRefine. This process is called data extension.
  3. As a result, the user will be able to take this wikitext and existing structured data, modify and clean it further in OpenRefine, and convert wikitext to structured data (for instance: convert strings of names of photographers to their corresponding Wikidata items, and add these as creators (P170) to the files' structured data. This step is currently not yet possible; the OpenRefine team will work on this during the upcoming months.

The reconciliation service is not written specifically for OpenRefine alone; it will also be usable in other tools that want to take existing information (Wikitext and structured data) from Wikimedia Commons files and further process this information.

OpenRefine at WikidataCon 2021

The OpenRefine team presented its ongoing work related to Structured Data on Commons to the Wikidata community at WikidataCon 2021. Additionally, we also gave a general OpenRefine tutorial, and participated in a panel discussion about Wikimedia tool sustainability. Slides (where relevant) of these sessions can be found at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon_2021/Documentation/List_of_sessions.


January 2022

Bennylin

February 22: Meetup about SDC support in OpenRefine

By SFauconnier

You are invited! Meetup with the OpenRefine team on February 22

OpenRefine logo
OpenRefine logo

Over 2021-22, OpenRefine is being extended with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC) support. This project is funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Project Grant.

On Tuesday, February 22, the OpenRefine team working on these functionalities invites you for an update and a first demo of the newly developed SDC editing functionalities in OpenRefine and will talk about what's next. Questions welcome!

  • When? Tuesday, February 22, at 15:00-17:00 UTC (check the time in your timezone).
  • For whom? For anyone who is keen to hear about the current status of SDC support in OpenRefine!
  • Where? Online, via Zoom. Check the event's info page for the link.
  • The meeting will be recorded and the recording will be published to Wikimedia Commons afterwards.

Agenda

This meetup includes a demo of the newly developed Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service

This meetup will cover:

  • Update on past, current and future Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons development in OpenRefine, by Sandra Fauconnier
  • Demo of 🚧 Wikimedia Commons reconciliation and SDC editing via OpenRefine 🚧 including use cases, by Sandra Fauconnier and Alicia Fagerving (WMSE)
  • Updates and tips about SDC data modelling and Wikitext
  • Q&A with the team - bring your questions!


February 2022

Bennylin

Editing SDC with OpenRefine; Monthly OpenRefine and Wikimedia office hours

By SFauconnier

Editing structured data with OpenRefine is now possible

On February 22, 2022, the OpenRefine team held a community meetup to present the current status of Structured Data on Commons development in OpenRefine.

This meetup was fully recorded; the recording can be found on the event page. The slides and an Etherpad with links and notes are also available for review.

In this meetup, the OpenRefine team demonstrated how it's already possible to edit structured data on existing Wikimedia Commons files, using a version 3.6 snapshot release of OpenRefine (it's not possible with the 3.5.x versions or earlier). An explanation of this process can be watched in the meetup's video recording.

The start of this process is also explained in this short video:

Short demo video (3'25") of the Wikimedia Commons Reconciliation Service inside OpenRefine. You can use it to retrieve Wikitext and structured data of Commons files so that you can continue working with this data in OpenRefine. Check the service's homepage for a more detailed how-to.

Monthly OpenRefine / Wikimedia office hours

OpenRefine logo
OpenRefine logo

In the upcoming months, the OpenRefine team will host monthly office hours for OpenRefine users from the Wikimedia community. You can meet and ask questions to other OpenRefine users here, and talk to members of the development team. These office hours are informal, have no set agenda, and are not recorded.

For now, we have scheduled office hours until end June 2022. Time of the day alternates to accommodate participants from diverse time zones. If these office hours prove to be popular, we will plan more of these later!

These office hours are also listed on OpenRefine's info page on Wikimedia Commons. Zoom links will be provided there.


March 2022

Bennylin

OpenRefine: survey for Structured Data on Commons features

By SFauconnier
Dou you upload files to Wikimedia Commons and/or edit structured data there? Please fill in this survey!

OpenRefine is running a short survey to learn about user needs and expectations for its new Structured Data on Commons (SDC) features. If you upload files to Wikimedia Commons and/or edit structured data there, please help by filling in this survey!


May 2022

Bennylin

Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine: looking for test uploads!

By SFauconnier
An etching by Johann Adam Klein (1792-1875), showing a group of five cossacks standing, sitting and lying down. They are eating a meal. One cossack is filling a jug with a drink from a vat. In the background, two horses are grazing.
The first file uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine, from the collections of Thorvaldsens Museum (Copenhagen)

The OpenRefine team is working hard to include Wikimedia Commons (structured data) batch editing and upload functionalities in OpenRefine, and the work is progressing well. The first files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons last month.

This means that experimental, basic functionalities for uploading files to Commons are getting ready! It is still fiddly to install and run these - this will be improved in the upcoming months. But we are ready for testing!

The team would like to work with a few (think 3 to 5) diverse community projects to test batch file uploads. This will help a lot to find bugs and to better support your workflows.

Maybe you have an upcoming Commons upload that the OpenRefine team can test with? If so, please contact Sandra!

Ideally this upload of files (any files!) is

  • Rather small (max. a few hundreds of files).
  • You preferably already have some basic data/information about the files.
  • They are ready to be uploaded somewhere in June-September 2022, and it’s OK if there is a bit of delay (you don’t have hard deadlines).
  • The rights for the files are cleared / there is evidence that the files have the right licenses/copyright .
  • You are OK with it that some mistakes may happen during the test, for instance some errors in Wikitext or structured data. (We are testing new software!). You are willing to help look for and fix mistakes if they happen.
  • You can upload the files yourself, or you can let Sandra upload them for you. If you want to upload the files yourself with OpenRefine, the team will help you set up. In that case, it’s good if you are a bit tolerant of bugs, errors, and unfinished software (we are testing brand new code that is still rough around the edges!). It would be great if you can then also give the team tips and feedback about your experience.

Are you interested in this? Then send Sandra an email (sandra.fauconnier﹫gmail.com) with some information about the kind of files you would like to upload.


June 2022

Bennylin

Structured data on Commons editing now possible with OpenRefine 3.6; file uploading with 3.7

By SFauconnier

Release of OpenRefine 3.6 with Wikimedia Commons editing functionalities

Video demo of Wikimedia Commons (structured data) editing with OpenRefine during Wikidata Lab XXXIV, 9 June 2022 (approx 1 hour 20 minutes).

In June 2022, the OpenRefine team released a first beta version of OpenRefine 3.6, which supports editing files on Wikimedia Commons with structured data.

At the time of publication of this newsletter, the most current version is OpenRefine 3.6-rc1 (Release Candidate 1), which you can download at https://openrefine.org/download.html. Give it a try!

Step by step instructions on how to edit files on Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OpenRefine/Adding_structured_data_with_OpenRefine. If you have suggestions for improvements for this page, please leave them on the talk page (or edit the page directly!).

Note that the OpenRefine installation in the cloud on PAWS, at the time of publication of this newsletter (early July 2022), is not upgraded to OpenRefine 3.6 yet, and it's therefore not yet possible to edit Wikimedia Commons files there.

Experimental uploading to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine 3.7

The OpenRefine team is also already working on the next version of the software, version 3.7, which will support the upload of new files to Wikimedia Commons.

If you want to give it a try, you will need to download a snapshot release of OpenRefine 3.7 via GitHub. In this (temporary) Google document you find step-by-step instructions how to upload files with early snapshot releases of OpenRefine 3.7. More than 2,000 files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine already!

This feature is being improved and made more user-friendly in the upcoming months. You can expect the release of an official/stable version of OpenRefine with Commons upload functionalities by end October 2022. Official documentation of that feature will also be published then.

A selection of files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine


August 2022

Bennylin

New tool in development utilizing Structured Data

By JamieF

In Development: View it! tool

Discoverability, Structured Data, and the View it! tool presentation and discussion during the August 2022 WREN meeting

The new “View it!” is a tool for discoverability of Commons media currently under development. You can install the prototype now and get started using it and providing feedback. The following is our first report from the View it! team:

The View it! tool is being designed to improve discoverability and increase editor and reader access to images uploaded to Commons, particularly those utilizing structured data. The tool is available across all Wikipedia platforms if users install the code on User:<YourUserName>/global.js; however, users can enable it on a particular project if preferred– look for the “View” button next to the Article and Talk buttons after the installation. Please visit the Meta page for installation instructions and to sign up for testing and updates.

Javan white-eye Wikipedia page with "View" view it! button
Javan white-eye view it! results

We are currently working to make the tool multilingual, so the button and text will translate according to the project the user is on. This month, we focus on extending and improving search functionality and View it! Results opening in a new tab/window. Currently, we are seeking comments on the user interface and how users would like View it! to manifest when in use.

More information on View it! and August update

The number of images displayed in a Wikipedia article is finite and highly curated by editors; through the tool, users will have access to the entire catalog of images on Wikimedia Commons, increasing discoverability and giving editors and readers a more broad experience. Our hope is that adoption of View it! will encourage contributors to utilize Commons more readily and include structured data with uploads.

During August, the team of User: Dominic (Project Manager), User:SuperHamster (Developer), and User:JamieF (Community Outreach), hosted two community conversations around the tool. One during Wikimania 2022/Pittsburgh Meetup and a virtual meeting on Wednesday, August 31, 2022. Those interested can find the notes from both events and a recording of the August 31st meeting on the Meta page. We received great feedback, particularly about what the user interface (UI) might look like, the search queries, and how users can manipulate the queries to achieve specific results (like adding a particular location, for example). So far, the tool has shown value for non-English wikis, is helpful for identifying and removing data errors, and is valuable outside of Wikipedia, such as seeing images for places on Wikivoyage or more images of flora and fauna on Wikispecies.


Beta testing is rolling out this week; please feel free to join on the Meta page, where you can also follow along on tool updates. Also, please reach out with any questions you may have!

We want to say a huge Thank you! To the GLAM community for supporting the beta rollout, joining our community conversations, and chatting with us on Telegram about the results you have pulled and recommendations. We appreciate it! The Wikimedia Foundation generously funds View it! through the Structured Data Across Wikimedia project.


September 2022

Bennylin

View it! tool development update

By JamieF

View it! tool has new features!

View it! Advanced Search

View it! is increasing its functionality with an advanced search option. Please consider helping the developers with language translation.

View it! is available across all Wikimedia projects and the developers have implemented localization for the user script. As of publication, there are now 8 languages supported, and you are invited to follow our step-by-step instructions to add additional translations to the tool in your own language.

View it! now has an advanced search menu. In advanced search, View it! users are able to choose from a dropdown list of properties to search by —"depicts" (P180), "main subject" (P921), and "creator" (P170)—along with an additional free text box and filters for Commons quality assessment and image resolution.

View it! results for Q23548- NASA
View it! advanced search results utilizing "Created by" (P170): Q23548 - NASA
View it! advanced search results utilizing free text "moon" with "Created by" (P170): Q23548 - NASA

About View it!

The number of images displayed in a Wikipedia article is finite and highly curated by editors; through the tool, users will have access to the entire catalog of images on Wikimedia Commons (particularly those utilizing structured data), increasing discoverability and giving editors and readers a more broad experience. Our hope is that adoption of View it! will encourage contributors to utilize Commons more readily and include structured data with uploads.

Please consider installing View it! or signing up for monthly updates!

Thank you GLAM community for supporting our efforts and providing feedback as you have explored the tool. We really appreciate it. The Wikimedia Foundation generously funds View it! through the Structured Data Across Wikimedia project.


October 2022

Bennylin

View it! tool: now with Commons category search!

By JamieF

Per user feedback, View it! now has a Wikimedia Commons category search option.

Users of the tool have regularly requested for View it! to allow direct access to Commons categories without SDC-driven results. This month, the developer implemented a Commons Category (P373) filter when using advanced search. When using the P373 search, users are also given the subcategories to click through as well.

View it! is available across additional Wikimedia namespaces, now including Wikisource Author and Index pages. This change was a result of community feedback from our presentation at the October Wikisource Triage meeting.

View it! is now installed by 97 users; it has also been incorporated into two other Wikipedia-external tools. The team continues to work on tool translation—at present, is has been translated into 14 languages. If you are able, please consider helping us with language translation!

View it! on Toolforge also has a little bit of a new look, and we will continue streamlining the interface where possible for better media viewing.

View it! Advanced search showing the Commons Category (P373) search option View it! Commons Category (P373) results for Earth (Q2) View it! results for Commons Category (P373) Earth (Q2) showing the list of subcategories.



May 2016

Bennylin

WMF GLAM report

By Astinson

New GLAM-Wiki Strategist Role

Wikipedia Library lead announced on wikimedia-l and cultural-partners, that former Wikipedia Library project Manager, Alex Stinson, will be filling a new GLAM-Wiki Strategist Role at the Wikimedia Foundation. The role is focused on connecting Wikimedia community members, directing attention for specific needs within the GLAM-Wiki community, and facilitating improvements to technologies, documentation and support throughout the movement. Starting in the June "This Month in GLAM", Alex will be providing regular updates in this column about what he has been working on, and how that might be engaged throughout the community.


June 2016

Bennylin

A Wikimania Reflection, GLAM Phabricator Queues, and a WMF Update

By Astinson

Reflections on Wikimania

For Wikimania, I (Alex Stinson) helped run a number of sessions, including

I also attended, and recommend the notes and conversation from:

In general, I was really happy with and engaged by the large number of people talking about the importance of cultural heritage for the movement. The growing consensus among our community leaders is that there needs to be a coordinated and systematic effort, beyond GLAM-Wiki or Wiki Loves Monuments, to align our collective impact on the cultural heritage space (as is broadly defined by organizations like UNESCO to include non-material heritage and natural heritage alongside our more traditional emphasis on GLAM). I found the conversation at the Wiki Loves Monuments and Connected Open Heritage meeting particularly useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwkI7iNidXk . Well done John Andersson, Axel Pettersson, André Costa, Philip Kopetzky and Jean Fred Berthelot!

Hopefully, in the next year we can use my new position with the WMF to help provide an advocate for that conversation, and especially as we look to integrate it into the movement strategy conversations that Katherine Maher described as an important part of her new tenure as WMF Executive Director. Staff at the Foundation are increasingly looking for ways to think about GLAM and other programs. A big part of my job will be building awareness in those other teams, especially the technical teams, so that both volunteer and partner GLAM-Wiki stakeholders can benefit from WMF projects.

Their was also a meetup of GLAM-Wiki coordinators at Wikimania, and we talked about the shared needs of the GLAM-Wiki community at the moment. The conversation led to several very clear conclusions on next steps for my role at the WMF: we need to make sure that our communication and documentation channels are clear amongst GLAM-Wiki folks, and that we need to find ways of developing our shared support needs/requests as GLAM-Wiki coordinators (see the next section).

Other highlights for me include:

  • A lot of very interesting conversations about and desire to support WikiSource, and significant software improvements for WikiSource including integration of Visual Editor into the Proofread Page Extension. WikiSource is very important for our long-term GLAM-Wiki strategy: emerging communities or communities with small supplies of digital records need these source materials before they can participate in other parts of our communities.
  • Lots of interest and positive energy for structured data in general, but also structured data on Commons: I think almost every session I was at mentioned the need for structured data on Commons – and it's in the works (phabricator:T68108). If you have the energy or interest in helping the Wikidata team please reach out.
  • Emerging communities are communicating new and different approaches to working with cultural institutions and working with cultural heritage. I hope to help integrate those model projects more with the best practices developed in the early Europe-centered GLAM-Wiki documentation.

Starting Phabricator Projects for GLAM-Wiki

One of the conclusions of the GLAM-Wiki coordinator meetings at Wikimania, was a need for better communication about who needs what help in the GLAM-Wiki Community. Part of this will be overhauling the portal on Outreach to make it easier to find the best contact information and communication channels. I will be coordinating a documentation consultation in the coming months to help us find the best existing material, and identify what needs to be done to improve those materials and make them easier to access.

But there is also a broader need to share the problems we are facing as GLAM-Wiki outreach folks, and at the Wikimania GLAM Coordinators meetup we decided on trying an experiment: shared Phabricator projects for GLAM-Wiki support needs.

  • A General GLAM workboard, for tracking support needs related to GLAM program activities, documentation, communications support, or other kinds of non-technical skills
  • A GLAM-Tech workboard, for tracking technical needs related to GLAM, both in the core MediaWiki software, in external apps/tools used for GLAM-Wiki projects, or help with templates, Wikidata, or some other kind of more technical on-wiki skills.

How does this work?

How to make a Phabricator account

Phabricator is a task management system designed by engineers for both project management and bug management. In the Wikimedia community the system has largely been used by developers; however, in the last year, more and more other projects in the movement have started using Phabricator for non-technical task management. Among these non-software uses: the Wikipedia Education Collaborative has created their own Workboard to track shared projects that require collective experience beyond what one Education Coordinator can support. Education leaders submit tasks to the workboard, and then other Education leaders who are part of the Education Collaborative work on those tasks. This time on collective tasks is becoming part of how those Education Coordinators schedule their time.

To get a task in the GLAM-Wiki queues, create a new task in Phabricator (plus sign at the top right), and in the field labeled "Tags" add GLAM or GLAM-Tech. Once in the queues, other GLAM-Wiki coordinators and practitioners can sign up ("Claim") the task if they can commit to solving the problem; moreover the comment section of each task allows us to talk through complications or challenges with those tasks (see for example this recent conversation about the possible reuse cases for dynamic Maps outside of Wikimedia projects). This kind of collaborative task list allow GLAM-Wiki leaders to get support beyond local volunteer communities and personal contacts. This also helps folks who coordinate between communities, like myself as WMF GLAM-Wiki Strategist, to better learn about and coordinate support for GLAM program leaders who need mentoring, documentation, learning materials, or help from someone else in our community.

If you are unfamiliar with Phabricator, the Education Collab has created a great Introduction to Phabricator. Please give it a try: shared work queues only work if you both contribute needs and spend time working on tasks submitted by others.

During the Documentation overhaul, better instructions and use cases will be integrated into the outreach portal.

June WMF GLAM Highlights

Some quick highlights of the work I (Alex Stinson) have been doing as GLAM-Wiki Strategist at the Foundation:

  • Wrapping up responsibilities with the Wikipedia Library, including advocating for and supporting a number of relationships and partnerships.
  • Consultations
    • IFLA: consulting on development of White Papers for IFLA World Congress in Columbus, August 2016
    • Corresponded with Ivan Martinez and Wikimedia Mexico for outreach to a university library
    • Met with Liam Wyatt about strategy with Europeana and European coordinators; regular correspondence with several European Coordinators
    • Wikimania consultations with dozens of people, including:
      • Parithi, Tamil Wikimedia work
      • Mounir Touzri of Wikimedia Tunisia
      • WIRs Jason Evans, Ewan McAndrews, and John Cummings
      • Mina Theofilatou of WikiTherapy
      • Andrea Zanni and Wikisource meetup group for WikiSource
      • Arne Wossink and User:Yarl for work on commons:Commons:Pattypan, as part of work to develop meta:Grants:IEG/Batch uploader for small GLAM projects/Midpoint
      • Maartan Dammers, Susanna Ånäs, and Sandra Fauconnier for Wikidata + GLAM workshop and strategy
      • GLAM-Wiki Coordinators meetup and WIR meetup
      • Had a number of meetings with others, throughout the conference, on request.
  • Helped prep guidelines for new Program Grants for GLAM, and revision questions for planning GLAM and content donations at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Plan . Also consulted on several requests for PEG and IEG.
  • with Dominic Byrd-McDevitt led program for GLAM-Wiki Bootcamp hosted by the National Archive of the United States. Documentation is at en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp. Was invited to help teach the event, since in the United States and a short trip for me. Refined the 2013 curriculum to include better coverage of Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and changes in different models being used to develop GLAM-Wiki partnerships. Consulted with 15 attendees and Wikimedia DC on GLAM work. Working over the next several months to internationalize for other contexts (initial discussions to do this in Tunisia) – if other communities are interested please reach out to astinson@wikimedia.org. I hope to help local communities pilot more GLAM-Wiki training around the world in the next several years.
  • Attended the Diversity Conference (https://wikidiversity.org/wiki/Main_Page ) since it coincided with the GLAM-Wiki Bootcamp. A number of interesting conversations about representing global and gender diversity in GLAM-Wiki, and how valuable the contributions of GLAM partners is to creating greater diversity. Because of the short timeline for planning the conference, attendance was very U.S.-focused.
  • Attended Wikimania (see review above).
  • Working with WMF Community Tech Team to GLAM-Wiki identify needs for technological developments – currently talking with the team about supporting the Programs and Events Dashboard (being spearheaded by the WMF Education Program team), WikiSource, and Structured Data on Commons.
  • Developed partnership request with WMF Strategic Partnerships for access to Googles OCR tools for WikiSource. Currently, Community Tech is evaluating the API for that tool for solving the Community Wishlist Ask https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T120788

What's next?

  • Design and get ready to launch documentation consultation: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T139464
  • Begin investigation of best practices for digitization in non-Western contexts – if you are interested in this topic, please reach out to me.
  • Work with Community Tech and other teams to further work on structured data on Commons and other technical needs
  • Support Wikimedia Blog posts being developed by volunteers/GLAM Coordinators on:
    • Wikimedia Netherlands & helping GLAMs release colonial collections
    • The Case for Wikidata + GLAM
  • Continue discussions with IFLA, ARL, OCLC, etc. as part of relationships developed during the Wikipedia Library work
  • Prepare for IFLA conference in Columbus, Ohio
  • One-on-one consultations as needed – if you need help on anything related to GLAM-Wiki, please reach out: astinson@wikimedia.org.


July 2016

Bennylin

Grants; New Content Donation Evaluation Report; WMF Updates

By Astinson (WMF)

Grants: Review Round 1 of the New Project Grants and Yearly Reports from APG grant recipients

The Grants department at the foundation, recently reconfigured a number of Grants programs. In the process, what was formerly the IEG process, which has funded a number of GLAM-Wiki related grants in the past, has gone from a rolling application period, to a deadline based application period. Round 1 of 2016-17 just ended its submission window, and is now open for comments. The following grants are related to GLAM-Wiki activities:

GLAM-Wiki Proposals
  • Librarybase -- a project by Harej (talk · contribs) which focuses on extracting citation data in a WikiBase from Wikipedia articles for reuse. Relevant for technical outreach to libraries.
Related tech proposals
  • Arc.heolo.gy- a visualization project for Wikipedia and Wikidata material, used to eveluate and explore WIkipedia's content.
  • Wikimedia Augment a project proposed to develop augmented reality features for Wikimedia Projects.
  • StrepHit renewal -- a project to improve the primary source refernecing on Wikipedia.

APG 2015-16 FDC Reports arriving

The Round II reports for FDC APG Grants, have been mostly submitted by recieving organizations. Many of them include reports on GLAM-Wiki activities. Find the reports as part of the records at this Meta Page

New Content Donation Evaluation Report

In 2015/14, the Learning and Evaluation team at the Wikimedia Foundation collected data on how Content Donations from GLAMs. The data has been analyzed and turned into a report on Meta.

WMF Updates

This month has been fairly busy, in both recovering from Wikimania, and I had a number of personal events (including my wedding!). The highlights on GLAM-Wiki work includes:

  • Recover and followup from Wikimania.
  • Finish, and polish IFLA White Papers for publication at World Library -- publication soon.
  • Finishing blog post about Wikidata + GLAM, under review from Wikidata+GLAM leaders, should be published mid August.
  • Work with TWL team on preparation for IFLA World Librarian Congress and meeting with Association of Research Libraries, as continuation of Wikipedia Library work, and modeling potential collaborations with big networks in Galleries, Archives and Museums.
  • Created GLAM-Wiki handle that mirrors the Twitter account on Facebook, so that the communities less active on Twitter, do not loose that channel of communication.
  • Worked with Wikimedia Argentina to document case study on digitization to begin collecting best practices/models in digitization. Will be published in August.
  • Consultations with:


August 2016

Bennylin

IFLA #WLIC2016 & Updates

By Astinson

IFLA and White Papers

With the Wikipedia Library team, I attended and presented about two White Papers that I have been supporting. These white papers, which focus on Academic and Research Libraries and Public Libraries, will offer better communication tools for engagement from the Wikimedia community to libraries. For more information about the conference, and talks see the Books and Bytes Update on English Wikipedia.

WMF Updates


October 2016

Bennylin

Digitization, Travel, Structured Data on Commons, and WMF updates

By Astinson

Note: this episode of the WMF report in this Month in GLAM Covers September and October'

Digitization and Case Studies

During Wikimania, and my early assessment of the Wikimedia Community's needs at Wikimedia Conference and through conversation with a number of volunteer communities, I realized that many of our communities are either exploring or working on digitization; this kind of collaboration it offers a number of opportunities to support potential GLAM partners in getting them thinking about open content and knowledge. Because funding and the broader heritage sector is placing emphasis on digital sharing, many institutions, even those without robust digitization programs, are looking for help. Wikimedia Communities can help supporting at different stages in the process, and I have begun collecting those experiences at this outreach portal.

Also, their are folks already working on this in the Wikimedia Community: a couple years ago the Wikimedia user group was formed, to support the best practices for DIY digitization in partnership with other organizations. I am working with members of that group, to both easier to reach, and make sure that materials that they are creating get shared as part of the Digitization portal on outreach.

Also, in attending the Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum, I talked with a number, and will be continue to talk with members of their staff, to see if their is a way for the project that seeks to create access to "all knowledge" with the world, can work with the non-profit project seeking to create access to the "sum of all knowledge" (of course we can! But I bet their are more opportunities). If you have any ideas about digitization, can help writing a case study or best practice, or want to talk about the opportunities with digitization reach out at astinson@wikimedia.org.

Structured data on Commons

One of the main reasons for delay in writing a September this Month in GLAM WMF report, was the unexpected opportunity to support development of a possible funding source for expediting Structured Commons alongside the number Events that I attended (see below). For a preview of what the extended funding on the project could look like, see: The Overview on Commons of the new application. Please weigh in.

Events!

September and October included a number of events:

  • At WikiConference USA, a number of other Wikipedia + Library leaders offered a whole range of presentations on the role of Wikipedia and Libraries. It had a GLAM heavy focus with Alex, providing workshops on Wikidata and Global GLAM. For highlights from the event, see the blog post on Wikimedia blog
  • Jake Orlowitz and Alex Stinson, attended the Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum: the conference featured conversation about the future of libraries, with a number of libraries both within in the United States and Canada. The focus overall, was less on the broader library community, and more on Internet Archive's role in that change, and how to better develop partnerships with their organization. The Wikipedia Library team, attended to both: represent the recent Internet Archive bot, work on WP:OABOT, and the relevance of Wikidata in the library space; and to explore closer collaboration with IA and their partner organizations, like Biodiversity Heritage Library and Family Search.

Also, living in New England, Alex accepted invitations for talks at both the New England Library Association and Cornell University Libraries. These talks at local gatherings allow Alex to listen to the challenges facing our local, and smaller GLAM partners - where even in the United States, the funding and pressure on these professional groups is pretty extensive. The talks went well :)

  • The Community Wishlist Survey has opened for its first phase: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey . This year, asks and that support Wikimedia Programs and other smaller and typically unsupported volunteer communities (i.e. WikiSource and Wikitionary), will be given a second grouping of priorities which the Community Tech team will work on. Make sure that you include your program-related requests.
  • The Next round of Project grants opens in December: make sure to start planning for projects in that window of time: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project
  • #1lib1ref launch: 1lib1ref is beginning planning, please join the conversation by following the instructions at: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/glam/2016-October/001094.html . #1lib1ref allows for an excellent opportunity to start talking with library communities and partners who have not yet participated in Wikimedia Collaborations.

Blog Highlights

Other Consultations

In September and October, I supported a number of community and staff members in consultation, including but not limited to:

  • Meetings with WMF Legal and Communications about long term strategies for supporting GLAM
  • Reviewing Annual Plan Grant requests with GLAM components with Community Resources at WMF
  • Supporting initial design of the Canadian Music Data Project
  • Getting Citation Hunt and other #1lib1ref materials prepared for a number of communities
  • the Digitization User Group
  • WMUG Ghana
  • A number of contacts gathered at conferences and movement events


November 2016

Bennylin

Digitization, #1lib1ref, and Tech Updates

By Astinson

Digitization Case studies portal drafted and Scoping next Portal

As part of my work documenting case studies and experiences of the Wikimedia community, I have encountered a lot of interest and questions about how to implement projects that either a) help institutions expand their digital collections (digitization), or b) or actively work to disseminate, share and enrich those collections (batch uploads to Commons + engagement of the Wikimedia Communities).

Thus, I have compiled a range of different models for this work into a portal here on outreach: Digitization. I am reaching out to folks who have specific models for implementing these projects, to write better case studies for the portal. For example, I recently worked with User:Joalpe to document a case study from the São Paulo Museum of Veterinary Anatomy. If you have a project that you think will fit well within the scope of the portal, please let me know.

The next step for me, in developing the GLAM case studies online, is to evaluate the other major component of GLAM-Wiki: sharing institutional knowledge in Wikimedia projects by building institutional capacity (workshops and Wikipedians in Residence), promoting direct contribution (training staff to edit and editathons) and collaborating or advising with other groups (Wikipedia Visiting Scholars, Education program assignments).

Structured Data on Commons External Funding Request Feedback ended and proposal submitted

We finished the commenting on the larger project plan at commons:Commons:Structured data, and submitted the request to the external funder. The work completed to scope, and outline a timeline for working on Structured Commons makes it possible to engage others to further the project.


#1lib1ref ramping up

If you haven't already noticed in our other spaces, #1lib1ref is ramping up. Like last year, we are running the campaign under the "Wikipedia Library" brand on meta Wiki: see http://1lib1ref.org.

The two main tools for the campaign, Citation Hunt and the Hashtag tools, now support a number of more languages, and there is support for the campaign from many more affiliates than last year. If you want to support the campaign, please reach out to Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org.

Programs and Events Dashboard

The Programs and Events Dashboard has been released in a Beta, for use by program leaders. To learn more about the dashboard, see the introduction to the Dashboard by Amanda Bittaker: on YouTube.

Further documentation on how to use the dashboard will be upcoming at meta:Programs & Events Dashboard/Using the Dashboard

The Dashboard is ideal for application for editathons and other time-bound, and focused events where you know who the participants are.

Community Tech Wishlist

The current WMF Community Tech Wishlist, is currently in its voting phase through December 12, make sure to participate.

There are a number of GLAM related requests including 7 proposals about programs, a number of Commons requests that are related (including an Artwork upload Wizard, and a Changes feed for use of Media elsewhere in Wikimedia Projects, many Wikisource usability requests, and many Wikidata Requests Make sure to vote.

Consultations

In November, Alex consulted with a number of community leaders via email and other communications, including:

  • The Digitization User Group
  • The Wikimedia Brazil User Group
  • Wikimedia Czech Republic
  • Wikimedia Espana
  • Oxford Wikipedian in Residence
  • Wikimedia UK
  • Wikimedia France
  • WMF Community Resources
  • Romaine for This Month in GLAM



December 2016

Bennylin

Structured Data on Commons Funded! #1lib1ref and a holiday break

By Astinson

Preparing for #1lib1ref

Mid-January launches the #1lib1ref campaign, in over 12 languages and contexts: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref

This year, we are also making a few tweaks to the campaign strategy:

  • We added a page for small "Coffee hour" get togethers, to encourage folks to organize a small social activity with librarians.
  • We added more international support, from various language communities, by deliberately engaging chapters and community organizers
  • We are going to be testing a central-notice banner. Look for posts on GLAM-Wiki Global and the Wikipedia + Libraries Facebook groups for help translating.

If you want to help with #1lib1ref is still not too late! We can still translate and engage more communities in the campaign, or share it with library networks!

Structured Data on Commons: Funded!

One of the greatest difficulties and challenges for GLAMs to work with the Wikimedia community, has been the inconsistent and hard to evaluate usages of GLAM content once its on. The long discussed opportunity for integrating the Wikidata software, Wikibase into Commons to allow for better structured metadata for media is finally upon us!

The WMF and WMDE announced funding for work on Structured data on Commons via a grant from the en:Sloan Foundation. You can find the announcement at the Wikimedia blog. More information about the grant is at Commons:Structured data/Sloan Grant. If you have questions, please join us at the Structured Data on Commons talk page.

Alex will be leading up community engagement during the first few months of the project, while the grant monies allow for hiring a Community Liason and additional GLAM-Wiki Staff to support the project. Please join in supporting the project where you can, and let us know where you can help .

Consultations

Some of the consultations were light in December because of the holiday break, and work on the two above projects.

  • Structured Data on Commons consultations with staff and Magnus
  • Supporting User:Joalpe
  • Communicating with community organizers for #1lib1ref
  • Consulting on what components of the Community Wishlist Survey
  • Working with the Learning and Evaluation Team at the Foundation on identifying learning day participants
  • Several solicitations of GLAM-Wiki support at the Foundation through various channels


January 2017

Bennylin

Ramping up structured Commons, #1lib1ref success, and other updates

By Astinson

At the Wikimedia Foundation, the big focus has been on the Structured Data on Commons Grant, and getting that started, and supporting the #1lib1ref campaign.

Structured Data on Commons

In January, we announced the receipt of the Structured Data on Commons grant from the Sloan Foundation. The Grant, which allows for $3 million over the course of three years, helps us support both the software devlopment side of commons and the development of

However, in addition to the software, we are beginning to develop the team of folks. This will include several positions that would be a good fit for folks familiar with GLAM-Wiki, Commons, Wikidata or all three:

  • Program Manager -- whose main responsibilities will include coordinating efforts among various participants and stakeholders in the project and reporting to Sloan about our progress. More information can be found on Greenhouse.
  • Another GLAM-Wiki strategist focus on structured data. (See the job posting on Greenhouse).
  • Community Liaison -- who will be interfacing with the Commons and Wikidata communities on the project.

Keep an eye out for these position descriptions as they become available from WMF, and if you know folks working in the GLAM sector who would be a good fit, let us know.

Before the team comes onboard, I am beginning to schedule opportunities for talking with various communities, that have a deep understanding of Outreach Parnter and stakeholder need for Structured Data on Commons, including:

  • The International Coordinating Team for Wiki-Loves Monuments (already talked with)
  • European GLAM-Wiki Coordinators (see meeting agenda)
  • DPLA -- this relationship includes talking with their staff soon and providing a 2 hour workshop/talk on Wikidata + GLAM at their annual meeting
  • Smithsonian -- supporting some initial Collaboration alongside Wikimedia D.C. around how we could enable more data sharing through Commons
  • Europeana -- through Liam, I plan to do outreach with Europeana to better understand how we can be more intertangled with and compatible with their needs.

If there is a particular organization or partner network who you think would benefit from being on our contact list, let Alex know (astinson@wikimedia.org).

1lib1ref: Smashing Success!

We ran year two of #1ib1ref this year, with the help with volunteers in over 18 languages! The outcomes were over 3x last years recorded edits using the hashtags tool: 4,171 edits from 741 contributors to 2,588 pages. See the outcomes from last year by comparison!

We are in the process of doing some deeper and more complex analysis of the campaign and its outcome. We have some preliminary lessons from the campaign:

  • Three weeks gave most participants enough time and communications to run small workshops if they didn't have them planned before the beginning of the campaign. We saw a steady flow of workshops discussed on Twitter throughout the campaign, with a burst of them towards the end.
  • Coverage in Library publications was not as striking this year, as in previous years. But we got some great support from close allies of the movement, including individual GLAMs that have worked with Affiliates, OCLC, IFLA, Biodiversity Heritage Library, and a number of regional library networks.
  • The invitation to more community affiliates to lead their own sub-campaigns, in their own languages and geographies, worked moderately well this year. The number of impacted language communities doubled, but we still didn't reach critical mass in a number of languages for growing the campaigns there. We will need to work on guidance and support for community leaders to build better network impact.

We will do a more thorough report about the other outcomes in the campaign, including some highlights from blogposts and other resources created during the campaign.

We plan to host the campaign again in 2018, and if you are interested in supporting it in your language or context, make sure to join the Wikipedia + Libraries Facebook group: we plan to use that as a coordinating hub for social campaigns around librarians.

Other consultations/support include

  • Development of next steps with IFLA and ICOM -- we are trying to develop a better understanding of the next projects for cooperation -- its beginning to look like it might be in the space of Wikidata
  • Development of the Met press release and project communications
  • Triaging several requests from North American GLAMs to the glam@wikimedia.org OTRS queue
  • Several other requests related to WMF Grants
  • Support of the Movement Strategy Process
  • Supporting the hiring process for the Lead Programs Manager
  • Developing European Coordinators Meeting program
  • Beginning preparations for Wikimedia Conference

Other WMF updates


February 2017

Bennylin

European Coordinators Meeting and Planning

By Astinson

European Coordinators Meeting

Learn more on Meta

One of the principle activities February, was support of European GLAM Coordinators meeting. At the meeting, Alex provided updates on Structured Data on Commons and Wikicite, did a workshop examining the workflows for batch uploads on Commons, and a conversation about the skills that communities learning how to participate in GLAM need most. Paired with the wider workshops and learning from the meeting, the meeting felt very productive for understanding and learning about the work of various affiliates in the greater European community.

Before the meeting we had the opportunity to sit down with partnerships coordinator at the International Council of Museums, and talked to the staff at the ICOM about future collaboration. One area of interest was the possibility of developing, a open registry of museums using Wikidata. ICOM and a number of other heritage organizations (UNESCO for example), organize responses to natural disasters around heritage collections, and in certain parts of the world, where governments haven't collected this data, its hard to figure out which museums are in the region. We are exploring what it would mean to facilitate a campaign to invite the collection of this data through a Campaign like #1lib1ref .

Annual Planning, Programs Team at WMF, and Structured Commons

If you follow the Annual Planning process for the Wikimedia Foundation, you know how each year the foundation completes its planning process during the early part of the year, before going to community consultation. This year GLAM-Wiki will be part of the focus of both the Programs team and Structured Commons work.

We are going through the hiring process for several roles on the Structured Commons team, including the GLAM-Strategist role for the grant, as well as the Lead Programs Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation programs team. Take a look at the hiring page for Wikimedia and share the roles with folks you think would be a good fit.

Additionally, Structured Commons work is ramping up with initial work on backend infrastructure for the integration of Wikibase into Commons.

Other consultations

  • Movement Strategy Process -- supporting the outreach to particular partner audiences for track C&D
  • Helped support the Inspire Campaign for External Knowledge Networks
  • GLAM Workflow Mapping being supported by WMUK
  • UNESCO WIR consultation
    1. 1lib1ref coordination and followup
  • Triaged several external requests for how to get involved in GLAM
  • Support for The Canada 150 project


March 2017

Bennylin

Wikimedia Conference

By Astinson

Wikimedia Conference

As part of the broader support of program leaders and the movement strategy, Alex attended Wikimedia Conference. He supported several workshops, including:

Other highlights from the conference include a strong interest from the attendees in library partnerships: many emerging communities are finding libraries as a clear entry point for GLAM skill development among community program leaders, and for proof of concept for other GLAM work. Additionally, the movement strategy process has a number of GLAM-Wiki advocates, so they provided significant feedback and advocacy for the knowledge and experience we have developed doing programmatic outreach in the GLAM-Wiki community.

The Wikipedia Library provides a summary of more library-focused conversations at the event: in the Books and Bytes Newsletter.

Consultations

Most of the consultative time for Alex during March focused on the development of Structured Data on Commons and developing the Annual Plan in the Wikimedia Foundation. Other support included:

  • Shannon Perry at Libraries and Archives Canada
  • Connection with the Global Heritage Foundation
  • Development of materials to support a visit by Katherine Maher with WMDC to the Smithsonian, National Archive and Library of Congress
  • Internet Archive support of Wikidata
  • Consultations as were relevant during Wikimedia Conference


April 2017

Bennylin

DPLAFest and Beyond

By Astinson

DPLAFest

This month, as part of the work with the Structured Data on Commons project, Alex attended DPLAFest 2017. At the event, he made sure to connect with and learn from and connect with various partner organizations in the network around DPLA, including Haithi Trust, METRO (which had a Wikipedian in Residence from 2013-15, Internet Archive, California Digital Library, and others in the greater DPLA community.

The conference also allowed me to learn about a number of the challenges and applications for Wikidata in the North American context:

  • The existing platforms, like DSPACE and others, don't have robust built-in authority control/linked open data use in ways that would make matching and reuse for DPLA and other organizations, like the Wikimedia community has.
  • That authority control creation is still a really messy process -- especially for topics that have only regional interest-- with lots of time consuming back-end issues, some of them related to the bureaucracy of the library/metadata profession and institutional resourcing.

That there are tons of opportunities for using Wikidata to enrich collections and metadata at the aggregation level; we really need to test them though, and many bigger organizations are at the stage where they see the opportunity but haven't done much testing.

Slide deck used for teaching Wikidata for Cultural Professionals at DPLAFest 2017

At the conference, I also gave a two hour workshop for Wikidata for Cultural Professionals: it was well received but a lot of information. You can find the slide deck on Google Drive and on Commons.

Other consultations

Other consultations included:

  • Followup from WMCON
  • Followup from DPLAFest
  • Continued collaboration with the team working on the Women in Canada Project
  • Blog post with Brazilian GLAM community
  • Hiring from Structured Commons projects
  • GLAM-Ghana
  • Libraries and Archives Canada
  • Annual Plans for Round II for 2016-17
  • Several other requests as they came in


May 2017

Bennylin

Documentation, Categorization and Reviewing what we know!

By Astinson

Case Study Portal and Newsletter Categorization drive need your support!

This month, Alex focused heavily on reviewing and revising the framework for documentation on the GLAM portal on outreach. First, by finishing the second of two portals focused on different project models used within the Wikimedia community: GLAM/Sharing_Knowledge which accompanies GLAM/Digital collections. These pages are drafts based on what Alex has been learning from Wikimedia communities what tactics they have employed throughout the years.

As part of the project, Alex has developed a draft new portal for entering the GLAM project models and Case Studies: Join the conversation here.

Additionally, in collaboration with the Education team at the Wikimedia Foundation, Alex deployed a new structured form with prompts to help folks create high quality case studies: see the initial section of the Case studies page.

One of the outcomes of the GLAM coordinators meeting in February, was an identified need for improving the organization of content in the GLAM-Wiki Newsletter. After a second meeting at WMCON in March, a small working group determined that one of the low hanging fruit would be categorizing This Month in GLAM to better make it usable for future analysis and facilitation of its usage for others. The page for the project is at this link.

You can help!

There are several ways that you can help:

Consultations

Alex has provided consultations, including:

  • An referral of an U.S. Organization interested in Women in Sports, from WMCH
  • A project that Library and Archives Canada is developing with Wikimedia Canada
  • Music in Canada Wikidata Project
  • Creative Commons is initiating design of a OpenGLAM framework related to Creative Commons licenses
  • GLAMpipe team
  • Documentation of the Math Video Project at Sau Paulo (see blog post below)
  • Several other referrals from within the WMF

From the WMF Blog

Several GLAM and heritage projects have been highlighted in the WMF blog, including:



June 2017

Bennylin

Welcome; Documentation Update; Other updates

By Astinson

Welcome Sandra Fauconnier for Structured Data on Commons

Sandra Fauconnier (User:Spinster/User:Sfaucconier) has started working on the Structured Data on Commons project, with the main focus as being the Community Liason for the project. However, her deep expertise and support of GLAM-Wiki projects over the last few years, means that she will be also working on supporting GLAM needs in both Wikidata and the Commons as part of the project.

Documentation Update

Last month, Alex announced working on the documentation for GLAM-Wiki. Though originally planning to run a categorization drive for the This Month in GLAM archive, that tactic has been put on pause, do to several concerns about the usefulness of that data. We are reevaluating the workflow and process, and hope to have an update soon.

Additionally, the new portal for GLAM case studies and models has been updated.

Other updates

Alex supported a number of other projects, including:

  • Uploads to Wikimedia Commons for the collaboration with
  • Submitting a book Chapter for an OCLC book on Wikipedia and Libraries
  • Supporting the development of a GLAM user group
  • Consultations from Wikimedians in the United States, Canada, and Brazil.
  • Continued support of the Structured Data on Commons planning
  • Response to this RFC on ENWiki


July 2017

Bennylin

Edit-a-thons, Structured Commons and Wikimedia Blog

By Astinson

Edit-a-thon Training Draft

Edit-a-thons are one of the most commonly used programs among Wikimedia program leaders and one of the programs that they want to use most (see this survey result and this survey result.) However, in many settings and situations Wikimedia Community members are not sure what goes on during these events, or are unsure about the best practices for making those events successful.

During the month of July, Alex surveyed the existing documentation for edit-a-thons, to develop an initial draft of a training for folks who have not run Editing events before. The draft was developed, so that it could be included in the Programs and Events Dashboard training module environment. The environment allows for folks to translate such a training on Meta, localizing such a training for their own cultural and language context.

Please participate in giving feedback at the Draft Page.

Structured Data on Commons Update

Structured Data on Commons is making progress on design research and initial back-end development. This initial research, includes targeted outreach to major institutional partners, and deep design-research interviews With folks who have done batch uploads as part of GLAM projects.

With the hiring of User:SandraF (WMF), as the principal Community Liason on the project. She will also be supporting development of best practices for GLAM+Wikidata and the Structured Commons to be used as part of programmatic partnerships. Her background is very deep in GLAM-Wiki, where you may know her as User:Spinster.

The Structured Data team released a Newsletter on July 19 on Commons.

Wikimedia Blog updates

The Wikimedia Blog has included a number of stories of importance to representing GLAM-Wiki:

Participate in GLAM-Wiki activities at Wikimania

Wikimania this year, is filled with GLAM-Wiki programming, including a significant amount of the WikiConference North America and the main conference program. To learn more about the schedule, see: the post on the public GLAM mailing list.


August 2017

Bennylin

GLAM-Wiki team, Wikimania, and updates

By Astinson

Onboarding a Team

The second expansion to the GLAM-Wiki team at the Wikimedia Foundation after the addition of User:SandraF (WMF) as part of the Structured Commons project, came with the addition of Ben Vershbow (User:BVershbow_(WMF)) as Lead Programs Manager for the Community Programs team. Though Ben will support all of the GLAM, Education, and Wikipedia Library teams, Ben’s background over the past decade-plus is in large part in the cultural heritage sector, working at both the Institute for the Future of the Book, and more recently leading the New York Public Library Labs.

Ben brings a deep network within libraries, museums, and digital humanities, and will be helping the team to evaluate, prioritize and advance support of the larger cultural heritage community. It’s exciting to have additional minds working on the GLAM-Wiki program space!

With Ben and Sandra on board, we are beginning to evaluate the where we want to focus GLAM-Wiki support, in light of the movement strategy process.

Wikimania and Structured Data on Commons Offsite

Ben, Sandra and Alex all attended Wikimania, the preconference for Wikimania and an off-site for the Structured Data on Commons project. The conference offered a great opportunity to learn from, reflect on, and gauge the interest of for various needs within the GLAM-Wiki community.

Alongside our own presentations, we noticed a number of trends in the conversation:

  • The Library space was vibrantly represented by the community, in part being supported by the great work being done in the Wikipedia + Libraries User Group
  • Wikidata use for cultural heritage applications has an ever-increasing global community that will be really well situated to advance GLAM-Wiki into a closer working relationship with GLAMs and other heritage communities. One of the highlights in this, was the gathering of folks for the Cultural Heritage + Wikidata “Birds of a Feather” session.
  • Structured data on Commons saw a lot of support from both GLAM-related and other contributors within the Wikimedia community.
  • The Wikimedian in Residence Birds of a Feather session was well attended, and highlighted how diverse and challenging the role of “Wiki(p/m)edian in Residence” can be for practitioners, and how challenging it is to make sure that new roles successfully join the community of WIRs. As an outcome of the meeting, a group of WIRs are proposing a user group that can help with onboarding and developing best practices for the roles.
To find notes and slide decks related to GLAM-Wiki sessions, see the notes page on the Wikimania Wiki.

Following the conference, the Structured Data on Commons team gathered for an offsite that reflected on what we learned over the course of the conference, and worked on a shared plan going forward. We were very happy to share with the team working on the project its importance for institutional partners and how they work with the Wikimedia community. At the meeting, we also saw some of the early outcomes of the meta:Research:Supporting Commons contribution by GLAM institutions being led by User:Jmorgan (WMF).

Updates will soon be made to the Structured Data on Commons portal at commons:Commons:Structured data. We recommend everyone to also subscribe to the Structured Data on Commons newsletter!

Other updates

Other work by the team, has included collaboration, outreach and consultation on:

  • Reviewing grant requests to the Community Resources team at the foundation
  • Supporting and consulting on several incoming contacts from external orgs to WMF
  • Revising the Edit-a-thon training-- feedback still welcome
  • Development of upcoming blog posts for the WMF blog on several different community-led projects.
  • Review of contextual materials for the Wikimedia Strategy Process
  • Short visits with Europeana and DPLA, to better understand how Structured Data on Commons, and Structured data more generally will impact their work. For a report on the Europeana visit, see the section in the Wikidata report.
  • Followup from several Wikimania conversations.



September 2017

Bennylin

Running Edit-a-thons, Studying GLAM Uploads to Commons, Project Grants and more!

By Astinson & SandraF

How to run an edit-a-thon?

One of the major pieces of work by the team over the course of July to September, was Alex’s work on the Edit-a-thon training on the programs and events dashboard. It’s now live! Check out the training at: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training/editathons

We are finishing illustration of the edit-a-thon training, and welcome additional feedback or tweaks to the training at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_modules/dashboard/editathon

If you would like to leave feedback or help us identify gaps in the training, please do so on the talkpage of the training transclusion.

Case studies and communications

In addition to normal communications workflows, such as supporting Twitter and Facebook conversations, the WMF team has supported a number of neat story telling opportunities, including:

We are also in the process of developing additional blog posts highlighting both individual community projects and larger trends and opportunities we are seeing. If you have ideas, or want support, consider reaching out to astinson@wikimedia.org.

Survey about GLAM uploads to Wikimedia Commons

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has created a survey for people involved in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) media upload projects to Wikimedia Commons. Please consider filling out the survey, if you are currently participating in a GLAM batch upload project, or have participated in one in the past! Completing the survey takes 10-15 minutes.

The survey results will be used to understand how the Wikimedia Foundation can improve its support for these important projects - in the project Structured Data for Wikimedia Commons, and beyond. We are interested in learning more about the media collections that are donated, the tools people use to prepare and upload files, and the overall experience of donating media from GLAM organizations to Wikimedia Commons.

The survey data will be collected and stored under the terms of WMF's survey privacy statement <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/GLAM_Donation_Survey_Privacy_Statement>.

We hope to receive responses from Wikimedia community members and staff at very diverse organizations - geographically, in terms of size and focus!


Review GLAM Project Grant Applications

Round II of 2017 project grants have been proposed on meta. A number have GLAM-related themes or focuses including:


Other going ons

The GLAM team is working on a number of other opportunities for support across the community, including:

  • Conversations with Internet Archive, DPLA, Europeana, UNESCO and a number of other orgs in the heritage space
  • Interviews with GLAMs who have embedded Wikidata into their institutional catalogues for an upcoming blog post.
  • Support of several organizations considering developing Wikipedian in Residence roles.
  • Sandra at Swiss cultural data hackathon
  • Consultations with volunteers who want new skills or support for GLAM projects in Europe, North America and Latin America



October 2017

Bennylin

News about Structured Commons!

By SandraF & Astinson

Case studies campaign

Share your case studies! Is there an education, GLAM or other program that you really admire? One you would like to know more about? Have you seen via the newsletter, blog, or social media a project that you think would make a great case study?

The WMF Programs team would like you to encourage program leaders now to submit their case study to the Programs Case Studies Campaign. We will be accepting submissions until January 8, 2017 . We will then select projects in Education, GLAM and across all programs to be highlighted in new case study brochures and materials.

See this page for more information about submission criteria and the selection process.

Structured Data on Commons update

Sandra presents Structured Data on Commons at WikidataCon
A graphic that explains how information will be stored on Structured Commons

The survey about use of Wikimedia Commons by GLAMs, mentioned in the previous newsletter, received more than 100 responses! We want to thank everyone who participated and who distributed the survey. Results are processed by the end of 2017.

Likewise, Jonathan Morgan and Niharika Ved have finalized interviews with GLAM representatives about their use of Wikimedia Commons. The interviews are being analyzed now.

A new newsletter about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons was published on October 25. You can read the newsletter on meta.wikimedia.org, and contribute to the next one. Of special interest:

Structured Data on Commons was presented during WikidataCon by Sandra Fauconnier. You can watch the video recording online.

Other going ons

The GLAM team is working on a number of other opportunities for support across the community, including:

  • Conversations with Internet Archive, DPLA, LD4L, ICOM, IFLA.
  • Support of initial conversations around GLAM-Wiki Conference
  • Review of Annual Plan Grants for FDC Round 1 applications: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals
  • Interviews with GLAMs who have embedded Wikidata into their institutional catalogues for an upcoming blog post.
  • Support of several organizations working on GLAM projects with direct requests for consultations.


November 2017

Bennylin

Conferences, case studies, Structured Commons, #1lib1ref

By SandraF & Astinson

Attending regional conferences

Alex Stinson attended two regional conferences, to listen to and evaluate the needs of various GLAM communities that might use structured data.

The first was the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference, hosted by the Library of Congress. As part of the Alex was invited to give a workshop on Wikidata and GLAM, at the University of Maryland’s Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities -- with the help of the Smithsonian’s Effie Kapsalis and Wikimedia D.C.’s Andrew Lih, we discussed the role of open. Videos of the workshop can be found at: Part 1 and Part 2 and workshop outlines can be found at wikidata:Wikidata:Events/MITH Workshop. Alex attended the rest of the conference that included a rich mix of archivists, hobbyists, public radio organizations, librarians and other communities interested in researching radio

The next week, Alex attended the Museums Computing Network Conference, and a aatellite event on representing Provenance in Structured Data. At both events, Alex talked to Museum technologists, including representatives of the Getty, Smithsonian, British Museum, Yale Center for British art, and a number of folks who work on or with other kinds of metadata and or

As part of the event, Alex found a number of clear trends in the conversations he had with each of the communities:

  • Museums have a lot of vocabularies that the use or rely on internally within the sector, but not many of the institutional staff feel like their software supports using those vocabularies in linked-open-data contexts.
  • Archives (at least in the Radio Preservation Context) have much more complexity in creating vocabularies and are constantly needing to revisit standard vocabularies. Wikidata could fill that gap.
  • Crosswalking between major vocabularies is very appealing to institutional staff in multiple contexts -- Wikidata could serve that purpose.

Case studies campaign

As we announced last month, the WMF Programs team is collecting more case studies as part of the Programs Case Studies Campaign in an attempt to demonstrate the range of different projects that community members experiment with over the course of their activities. Please submit case studies through January 8, 2017 . We will be highlighting new case studies in communications materials created in the next year!

See this page for more information about submission criteria and the selection process.

Structured Data on Commons

Read a report of the first nine months!

Nine-month report of the work on Structured Commons

The Structured Commons team has written and submitted a report about the first nine months of work on the project to its funders, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The 53-page report, published on November 1, is available on Wikimedia Commons.

Inventory of tools

Sandra is co-ordinating an inventory of crucial volunteer tools for Wikimedia Commons, GLAM, and structured data in general.

IRC office hours

On November 21, the Structured Commons team held a IRC office hour to discuss recent, current and future development of the project. You can read the public log here.

The next IRC office hour will take place on Tuesday, February 13, 2018, at 18:00 UTC.

#1lib1ref

Preparations are beginning for #1lib1ref. If you would like to do more for the campaign, helping coordinate or expand its impact during 2017: please reach out to astinson@wikimedia.org


December 2017

Bennylin

#1lib1ref, Structured Commons Research, and Blog Highlights

By Astinson & SandraF

Help us identify program leaders!

Every year, the Wikimedia Foundation runs a survey, called the Community Engagement Insights survey, which asks community members to give feedback on the Wikimedia Foundation’s work. The survey focuses on different audience groups, one of them being community organizers and program leaders who organize activities, outreach, and other programs in the areas of GLAM, Education, Diversity, Gender, STEM, and others.

We want to get in touch with program leaders who aren’t already connected to the Wikimedia Foundation or haven’t attended major Wikimedia movement events (like Wikimedia Conference or Wikimania). By filling out this survey, program leaders become part of our global feedback network and will have a chance to offer feedback on Wikimedia Foundation’s work to support our communities.

If you would like to be part of these feedback opportunities, please fill out this short survey: https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3mmeBPdVXfCOhlr

If your local community has a mailing list or social media channel or you know an organizer who like didn’t see this message, please share it and encourage participation in the survey.

#1lib1ref is coming

It’s #1lib1ref season! Remember to remind and engage your local librarians to participate in the campaign which lasts from January 15- February 3! Remember #1lib1ref can be done in any language and its simple: encourage librarians in your local context to contribute. Learn more about the campaign at: http://1lib1ref.org.

If you need help supporting the campaign, contact astinson@wikimedia.org.


Initial findings for Structured Data on Commons Research

Wikimedia Commons upload tools used by GLAMs
Reasons why specific Commons upload tools are used by GLAMs

As part of the Structured Data on Commons project, WMF teams are working on various research projects, of which a few have been finalized in the last months of 2017. Here are the highlights:

GLAM uploads to Commons

Draft findings from the GLAM research as part of Structured Data on Commons has been published on Meta. The research highlights the challenges that GLAM professionals and Wikimedians supporting them face when doing uploads to Commons. The project confirms a lot of assumptions, and anecdotal evidence that the WMF GLAM team had been collecting as part of the Structured Data on Commons process, but also provides some targeted feedback and a body of evidence for strengths and weaknesses in the workflow that we were anticipating.

Highlighted issues in the research are:

Read the full report: Supporting Commons contribution by GLAM institutions. You can also watch a 36-minute YouTube video in which Jonathan Morgan presents the research results. We plan to organize more public presentations of this research!
Baseline metrics for Wikimedia Commons

The Structured Data on Commons project has also investigated the different ways in which Commons can be evaluated in the future. The goal of the research is to identify additional baseline metrics for Structured data on Commons team to evaluate and think about the impact of their work.

Read the full report: Baseline Metrics for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons
Prioritization of tools for GLAM, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata

Additionally, Sandra led an AllOurIdeas poll to find out which tools are relied on heavily by the broader Commons and Wikidata communities, in order to help decide which ones are critical for integrating into product development decisions as part of the grant or future Commons development.

See the results on AllOurIdeas

From the WMF Blog


January 2018

Bennylin

Call for case studies, #1lib1ref, Structured Commons and more

By SandraF & Astinson

Call for Case Studies!

The Community programs team is still looking for case studies, to highlight the great work that is going on around the world in GLAM, Education, and other programs. For that reason, we have decided to extend the case studies collection period, and will be providing additional opportunities to work on case studies together with you!

Additionally, at Wikimedia Conference, Wikimania and other regional conferences, we will be holding clinics to help you draft your case study. We will also hold several virtual clinics where Wikimedia Foundation Programs staff can give you feedback and support on developing your own case studies (keep your eye out for invitations for these workshops!).

If you thought you might want to submit a case study, but haven’t done so yet: please let us know that you are interested by emailing astinson@wikimedia.org or nsaad@wikimedia.org.
We can support you in drafting or developing the case study using the case study templates on outreach. If you would like to share a case study you have already drafted, you can still do so through the input boxes on the same page.
Learn how to add a case study.

To highlight this year's #1lib1ref campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation team published several blog posts, with a focus on the importance of Wikipedia and Libraries Collaboration:

Also, we produced a short explainer video about #1lib1ref:

2-minute explainer video on how to contribute to #1lib1ref.

Look for an upcoming full report and reflection on this year’s campaign!

A bit earlier, two interviews have also been published on the Wikimedia blog:

If you are interested in sharing your experience collaborating with libraries, email astinson@wikimedia.org.

Structured Data on Commons: research on GLAM use of Wikimedia Commons

In 2017-2019, together with the community of Wikimedia volunteers, a team at the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland updates Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia's media repository, to work with structured data. This will make it easier to add, update and find important information about individual files and entire collections.

Presentation of research results: GLAM use of Wikimedia Commons

In order to learn more about the needs of users of Wikimedia Commons, the team performs quite a bit of design research. This helps us understand what to improve, and why it matters. In the past months, we have surveyed and interviewed cultural institutions, asking them about their processes, wishes and pain points when they contribute media to Wikimedia Commons. This survey has been widely distributed and filled in by GLAMwiki volunteers; thank you!

For more information or feedback, email sandraf@wikimedia.org.

Other going ons

  • Alex gave a Wikidata workshop and a GLAM-Wiki introduction at Lathrop Library, Stanford University. More info and links to the presentations: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/Stanford
  • Sandra gave two short introductory Wikidata workshops at the conference Open-Up! in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Her presentation is on Slideshare.
  • If you want to re-use some of our workshop materials about structured data and Wikidata, feel free to take a look at, and adapt, the master presentation that we are compiling (Google Sheets, downloadable in various formats)! It is very much work in progress and we'd be interested in any feedback and additions.
  • In January, Ben, Alex and Sandra have had continued chats and discussions with the LD4L Community, Smithsonian, Europeana, and several other partners.


February 2018

Bennylin

Structured Data on Commons, Wikidata Workshop materials, and Spring Travel

By Astinson & SandraF

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons: community consultations

A proposal on how information can be stored on Wikimedia Commons in the future.

The project Structured Data on Commons is progressing well; in the upcoming time, the free media files on Wikimedia Commons will be converted to a structured and machine-readable format, so that they become easier to view, search, edit, organize and re-use, in many languages.

The most important changes to Wikimedia Commons will take place this year (yes, in 2018! You can check the roadmap for more detail). GLAMs are very important stakeholders for the 'new' Wikimedia Commons, and we need your input too! The best ways to stay up to date about the project:

Some news and updates

  1. A general community consultation on metadata placement in the 'new' structured data on Commons has concluded on March 1. Several GLAM volunteers and staff members have provided specific feedback on GLAM metadata - thank you! You can still add extra thoughts and insights to the page.
  2. We are still growing the GLAM focus group for Structured Commons. It is a group of GLAM staff around the world who are willing to advise and provide feedback regularly in the upcoming months and years. GLAM staff from Africa, Asia, the MENA region and Latin America would be especially welcome; feel free to invite people if you know they would be interested! More info can be obtained from Sandra at sandraf﹫wikimedia.org.

Feedback, examples and activities needed for Wikidata Lesson Plan and Query Service One Pager

A one page handout for workshops on the Query service.

As part of an ongoing collaboration with the Wikidata team at Wikimedia Deutschland to develop teaching materials that can help GLAM and other communities contribute to Wikidata, Astinson (WMF) (talk · contribs) has developed a lesson plan for teaching Wikidata workshops, and a one pager for helping teach the Wikidata Query service.

We are looking for feedback and contribution, specifically:

  • What is missing from the lesson plan and one-pager? What other additional materials would you like?
  • If you have taught Wikidata workshops before and find them successful, upload them to Commons or add to the section for presentations
    • Once you have uploaded or shared your presentations: Each section has a “Examples” header. Please link to sections of presentations which demonstrate that kind of teaching: we want future Wikidata workshop developers, to have plenty of examples.
  • If you have had participants in Wikidata workshops contribute content through specific activiteis, considering writing those activities at: the activities section
Check out the lesson plan at on Wikidata

Upcoming travel

The GLAM team at the Foundation is going to be at the following community events and conferences. Let us know if you'd like to meet up!

  • March 16-18: WikiIndaba 2018, Tunis (Alex)
  • April 13-15: Creative Commons Global Summit, Toronto (Alex)
  • April 18-22: Wikimedia Conference, Berlin (including Learning Days) (Sandra, Alex, Ben)
  • May 10-12: Yerevan 2800, Armenia (Sandra)
  • May 14-16: EuropeanaTech, Rotterdam. The GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working together with Europeana to include quite a few Wikimedia-related program elements to the upcoming international EuropeanaTech conference (Rotterdam, May 15-17 + a workshop day on May 14). Keep an eye on the GLAM mailing lists and/or social media - we will keep you updated there. (Ben, Sandra)
  • May 18-20 Wikimedia Hackathon, Barcelona (Sandra)


March 2018

Bennylin

Structured Data on Commons; Upcoming events and travel

By SandraF

Structured Data on Commons

In March, a community consultation about structured metadata for copyright and licenses on Wikimedia Commons took place. It is very interesting to read through the insightful discussion that took place. Many thanks to all who participated!

In this new quarter, we announce new GLAM-related activities on Structured Commons in the following two areas. You can expect updates on Commons, and via the GLAM-Wiki mailing lists and other communication channels about these in the upcoming months:

  1. We start working on mapping GLAM metadata schemas to Wikimedia Commons, in order to make GLAM uploads to Wikimedia more smooth and easy.
  2. We start to invite and support a diverse set of pilot GLAM-Wiki projects that use Structured Data on Commons. These will be the first GLAM-Wiki projects that use the new technology on Commons. They will be documented well, so that everyone can learn from them, and be inspired. We collect the first candidate projects during the Wikimedia Conference. Do you have ideas for a suitable project already? Get in touch with Sandra at sandraf﹫wikimedia.org!

We are still growing the GLAM focus group for Structured Commons. It is a group of GLAM staff around the world who are willing to advise and provide feedback regularly in the upcoming months and years. GLAM staff from Africa, Asia, the MENA region and Latin America would be especially welcome; feel free to invite people if you know they would be interested! More info can be obtained from Sandra at sandraf﹫wikimedia.org.

Upcoming events and travel

The GLAM team at the Foundation is going to be at the following community events and conferences, and will hold several presentations and workshops. Join us, and/or let us know if you'd like to meet up!


April 2018

Bennylin

Wikipedians in Residence and Travel

By Astinson & SandraF

Have you negotiated a Wikipedian in Residence position?

In addition to documenting, and sharing the stories of Wikimedia communities around the world, the GLAM team is also providing support for core tactics used by Wikimedia community. Thus far, the GLAM team has developed supporting materials for two of the three most common tactics used for GLAM-Wiki collaborations: edit-a-thons (through developing a Wikipedia edit-a-thon training and teaching materials for Wikidata trainings) and batch uploads to commons (ongoing work as part of Structured Data on Commons, including Workflow mapping and research to identify needs of GLAM participants). The next major tactic to build support materials for is Wikipedian in Residence positions.

Wikipedian in Residence positions vary greatly, in terms of the amount of capacity, resources, time, and activities that both the resident and institutional partners leverage. Moreover, there are an increasing body of different roles beyond WIR positions (such as Wikipedia Visiting Scholars, Wikipedia Interns, or other staff roles). Though we don’t think we can adequately synthesize the best practice for doing residencies, because of the wide variety of circumstances involved in those positions, we do think we can create guidance on the process for establishing WIR positions.

To this end: if you have negotiated a Wikipedian in Residence or similar extended position within a GLAM institution in the last 2 years, Alex would like to talk about to you about experience. In a short 30-60 minute conversation, Alex would like to learn what worked, what didn’t, and what kinds of questions you had when creating those roles. We are looking to interview an additional 5 people about this process. If you are interested, please email him at astinson@wikimedia.org.

If you have thoughts about WIR positions, and aren’t ready to do an interview: that’s okay, there will be a brief followup survey, focus on filling in gaps, resources, and recommendations for creating residency roles.

Wikimedia Conference

The WMF GLAM team participated in the Wikimedia Conference and the preceding Learning Days, with several conversations, workshops and presentations, with a focus on:

  • communicating the typical workflows for uploads to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata in a dedicated workshop during Learning Days.
  • During a two-hour workshop, more than 50 participants gathered and brainstormed about potential GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons. Sandra and the GLAM team will follow up on this in the upcoming months. If you are planning a GLAM-Wiki project on Wikimedia Commons between Autumn 2018 and Summer 2019, and you would like to use structured data there, get in touch with us via sandraf﹫wikimedia.org!
  • We also participated in several workshops and sessions on partnerships, and supporting technical contributors.

Learning about Creative Commons and LD4 communities

In addition to Wikimedia Conference, Alex attended both Creative Commons Global Summit and a meeting of the Mellon- funded “Linked Data for Libraries” working group (also known as LD4 or LD4L). Both meetings proved to be very insightful into the broader opportunities of our work:

  • At the Creative Commons meeting, there was broad conversation about many of the challenges and opportunities that the Wikimedia community faces: including how do we address the lack of diversity in Global movements. In particular, both the keynotes and various well attended sessions as part of the main conference focused on how to work well with the cultural and social needs of marginalized groups. As for GLAM conversations, there were plenty of conversations about the intersection of the work that the GLAM-Wiki community does with the larger community working on Open practices in GLAMs. Look for more on both of these fronts soon.
  • At the LD4 meeting, participants were from (mostly) North American research institutions and European National Libraries. The meeting energetically discussed the technical practicalities of integrating Linked Open Data into Library systems. Included in the discussion were number of different tools and platforms, but the presence of Wikidata was widespread throughout the meeting both in the deliberate invitation of Dan Scott, Stacey Allison-Cassin, Anna St. Onge and Alex Stinson, but also in projects previously undiscussed in the Wikimedia community.

Both conferences were very effective in terms of creating contacts and opportunities for working on GLAM support throughout the world. Further communications coming from each of the conversations coming soon.

Upcoming Travel

Other news


May 2018

Bennylin

Recent travels; Structured Data on Commons updates

By Astinson & Sandra F.

Recent travels and presentations

Jason Evans talks about Wikidata and the National Library of Wales at EuropeanaTech 2018

A group of Wikimedians (including Sandra) were invited to Yerevan, where Wikimedia Armenia organized its GLAM Forum Yerevan for local GLAM professionals. Check this month's Armenia report for a summary!

In May, Europeana held its EuropeanaTech conference, which brought together almost 300 European and worldwide GLAM professionals working on technical aspects of cultural heritage, aggregation and Linked Open Data. GLAM-Wiki and Wikidata were important themes throughout the conference. Read a longer overview in this month's Wikidata report in This Month in GLAM.

The Structured Data on Commons corner at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2018 in Barcelona

The Wikimedia Hackathon, Barcelona included Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons as a focus area. Volunteer developers and the team discussed tools around Structured Commons, first ideas for basic data modelling, and search functionalities.

Structured Data on Commons

Community consultations

A first community consultation about GLAM metadata and ontology mapping for Structured Data on Commons has concluded in early May; a summary and next steps are available on the talk page.

Until 5 June, there was also a design consultation on MediaInfo and multilingual captions for files.

Personas

PDF file with the 4 GLAM personas collected for Structured Data on Commons

Recently, the research team of the Wikimedia Foundation published four GLAM contributor personas to Commons. A persona is a fictional character that represents a specific kind of user; the GLAM personas are four typical GLAM staff members that contribute to Wikimedia Commons. These personas, developed by design research intern Niharika Ved,, can help anyone (including developers, designers, and organizers) better understand the people who contribute to Wikimedia Commons from a GLAM perspective, including their needs, and the issues and pain points they encounter. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GLAM_Personas_for_Structured_Data_on_Commons_v2.pdf

The personas are based on interview and survey responses from GLAM participants collected during the GLAM Structured Data contributor research last Fall.

IRC office hour

A new IRC office hour about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons is planned on Tuesday 19 June. More info and participation link at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours

Other going ons

  • Alex is still focused on documenting the processs of creating Wikipedian in Residence positions (see last month for more information). If you would like to share information about a residency that you have hosted please reach out astinson@wikimedia.org



June 2018

Bennylin

Structured Data on Commons and Wikimania

By SandraF

Structured Data on Commons updates

Structured Commons at Wikimania 2018

The GLAM team will attend Wikimania in Cape Town, with quite a few presentations and sessions that are related to the upcoming Structured Data on Commons. Join us!

Workflow for data and media partnerships, covered at Learning Days of Wikimania 2018.
  1. During Learning Days, there is a 90-minute session on structured data and Wikidata partnerships, highlighting the main elements in a workflow for such a partnership, common tips, and an overview of software tools that can help during such a project.
  2. Structured Data on Commons is a focus area of the Wikimania hackathon, where we will do some work on modelling files and will be brainstorming about the most important properties and metadata that should be part of structured Commons files.
  3. On Friday 20 July, several sessions about Commons and Structured Data take place as part of the main conference program. There is a session about the research that has been done about GLAMs' use of Wikimedia Commons, and a 90-minute block of general information about the project, together with a panel of projects that deal with knowledge equity on Wikimedia Commons, followed by a design discussion.

IRC office hour log

On Tuesday 26 June, a IRC office hour about Structured Data on Commons took place. It included some discussion about GLAM pilot projects. You can read the log at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2018-06-26

New community consultation: Properties for Commons

In July, there is a community consultation on Wikimedia Commons, which collects possible properties for media files that will contain structured data on Commons. People with a GLAM interest in this topic are very welcome to contribute.

Other Wikimania news!

Wikimania looks like it will include a diverse and well represented group of GLAM-Wiki presentations. The GLAM-Wiki Team at the Foundation will probably be attending a range of different sessions; here are some highlights, that we think would be useful to any GLAM organizer:

Learning Days

Hackathon

Main conference program

Friday 20 July

Saturday 21 July

Make sure to join us for the Lunch meetup in the Hong Kong Room 13, Saturday 13:00-14:00: https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_and_Heritage_Birds_of_a_Feather_Lunch

Sunday 22 July

Other notes



August 2018

Bennylin

Wikimania, Wikimedians in Residence, Structured Data on Commons, and upcoming conferences

By SandraF

Wikimania 2018

The Wikimedia Foundation's GLAM team attended Wikimania Cape Town. It was great to see many of you there! We held several sessions during Learning Days - both on GLAM projects and partnerships and on structured data partnerships workflows. The main conference also included several sessions about Structured Data on Commons, including a panel about how GLAM projects related to knowledge equity can benefit from it.

  • A scheme explaining the workflow for (GLAM) partnerships that involve structured data (Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons in the future). See also a more detailed outline on outreach.wikimedia.org. Does this workflow make sense to you? Is something missing? Feedback is very welcome on the talk page.
    A scheme explaining the workflow for (GLAM) partnerships that involve structured data (Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons in the future). See also a more detailed outline on outreach.wikimedia.org. Does this workflow make sense to you? Is something missing? Feedback is very welcome on the talk page.

Recommendation on creating Wikimedian in Residence positions

A diagram of the typical relationships developed by a Wikipedian in Residence

Alex has written a document that gathers recommendations on how to create Wikimedian in Residence positions. Please leave feedback on the talk page – or feel free to edit the document directly!

Structured Data on Commons

In the past months, the Wikimedia Commons community brainstormed about the Wikidata properties that will be needed to describe media files on Wikimedia Commons with structured data. The proposed properties have now been brought together and grouped in one page. Please take a close look and leave your feedback, as this first collection of properties will be used at the start when Structured Data on Commons is deployed!

Conferences

The GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation attends and presents at the following conferences in the upcoming months:

And of course GLAM-Wiki Tel Aviv, 3-5 November, where the entire team will also be present. Check the program!


October 2018

Bennylin

Documentation survey, Structured Data on Commons consultations, blog posts and conferences

By SandraF

Structured Data on Commons

Documentation survey

In 2019, the documentation for batch uploads of files to Wikimedia Commons will be improved, on the occasion of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

Before we start working on this, the GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to understand better which types of documentation you already use, and how you like to learn new GLAM-Wiki skills and knowledge. To learn more about this, we have created a short survey, which you can access here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWcLNO6dyM11usIet29bGhEPtbA-01q04dYTruu1V1DtDsVw/viewform

The survey runs until November 30, 2018. It is most relevant for beginning and active GLAM-Wiki volunteers, and for GLAM staff members who have (some) hands-on experience with Wikimedia projects.

A privacy statement applies to this survey. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Sandra at sfauconnier﹫wikimedia.org.

Design mockup of a file page with structured data on Wikimedia Commons. Leave feedback!

New designs are up for structured copyright and licensing statements on Wikimedia Commons, based on feedback from the first round of designs of a few months ago. Please take some time to look over the new mockups and tell us what you think. How copyright and licensing is displayed in structured data is extremely important, and the development team needs to hear from you!

Prototype for new search functionality in October

Prototype for search on Wikimedia Commons

In October, a new prototype for searching Wikimedia Commons via structured data was published. It is still possible to provide feedback here as well.

New blog posts about Wikibase

Wikibase, the software behind Wikidata, is available as free and open software, and can be used for external databases and linked open data projects. It is quickly becoming quite popular in the cultural sector. Together with Jens Ohlig (Wikimedia Deutschland), Sandra and Alex have written a few blog posts on the Wikimedia blog that highlight how institutions use Wikibase:

Conferences

It is conference season! The GLAM team is travelling quite a bit and spreading the word about GLAM-Wiki, Wikidata in GLAM, and Structured Data on Commons. A few highlights:

And of course GLAM-Wiki Tel Aviv, 3-5 November, where the entire team was also present. See the program, which will increasingly include video registrations by User:Fuzheado and links to the presentations!


November 2018

Bennylin

Welcoming Satdeep Gill; Structured Data on Commons; WikiCite

By SandraF

Welcoming Satdeep Gill!

Satdeep Gill (sgill﹫wikimedia.org) has joined the Community Programs team at the Wikimedia Foundation, as Program Officer, GLAM and Underrepresented Knowledge. He will carry out research, documentation, and community listening to better understand the challenges of doing GLAM projects in emerging communities — with a particular focus on WikiSource and digitization practices.

Satdeep joined the Wikimedia movement as a volunteer in 2009 and became very active around 2012-13. He has contributed in the growth of the content on Punjabi Wikipedia and the Punjabi community. In a professional capacity, he joined the Wikimedia Foundation as a Strategy coordinator in March 2017. In October 2017, he joined the New Readers program as Community Outreach Coordinator (India). Until mid-January 2019, he will split his time between GLAM and New Readers, after which he will start working full-time at the GLAM team.

Welcome, Satdeep!

Structured Data on Commons and GLAM: pilot projects

As mentioned in this month's Sweden report, The Swedish National Heritage Board has initiated the project Wikimedia Commons Data Roundtripping. It researches and develops a prototype tool to return improved media metadata (translations, data additions etc.) back from Wikimedia Commons to the source institution. This project builds upon the new functionalities and APIs from Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons and is one of its official pilot projects.

The other official GLAM pilot projects with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons will be listed on their info page in the upcoming month(s), will kick off around March-April 2019, and lead to new Wikimedia Commons and GLAM documentation later in the year.

WikiCite

Ben and Satdeep participated in the WikiCite 2018 conference in Berkeley. Via the conference site, you can find links to video registrations of the presentations.


December 2018

Bennylin

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons: pilot projects and multilingual captions

By SandraF

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons: first GLAM pilot projects announced

The first official GLAM pilot projects with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons are listed here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/GLAM/Projects

Punjabi Qisse, to be included in the Wikisource pilot for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.
  1. The Belgian organization VIAA (staff members formerly working for Packed) will perform 2 or 3 example uploads of 'typical' GLAM collections to Wikimedia Commons with structured data - in any case probably one collection of a Belgian art museum and one collection of a city archive.
  2. There will be a Wikisource pilot, including digitized books in Punjabi, mentored by Satdeep Gill.
  3. Wikimedia España will upload sets of digitized maps and aerial photographs from the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional with structured data on Commons.
  4. The Swedish National Heritage Board has started working on the project Wikimedia Commons Data Roundtripping. It researches and develops a prototype tool to return improved media metadata (translations, data additions etc.) back from Wikimedia Commons to the source institution. This project builds upon the new functionalities and APIs from Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

More pilot projects, and more details, will be posted in the upcoming months. All the pilots will lead to new documentation for all Wikimedians and GLAM staff who want to do GLAM batch uploads with structured data on Wikimedia Commons.

First features of Structured Data on Commons going live in January 2019

Multilingual file captions on Wikimedia Commons are the first public feature of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. They are released around Thursday, 10 January 2019. Captions are a feature to add short, translatable descriptions to files.

There is a help page for using captions on mediawiki.org (because captions are available for any MediaWiki user). Feel free to contribute to GLAM-related documentation for captions on Wikimedia Commons if a help page becomes available there as well.


January 2019

Bennylin

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

By SandraF

Multilingual captions are live on Wikimedia Commons!

File captions on Wikimedia Commons, a first feature of Structured Data on Commons

In January 2019, multilingual captions went live on Wikimedia Commons. They are the first feature of Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

Captions can be added and edited on file pages and during upload of files via the UploadWizard. It is not yet possible to add captions via batch upload tools like Pattypan.

To learn more about captions and how to use them, see the on-wiki documentation. Please add specific suggestions on how to use captions for files uploaded via GLAM-Wiki projects!

Updates about GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons

While the Structured Data on Commons development team is squashing the last bugs before releasing more features on Wikimedia Commons in the upcoming months, preparations continue for GLAM pilot projects. The current list of confirmed pilots is available on Wikimedia Commons, and more upcoming pilots are being prepared and discussed.

Example of a digitized map uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 'unstructured data', but prepared for easy conversion to structured data later

Among others, Wikimedia España will contribute with a pilot project on historical maps and aerial photographs from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional. Recently WMES has uploaded a first batch of almost 10,000 digitized maps from the Mapa Topográfico Nacional to Wikimedia Commons.

This current upload is still in unstructured data, but was done in a format that should be easily convertible to structured data later:

  • The files are described with the {{Map}} information template on Wikimedia Commons
  • Information about the maps on Wikimedia Commons points to Wikidata items for the location shown on the map, the map type, place of publication
  • The file pages contain Wikidata-powered {{Institution}} and {{Creator}} templates.

In preparation for Structured Data on Commons, new Wikidata properties are discussed and created. Structured Data on Commons will include machine-readable copyright information, and for this purpose several copyright-related Wikidata properties now exist, including a few recent ones:

Description of copyright is documented on Wikidata at Help:Copyrights, and this system will likely inspire the way in which copyright of files will be described in structured data on Wikimedia Commons.


February 2019

Bennylin

Structured Data on Commons: GLAM pilots; Wikimania 2019

By SandraF

Structured Data on Commons pilot projects update

The first official GLAM pilot projects with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons are listed here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/GLAM/Projects

A complex collection of decorative arts: the Wolfers collection

The Belgian organization Packed/VIAA will contribute several GLAM pilot projects to demonstrate how Structured Data on Commons can work for various types of cultural collections: a typical museum collection, a photographic archive, and more.

In March 2019, Packed works on a pilot for a complex collection of decorative arts, which can serve as an example on how to describe many different kinds of decorative objects from GLAM collections. The pilot project also explores how different types of collections of decorative arts, from different institutions, can relate to each other on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

  • Nikè brooch by Philippe Wolfers, 1902
    Nikè brooch by Philippe Wolfers, 1902
  • Design drawing of the same piece of jewellery, Philippe Wolfers, 1902
    Design drawing of the same piece of jewellery, Philippe Wolfers, 1902

Olivier van D'huynslager (User:Oliviervd) extensively describes the Philippe and Marcel Wolfers collection on Wikidata this month. Louis Wolfers (1820-1892), his son Philippe Wolfers (1858-1929) and grandson Marcel Wolfers (1886-1976) were part of a family of prominent Belgian silversmiths and designers of decorative arts - jewellery, sculpture and other decorative items. Some of the objects they have designed are in Belgian and international museum collections; their company's archive and many design sketches have been preserved as well. Olivier's work in March focuses, among other things, on describing all these individual items on Wikidata, and interrelating them correctly.

Later this year, images related to these collections will be described in structured data format on Wikimedia Commons, and this pilot project will be used as the basis for new documentation on data modelling for structured data as well.

Research on 'metadata roundtripping'

Unknown actor, Hildur Engström and Julia Caesar in the revue Hertiginnan av Danviken at Kristallsalongen 1906. Photograph 1906 by Anton Blomberg (1862–1936), Scanned glass negative, Swedish Performing Arts Agency, Public Domain.
Unknown actor, Hildur Engström and Julia Caesar in the revue Hertiginnan av Danviken at Kristallsalongen 1906. Photograph 1906 by Anton Blomberg (1862–1936), Scanned glass negative, Swedish Performing Arts Agency, Public Domain.

Unknown actor, Hildur Engström and Julia Caesar in the revue Hertiginnan av Danviken at Kristallsalongen 1906. Photograph 1906 by Anton Blomberg (1862–1936), Scanned glass negative, Swedish Performing Arts Agency, Public Domain.

Don't forget to check out this month's Special Story in This Month in GLAM: it describes progress of a project by the Swedish National Heritage Board to investigate how cultural institutions can retrieve back improved metadata from their files on Wikimedia Commons.

GLAM-Wiki at Wikimania 2019

The Program Design for Wikimania 2019 is live! Please note that it is possible to apply for a scholarship (open till March 15) and there is a call for program Spaces and Leaders (open till March 22). If you think that GLAM-Wiki should be represented in the program, please consider applying for the latter!


March 2019

Bennylin

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons; Bengali Wikisource case study

By SandraF & SGill

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

Deployment updates

Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons is in the process of being deployed step by step.

In March 2019, it became possible to test Depicts statements on Test-Commons.

The deployment timeline for April 2019 is, as of April 5:

Early April 2019

  • Add/view/edit depicts on file pages
  • Add/view/edit depicts in UploadWizard

Mid - late April 2019 Phabricator ticket: T215305

  • Search depicts statements
  • Depicts qualifiers

Phabricator ticket: T215306

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GLAM pilot projects

While the first features for Structured Data on Commons are further developed, the first GLAM pilot projects are in progress too.

Project Wolfers

In March 2019, Packed/VIAA (BE) has been doing preparatory work on Project Wolfers, a pilot project for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons that brings the vast oeuvre of the Wolfers dynasty together on Wikidata and - where copyright allows - on Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Wolfers (1820-1892), his son Philippe Wolfers (1858-1929) and grandson Marcel Wolfers (1886-1976) were part of a family of prominent Belgian silversmiths and designers of decorative arts - jewellery, sculpture and other decorative items. Many objects that they have designed have been spread out through Belgian and international museum and private collections; their company's archive and many design sketches have been preserved as well.

In March, many Wikidata items have been uploaded for this project. As soon as Depicts and other statements for Structured Data on Commons are deployed, additional images of the works and sketches will be uploaded in structured data format, and existing images on Wikimedia Commons will be enhanced with structured data too.

  • Study of flowers, drawing (1895) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation
    Study of flowers, drawing (1895) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation
  • Civilisation et Barbarie, file box (1897-98) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation and Royal Museums of Art and History
    Civilisation et Barbarie, file box (1897-98) by Philippe Wolfers, collection