GLAM/Newsletter/March 2022/Single
Visual culture, human rights and digitization
Archives and human rights
Like in 2021, we organized Archivos en Vigilia, a campaign by which cultural institutions and organizations were invited to upload content related to our countries dictatorship period (1976-1983). We specially approached Archives, empowering these institutions on their social, historical and cultural role in the processes of truth, memory and justice. We offered two training workshops for interested people on this proposal and then designed resources for supporting Wikimedia Commons uploading process, which you can see here:
In result, +130 photographs and historical documents were released, including radio broadcasts, in collaboration with Archivo histórico UNLP, Archivo Nacional de la Memoria, Archivo Histórico Zulma Totis del Liceo Victor Mercante, Archivo de la Radio Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Biblioteca Popular "Constancio C. Vigil", Archivo Histórico Prof. Armenia Euredgian de la Escuela Normal Superior Nº 2 Mariano Acosta, Archivo Histórico y Documental Universidad Nacional de San Luis.
These files are added to the 31 documents released in the 2021 edition.
Strengthening visual culture in Wikipedia
With Wikimedia Foundation's support and in collaboration with Wikimedia México and Wikimedia Chile, we organized an event about images on the internet, contextualization and research, and how Wikipedia can be an useful ally to connect information and images through the Add an Image feature for newcomers.
For this protect, we invited museums' professionals and other people related to visual culture to a training program where Cora Garmanik, specialist on photographies, delivered a theoretical background about image uses and descriptions, while WMAR, WMMX and WMCL demonstrated how to use the tool and worked on it in small groups of people, allowing a more personalized learning experience. This resulted in more than 100 editions to Wikipedia.
At the end, participants shared ideas about the potential of this new feature, willing that in the future it can be developed to connect heritage pictures and related articles.
Scaling digitization of historical documents at ANH
We reached over 300 documents since we started in 2021 with the digitization of historial documents from Argentina at the National Academy of History (ANH). We are working on the documentary collections of former president Roque Sáenz Peña, former governor of Buenos Aires Province Juan Manuel de Rosas, former vice-president Norberto Quirno Costa, member of congress Ovidio Lagos, among others. Files can be found here.
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New projects on the road
WMAR is preparing the release of important projects that involve cultural communities. During the first days of April, we are launching CLiC: Cultura Libre Conectada a platform with resources aimed for archivists, museologists, librarians and other cultural workers in order to achieve open access policies on their institutions.
Interested people will find resources on digitization, intellectual property, free software, digital preservation and remote access of collections, among others. Resources such as guides, charts and booklets will help professionals develop better open access practices in their everyday duties, and encourage them to share as well experiences and new resources for the cultural community.
Australia grows gender equity for International Women's Day
Gender disparity across Wikimedia platforms is well-documented, from the gendered imbalance of editing participants to the under-representation of articles on women, non-binary and trans folk.
Contributors around Australia addressed these gaps over International Women's Day with edit-a-thons at libraries and galleries in Melbourne, Brisbane and online.
Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon in Melbourne
As in previous years a group of dedicated editors met in Melbourne, Australia to celebrate International Women's Day by writing Australian women artists into Wikipedia. We achieved some of our best results to date.
Hosted again this year by the Richmond branch of Yarra Libraries on Saturday 12 March, the Women's Art Register partnered with Wikimedia Australia who provided plenty of training and support on the day to enable us to make some excellent progress.
Our group of 16 editors on the day generated outstanding results resulting in new articles on artists including Lesley Hall, Judith Wright (visual artist), Yvonne Boyd, Jeannie Pwerle, Claire Lambe, Heather B. Swann, Diena Georgetti and the Women's Domestic Needlework Group, as well as updates to a number of other articles and Wikidata. Editors drew from the artist files and library of the Women's Art Register for sources.
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Happy editors -
Hard at work -
Art+Feminism 2022
Women in Religion
Australia's ever-prolific Women in Religion group based out of the University of Divinity in Melbourne ramped up efforts to mark International Women's Day with a Wiki-Week Editing Extravaganza. Across two online sessions, participants created new Wikipedia pages focusing on women in religion particularly those associated with the Movement for the Ordination of Women and the Women-Church journal.
The Australian Women in Religion Project effort is led by Kerrie Burn, who with her team is tirelessly collecting, sorting and uploading data, as well as editing and creating articles about Australian women. This is also the Australian contribution to the wider 1000 Women in Religion Project which aims to raise up the unrecognised work of important women in religion and to help address the gender bias on platforms like Wikipedia.
Follow the project's progress here.
Art+Feminism in Brisbane
Despite delays due to extensive flooding in southern Queensland, an Art+Feminism edit-a-thon finally went ahead at the Queensland Art Gallery on Sunday 6 March.
Angela Goddard, Dr Louise R Mayhew and Dr Kirsty Volz hosted a communal updating of Wikipedia entries on women, non-binary and trans folk in art and architecture.
New pages included Australian artists Deborah Kelly and Palawa artist Mandy Quadrio.
Read more and see the full results here.
New GLAMR Training program launched
Wikimedia Australia has collaborated with New Zealand Wikimedian Mike Dickison (User:Giantflightlessbirds) to develop a special four-part training program for GLAMR organisations in our region to explore opportunities for how Wikimedia platforms and projects can extend their collections and engagement.
Training developer Mike Dickison says the modules explore the philosophy of the movement as well as practical exercises to start participants on their editing journeys. "I wanted to create a session that was short, worked over Zoom, had clear learning goals, and made participants do at least one short activity so they stayed actively engaged," he said.
This training was designed to be run by a Wikimedia Australia team of facilitators, but can be presented in a self-guided manner by any organisation using the downloadable resources. Slides and notes are provided for each module, and each is designed to be presented over one hour.
Collaboration with GLAM institutes in Belgium
Reminder: "Wikimedian in Residence" project grant
Socio-cultural projects that wish to apply for a project grant Wikimedian in Residence can do so until 30 April.
Wiki Cafe Industriemuseum
The Ghent Industry Museum has been organising a Wiki Café with writing sessions for the past few months as part of the Cathedrals of Industry project. This project concluded on 7 April. In May and June, a new project Pagne Africain will be launched with writing sessions the first Thursday of the month from 17:00 to 19:30 in the museum.
Conservatory about Belgian Music
The Music Library of the Conservatory of Ghent has taken the initiative to organise writing sessions about (composers of classical) Belgian music. The first session took place on Friday 25 March.
Expert meeting at the Flemish Architecture Institute
On Thursday 24 March, the Flemish Architecture Institute held an experts' meeting to determine the VAi's strategy for the coming years. A number of representatives from the cultural world were invited.
Heritage course completed
The FARO heritage course Basiscursus immaterieel erfgoed ended on Tuesday 29 March with a final physical session in Brussels.
Pills of GLAM
#VisibleWikiWomen
In March Wikimedia in Brazil joined the global campaign #VisibleWikiWomen led by Whose Knowledge?.
“We estimate that less than 20% of Wikipedia articles of important women have pictures. When women’s faces are missing from Wikipedia, that invisibility spreads. [...] Women’s knowledge and contributions to the world are invisible in so many ways. Together, we can address this and make women more visible online!”
Hey, you who work with GLAM! Let’s make all the efforts to upload images of women and reduce the gender gap on the Internet! Don’t forget it: upload your images until May 8th on this link.
New Brazilian National Archives upload
We are happy to announce a recent upload of more than 7,100 media files from the Brazilian National Archives (GLAM do Arquivo Nacional). In this batch we have uploaded files from three funds: 1. Security and Information Advisory of the Superintendency of Fisheries Development; 2. Security and Information Advisory of the University of Brasília; and 3. Afonso Pena; which contain official documents, photographs, personal letters and other types of documents.
See below some of the official documents from Security and Information Advisory of the University of Brasília that were written during the Brazilian authoritarian period. This upload connects to our strategy to prioritize uploads that shed light to state-led human-right violations in our recent history.
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Prohibition of cultural relationship with socialist States -
Suggestion on the adequacy of censorship in Brazilian society -
Education & Culture Minister's statements about the closing of Brazilian National Union of Students -
Repression of the recomposition of the student movement -
Official Notice "No! The person sentenced to death is not a student"
The Portable Museum brochure
As announced in our January Report, the Museu Portátil -“Portable Museum”- Project has released a manual (only in Brazilian Portuguese) on how to use low-cost equipment for digitization of both bidimensional and tridimensional objects. The material also includes information on how to start a GLAM Wiki initiative and guidelines on legal aspects to make collections available under open licenses.
The Museu Portátil Project was coordinated by the art historian and curator Carolina Matos in a partnership with Goethe-Institut São Paulo, Instituto Moreira Salles and Wiki Movimento Brasil. Two GLAM-wiki initiatives have emerged as a result of this partnership: GLAM do Museu da Capitania de Ilhéus and GLAM da Santa Casa de Misericórdia da Bahia. These institutions have already uploaded 436 pictures of their collections, including the UNESCO awarded documental series Livros do Banguê - a set of eleven books with information on the enslaved in Brazil.
tGLAM tutorial
Our team has produced a video tutorial on how to create the basic landing page of a GLAM-Wiki institution, relying on a template we have developed called tGLAM.
This GLAM-Wiki page is a space for coordinating activities, centralizing metrics and providing context on the partnership. It is easy to translate!
New GLAM-Wiki manager
BTW: Hi, everyone! My name is Sandra Soster. I am the new GLAM & Culture Manager at WMB. Here's a little about me. I am currently working on my PhD, called “Management of the Brazilian Cultural Heritage: Collaboration in policies, processes and technologies”. I hold two bachelor’s degrees: Architecture and Urbanism + Advertising, and Marketing. I collaborate on projects of four research groups from different Public Universities here in Brazil. And I am really interested in digital technologies for documentation and dissemination of cultural heritage.
I am so excited to have this opportunity to contribute to both Wiki and GLAM institutions. I think GLAM+Wiki is a perfect match! Don't hesitate to get in touch!
...starting bottom-up in indie archive!
...starting bottom-up in indie archive!
In the first quarter of 2022, we started a non-conventional (Open) GLAM work with a focus on knowledge, data, and archive material of Clubture.org and its network of members (mostly independent cultural and art organizations, with some initiatives like our progressive wikimedians HrW_initiative). As announced in 2021 we prepared the partnership and now started project work as a group of four (1 Cluture staff member, 2 learners, and me as WiR) meeting each week for planning, processing, and learning together. We were given support by the Wikimedia Foundation, as m:Grants:Project/Rapid/Clubture.org/20 years of participatory and open culture.
In the next months, we hope to have some of the key independent cultural and art organizations, infrastructure, events, phenomena and publications for the first time surface (or get updated) in Wikimedia, as well as to have their data become indexed and searchable for future research and comparative study of the network and its effects in the Croatian culture and society.
First Wikipedia articles on non-institutional culture and civic-public partnership policies are filling the big gap in the understanding and visibility of this part of the cultural field and its democratization. Though some of this work on Wikipedia in the Croatian language was met with (usual) semi-automatic notability accusations, it also sparked new discussions on criteria for the local (underrepresented and suppressed) civil sector and ... prompted multiple new users to voice their opinion for the first time in discussions!
We presented the project for the first time at the annual assembly of Clubture, to over 50 representatives of indie cultural and art organizations across Croatia, promising not to make Wikipedia pages for each and every, but offering support and establishing categories and galleries with examples, adding Wikidata entries as basis for the future publishing.
As we started looking for good examples internationally we also noticed that the situation is not much better in Europe (any experts on Cultural or NGO networks?). We hope to research, develop and deploy, but also bring these practices, findings and learnings to the Clubture Forum event in the city of Pula for its 20th birthday (presented and demonstrated with graphs and interactive applets for rich insights). Hopefully than also internationally via platforms like CreativeCommons OpenGLAM.
If you're interested or experienced in this topic or type of work, please contact or follow us at: [email protected] and https://w.wiki/uQT
or follow via #GLAMwikiCROATIA #GLAMwikiHR on: FB +Insta. +T and Mastodon.Social ! <3
Glass, Books and Paintings
History of Glass in Estonia
As UN has declared 2022 International Year of Glass we in WMEE took it as a great opportunity to cooperate with one of Estonia´s smaller local glass-themed museums. We reached to Järvakandi´s Glass Museum and so the deal was made! They offered us a theme which in the end was also chosen: "Helga Kõrge - a story of Estonian glass". All together we uploaded to Commons more than 25 different glass objects between the mid-1950s and mid-1980s. Most of the glassware are decorated with national elements and are 100% handmade.
The exhibition is entirely in Estonian however we still recommend checking out the beautiful handmade Estonian glassware.
Year of Libraries 2022
In Estonia the year 2022 is declared the Year of Libraries. Our GLAM project manager Kerdo Kristjan came to an idea where all Estonian librarians collect their favorite quotes from their loved books and post them in Wikiquotes. The pilot project is currently taking place as a cooperation with Tartu City Library and their smaller branch-libraries and is set to end in May. After that, the project shall be expanded all over Estonia.
We are hoping to hold this widescale event active throughout the current year and also simultaneously introduce librarians the opportunities Wikimedia has to offer. As working with libraries our main target is the incumbent staff, we are very optimistic about this ongoing event and hope to add Estonian Wikiquotes with tens of new quotes from all kinds of classic literature and poetry.
Lilly Walther
At the end of February Tartu Art Museum opened an exhibition Lilly Walther. Limitless presenting the works of Baltic German painter Lilly Walther (1866–1946). But it did not stop there! Many of here work can now be viewed in Wikimedia as well.
Some examples of Lilly Walther paintings:
Mooc Wikidata
Mooc Wikidata
The Wikidata MOOC proposed by Wikimedia France is officially open for registration! Subscribers have one month to register before the very first training session starts on April 26th!
The creation of this online course responds to a demand from both the Wikimedia project community in general and the GLAM partners (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) of Wikimedia France. This MOOC is aimed at anyone who wants to discover how Wikidata works and the principles of the semantic web and queries, even if they are starting from scratch: all they need is to have seen tables and spreadsheets before.
Link to our training platform: https://formations.wikimedia.fr/login?next=/dashboard
Link to the Wikidata Mooc: https://formations.wikimedia.fr/courses/course-v1:WikimediaFrance+MWd-1+2022/about
Wikimedian-in-Residence program initiated at the Research Institute of World's Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage in Arunachal Pradesh
A GLAM project has been initiated at the Research Institute of World's Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage (RIWATCH) located in the village of Khinjili near the town of Roing at Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh in the North-eastern part of India. RIWATCH has an ethnographic museum and a collection of photographs, audio and video files depicting the rich cultural tradition of different tribes and indigenous people of Arunachal Pradesh and North East India at large the region. CIS-A2K had made contact with the institute in 2019 for a possible GLAM project but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting nation-wide restriction of movement, further communication was postponed. Communication with the institute was resumed again on January 2022 and after receiving their positive response, it was decided to have a field visit during the month of March. West Bengal Wikimedians User Group was also involved in setting up the GLAM process. Kime Rilla, a resident of Itanagar and a close associate with RIWATCH, was given Wikimedia training and assigned as Wikimedian-in-Residence for the GLAM partnership. Vijay Swami, the executive director, has released all RIWATCH digital contents under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. Slow internet is the major challenge of this GLAM project which has hindered the smooth uploading of the media files on Wikimedia Commons.
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Group of Mishmi people photographed by Benjamin Simpson in 1860 -
Young girl from Idu-MIshmi tribe in 1937 -
An elderly Adi women leading a folk song -
A headgear made of bamboo & wild boar teeth -
A headgear made of made of bamboo & horn-bill beak
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The growth of sharing on Wikimedia projects
Renewed collaboration with BEIC
BEIC (Fondazione Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura) and Wikimedia Italia renewed their collaboration for the 2022. The GLAM-BEIC project started in 2014 and is the longest-running GLAM-wiki project in Italy. The goals:
- Enrichment of Wikidata;
- cooperation in the project of census of italian cultural heritage;
- upload of images in Wikimedia Commons and inclusion in Wikipedia of bibliographical references;
- training activities by Wikimedia Italia in the interest of BEIC;
- activities on Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikivoyage;
- activities to involve the public.
Call for proposals for GLAM 2022
The winners of the Call for Proposals for Museums, Archives and Libraries 2022, promoted by Wikimedia Italy in collaboration with ICOM Italy and Creative Commons Italy to encourage the sharing and free reuse of images, data and content preserved by cultural institutions, have been choosen.
Seven winning projects out of thirty-two proposals received, for a total of 28,000 euros made available by Wikimedia Italy to encourage the production of free knowledge. Here the winners:
- Museo internazionale delle marionette Antonio Pasqualino in Palermo: it preserves 5000 works, animated figures and scenic objects belonging not only to the tradition of Sicilian puppets, but also to cultures of other parts of the world. Thanks to the project, the entries on these topics on Wikipedia in Italian, French, German and Spanish will be improved. Moreover, a tourist itinerary will be elaborated and will be available on WikiVoyage and on other channels, in order to promote the discovery of this tradition by an international audience, encouraging the practice of slow tourism and the discovery of less known areas of Sicily.
- Istituto Campana per L'Istruzione Permanente in Osimo: the institute will work on the digitization and publication on Wikimedia Commons, with links to OpenStreetMap, of 18 geographical maps and views of cities and 300 architectural drawings and prints dated between the 18th and 19th centuries.
- The historical archives of the parish of Santa Maria Assunta in Trevi nel Lazio: they'll digitize 23 parchments dating back to the period between the 13th and the 16th century. The documents offer important information on local history, but also on the Caetani and Colonna families, at the center of the history of Rome and Italy. This will also be useful as a source for Wikipedia and a geographical data for OpenStreetMap.
- Museo Ugo Guidi in Forte dei Marmi: the museum contains the works of the sculptor Ugo Guidi and the documents that testify his relationships with great artists of the twentieth century. All these works, already cataloged by the museum, will be digitized and made available on Wikimedia Commons.
- Conservatorio Giuseppe Nicolini in Piacenza: the Conservatory Library will make the collection of 171 photographs of voice teacher Corrado Pavesi Negri available on Wikimedia Commons.
- The Library of the Research Area of the CNR of Bologna that manages NILDE (a web software designed to facilitate the sharing of documents between Italian and foreign libraries), will map on OpenStreetMap of all the institutions adhering to the network, also including information on libraries with historical and architectural value.
- The library of theUniversity of Salerno in collaboration with the Wikidata Group for Museums, Archives and Libraries (GWMAB), will connect the data of researchers and teachers of the university with those already existing online, scattered among repositories, catalogs and encyclopedic entries. The goal is to make the work of every scholar more easily available and accessible on the web.
Credits
Letters from Sierra Leone: the Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection in a new light
Dutch anthropologist in Sierra Leone
It is fascinating to see how old photographs can revive by being included in Wikimedia Commons. Sjoerd Hofstra was a Dutch anthropologist and sociologist who was stationed in Panguma Village, Sierra Leone from 1934 to 1936. He lived among the Mende, one of the largest ethnic groups of Sierra Leone. In total Hofstra made two trips to the country, having to end the first trip due to illness. His work was mainly focused on ethnographic research, however Hofstra also made himself useful as village doctor. Over the years, as he conducted his research, Hofstra took hundreds of photos of the people and nature of Sierra Leone.
Photo collection digitized in Leiden
A collection of about 400 of these photographs were digitized by the African Studies Centre Library at Leiden University. Working at the ASC we have spent the last few months working on the Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection at the African Studies Library in Leiden. We have gone through the photo’s carefully, as we contextualized, categorized and uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons. Hofstra’s photos depict day to day life in Sierra Leone, as the Mende people cook, clear rice fields and retract palm oil from palm kernels, but also portray rituals, festivities and burials. The Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection is now complete and can be found here.
Photos shed new light on village life
What makes the Sjoerd Hofstra photo collection particularly interesting is the fact that Hofstra wrote detailed letters to his adoptive mother, M.F. Overdiep-Ham, also known as ‘Moeteke’. In these letters, which were written from 1934 until 1936 Hofstra described his journey and day to day life in Panguma Village, Sierra Leone. Hofstra’s letters portray the interesting bond Hofstra had with the Mende people, who trusted him and came to him for (medical) advice. At the end of his journey, Hofstra even became part of the highest group in the ‘Poro’, a men’s secret society, which normally only accepts higher political leaders. These examples portray the mutual respect both the Mende people and Sjoerd Hofstra had for each other. Because of these letters, we were able to connect names of villagers to photos, creating not only a better understanding of the collection but important narratives to support the stories behind the photos. The letters of Sjoerd Hofstra can be found in the book by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Sjoerd Hofstra's daughter: Among the Mende in Sierra Leone; the Letters from Sjoerd Hofstra (1934-1936). (Open access online version).
Forming Wikimedia Aotearoa and the Aotearoa New Zealand Theses Project
Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc
New Zealand now has an official Wikimedia User Group: Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc, known as WANZ or Wikimedia Aotearoa for short (Aotearoa is the Māori name of New Zealand, and how it's commonly referred to in New Zealand English). The group is now an incorporated society, and is applying for charitable status.
At its first general meeting on 17 March, the following appointments were made, interim until elections at the society's first Annual General Meeting.
- President: Einebillion (Victoria Leachman)
- Vice-President: Giantflightlessbirds (Mike Dickison)
- Treasurer: Marshelec (Marshall Clark)
- Secretary Noracrentiss (Christine Richardson)
- Committee member: MurielMary
- Committee member: Schwede66
- Committee member: Pakoire
This marks a new stage in the growth of the Wikimedia movement in Aotearoa. Ten years ago there had been no organised Wikimedia events in the country, except for half a dozen small meetups in Auckland and one in Wellington. Several edit-a-thons were organised over 2015–2017, and a project-grant-funded Wikipedian at Large over 2018–2019. A monthly Wellington Wiki Meetup began in 2019, and a national online monthly meetup in 2020. Christchurch began regular meetups in 2020, and there were Wikipedia conferences in Hokitika (March 2021) and Auckland (July 2021). Auckland launched its first regular meetup in April this year.
Wikimedia Aotearoa's first tasks are to apply for a grant from the Community Fund to support meetups and a conference over the next year, and organise a strategy workshop in Wellington where the committee can work on the group's roles, kaupapa (philosophy), and strategic plan. Then there's the normal business of a society: setting up a website and mailing list, planning meetups and edit-a-thons, and determining projects to support for 2022 like the Theses Wikidata Project (see below). For the moment the society's information is on its Meta page, and it can be contacted via secretary
wikimedia.nz.
Aotearoa New Zealand Academic Theses Wikidata Project: Progress is being made!
This project came about while Mike Dickison was a Wikipedian in Residence at Lincoln University. During that short residency, librarian Deborah Fitchett raised the possibility of adding Lincoln University’s theses to Wikidata. She had an opportunity to present on to her academic librarian colleagues at the online conference Aotearoa Institutional Repositories Community Days 30 September - 1 October 2021 on adding thesis metadata into Wikidata. In preparation for this presentation she reached out to Mike Dickison who in turn invited Siobhan Leachman and Tamsin Braisher to join in the discussion. This group met several times to discuss the proposal of uploading all New Zealand academic theses into Wikidata and to prepare for the presentation at the conference.
The four contributors worked together to produce both slides and a presentation attempting to encourage discussion amongst the academic library community and to also attempt to convince all the academic libraries across New Zealand to release this metadata to be uploaded into Wikidata. In preparation for the presentation Deborah Fitchett also sent a small dataset of the metadata to Tamsin Braisher to test the possible data clean up workflow and upload into Wikidata. In preparation for the presentation Tamsin Braisher produced a document giving a proposed workflow and raised potential issues concerning the mapping of doctoral theses to Wikidata. At the same time Siobhan Leachman worked on a potential schema for mapping the citation data into Wikidata. This proposed schema was discussed by the group and the issues were thought through and documented. This proposed schema was then placed into the Wikidata Cradle tool to assist with visualisation and aid discussion during the presentation. Although a cradle form was generated it was recognised by all participants that this ontology was likely to be edited in the course of this project.
The presentation to the Aotearoa Institutional Repositories Community Days was well received by the attending academic librarians and a hackathon was subsequently arranged to be held on the 6th of December 2021. The aim of the hackathon was to determine the data fields/format required for the thesis record data that the libraries intended to extract from their repositories. Again this hackathon was successful and by February Deborah Fitchett had received multiple datasets from multiple academic libraries on the theses held by those institutions. Deborah Fitchett undertook significant work collating and aggregating the data and was able to pass the dataset onto Tamsin Braisher in the beginning of March. Tamsin Braisher then spent time exploring the dataset and began a small trial upload of theses into Wikidata both to test the proposed workflow and the schema that had been previously created. On the 25 March 2022, Tamsin Braisher presented her findings to the Project participants and contributors and requested feedback from the contributing libraries on issues this trial upload raised.
Feedback is in the process of being gathered from the participating institutions and Tamsin Braisher is continuing to work on the dataset preparing it for upload to Wikidata. It is anticipated that the upload of a core set of statements for the full theses dataset will be complete in May. After this, the Wiki editors involved are anticipating holding further workshops with the academic librarians to teach them how to then disambiguate the author name strings, and how to link author items to their supervisor or affiliated institution items. It is also anticipated that librarians will be taught how to contribute to the #1Lib1Ref 2022 event by adding theses citations to the publications section of appropriate author Wikipedia articles. We also anticipate adding a further set of statements to the thesis items later, including licensing and access, degree programme, and main subject statements. Deborah Fitchett and Tamsin Braisher have been working with some Australian editors to improve the mapping of ANZSRC controlled vocabulary codes to Wikidata as it would be helpful to have this completed prior to adding main subjects to the theses. Similarly, Tamsin Braisher is exploring obtaining a list of approved degree programmes for New Zealand for upload to Wikidata.
News in Wikipedian in residence projects
Wikipedian in residence at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
A Wikipedian in residence at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, one of the largest cultural and scientific institutions in Serbia, has begun. During the first month of the project, 14 articles were written about its members, 23 were improved, and 69 files were digitized, many of which are bibliographies, as well as video autobiographies, which were released for the first time during this project.
Wikipedian in residence at Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment
After the second month of Wikipedian in residence at the Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment, 76 articles were illustrated and 411 files were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Many of these files have been digitized, and thanks to this project, made available to the public for the first time. Among these files are the will of Ilija Kolarac, programs of performances by many artists, as well as books that introduce us to the art scene in Belgrade during the interwar period. The project will continue during April.
Edit-a-thon in cooperation with Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
An edit-a-thon was held in cooperation with the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from March 25th to April 1st. Thanks to this activity, 10 participants wrote 60 new articles about its members, branches, the Day of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and many other related topics.
Wiki librarians
The first edit-a-thon within Wiki librarians called Award-winning writers and their work, is held from March 15th to March 31st. During this edit-a-thon, 11 participants wrote 57 new articles, while 1 was improved and 26 files were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
Gallery
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Video autobiography of Olga Hadžić
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The Order of Saint Sava I degree was awarded to Milan Jovanović Batut -
Manuscript book of religious content -
Collegium Musicum -
Dubravka Tomšić
WikiToro
WikiToro
With the aim of improving the visibility of the municipality on the Internet and, especially, on Wikipedia, the municipal library of Toro (Zamora), in collaboration with the Town Council, has launched the WikiToro project. For its development, collaboration has been requested from groups, students and citizens willing to get involved in the search for topics about Toro on which it is necessary to incorporate more information in Wikipedia, to subsequently start editing or creating the contents. With this last objective in mind, on 30 March, an in-person training session was held in the library, in which the basic guidelines for the use of Wikipedia were explained to the people interested in forming part of this editing group.
The Unique Historical Kalmar County project continues ...; WikiGap x 3; Students writing articles
The Unique Historical Kalmar County project continues ...
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The Unique Historic Kalmar County project has planned for a continuation with three new meetings in May 2022. In the meantime, we have worked with the image archive at Kalmar County Museum where we have request images, and if possible they can be published with a free license at the Digitalt Museum. This has allowed us to focus on some selected photographers such as Therése Wallgren.
Therśese Wallgren was a professional as a portrait photographer but also took a lot of pictures outdoors around Oskarshamn and Kalmar counties. Many portraits and images become relevant again and enter a new context on Wikimedia's platforms.
WikiGap x 3
For the week of march 8 several WikiGap related events took place. To start things off Västmanlands läns museum hosted a full day training session and workshop for both staff and visitors. A few articles were created and updated with a hope from the museum's of more to come from their side. In the evening Folkmusikens hus (House of Folk Music) hosted an online edit-a-thon focusing on women active in the field of folk music. The participants worked both on articels and in getting previously uploaded traditional music added to articles. At the end of the week a group involved in writing an encyclopedia about Women in Architechture learned how to add to and improve Wikipedia as a way to reuse the material they created for other platforms. As some had tried to write articles before but had them questioned on notability grounds a big part of the training was aimed on that and how to find reliable and secondary sources.
Students writing articles
The cooperation between Wikimedia Sverige and Nordiska museet where upper secondary school students write their special project as a Wikipedia article has this year expanded to also include Centrum för näringslivshistoria (Centre for Business History) as a partner. By the end of February and early March the students published 26 new and eight expanded articles ranging from pronography and HIV to the expansion of Clas Ohlson and history of allowing women to attend universities.
Khalili Collections
Khalili Collections
A new article draft has been written about the Gulshan-i 'Ishq, a romantic poem that combined elements of Indian and Persian culture.
On the 17th March, the nineteenth Did You Know to come from this project appeared on the English Wikipedia home page: "Did You Know that the Dar al-Kiswa in Egypt made ornamental curtains for the Kaaba in Mecca?" 2,780 readers clicked through to the article, bringing the equivalent of ten months' traffic to the article in one day.
There were no new image uploads this month, but I added five cropped versions of existing images. 202 category tags were added to images this month. The number of "uncategorised" images went down from 301 to 237. 13th-century glassware, Group paintings of women, and Birds in art of India are among the categories to which Khalili Collections objects have been added.
The "Art in the Age of the Caliphs" class at the University of Edinburgh, led by Dr Glaire Anderson, has this term been adding Khalili Collections images to Wikipedia articles and writing captions. They edited sixteen articles in total, including Jug, Mortar and pestle, and Belt (clothing). There are now 284 pages on English Wikipedia using Khalili Collections images: 23 more than at the start of the calendar year.
(Post Scriptum: forgot to add this at the time) On 29th of March I attended a day workshop at University College London about a new piece of software that would measure the potential impact of bulk image uploads to Wikimedia by identifying Wikipedia articles that the images could be used to illustrate. The software had been developed for use with libraries and I advised on how to adapt it for use by museums and art collections.
GLAM Activities by Wikimedistas de Uruguay
M.arte + Wikipedia workshop
To celebrate Women's Month, Wikimedistas de Uruguay colaborated with the arts collective Colectiva Có. We participated in a guided visit to their exhibition about "Women in the Arts in Uruguay" in Fundación Verde, where they highlighted the low representation of women in the arts in Uruguay. Then, we had a Wikipedia editing workshop, where we added some of the information from their research into Wikipedia articles: Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales and the article Berta Luisi. Around 15 people participated in the activity.
Presentation with the Library Association of Uruguay
We gave a presentation to the Library Association of Uruguay, to invite them to the #1bib1ref activities that will be taking place on May-June. The presentation is available here. The librarians were very enthusiastic to collaborate with us and we will be following up with them on next steps.
Women's History Month
Smithsonian Women in STEM edit-a-thon
The Smithsonian Institution marked the end of Women's History Month with an online edit-a-thon on Increasing the Representation of Women in STEM. The IF/THEN project, which saw more than TK orange 3D-printed statues of notable women in science displayed at Smithsonian sites in Washington, D.C., was used as inspiration for the worklist.
With more than 80 attendees, the online meetup was led by Kelly Doyle and Andrew Lih and tackled the improvement of Wikipedia articles, as well as introducing Wikidata tasks from interacting with knowledge graphs to using TABernacle to add the occupation, field of work, and employer information for the women scientists and academics depicted in the exhibit.
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Visual knowledge graph of Wikidata items for women in STEM -
Tabernacle tool for editing Wikidata items for women in STEM
SpelmanLitWeek
Spelman English Department and AfroCROWD held an editathon, SpelmanLitWeek.
WikiSalon
Philadelphia Wikimedians, held a salon, WikiSalon 2022-03-12
Women in Religion Edit-a-thon
American Academy of Religion_Western Division held a meetup, AAR Western Region Edit-a-thon March 2022
San Diego meetup
San Diego Public Library and San Diego Wikimedians, held a meetup, San Diego/March 2022
UN Environment Programme sharing their knowledge on Wikipedia. Logo competition
UN Environment Programme sharing their knowledge on Wikipedia
We have been working with the UN Environement Programme to share their knowledge on Wikipedia, they have released their 9 flagship publications under an open license so we can use the text within Wikipedia articles. So far their text has been added to articles which are seen over 600,000 times per month including Plastic pollution, Microplastics, Marine plastic pollution, Soil, Agriculture, Fishing, Aquaculture and Natural disaster. Please add text from their publications on Commons into Wikipedia using these instructions.
Creating a visual identity – compete with your logo designs
As the hub is continuing to grow and form, we are working on the graphic identity. An important part of this is the logo, and that's where you come in!
We are running a competition to find a new logo: the winner will pick their prize as an item of their choice from the Wikipedia Store.
Please share your ideas and designs here by April 30th.
Looking forward to seeing your designs!
OpenRefine: survey for Structured Data on Commons features
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!
Bophana documentaries
Bophana-UNESCO empowering indigenous Cambodian youth in building audiovisual archives
Bophana Center and UNESCO collaborated on a project for building capacity of indigenous youth in Cambodia for building audiovisual archives by training 24 youth from Brao, Jarai, Kachok, Kreung, and Tampuan Indigenous communities.
The content is currently being organized on Wikimedia Commons and 21 documentaries produced in this project are available in the Wikimedia Commons' category Indigenous Audiovisual Archives through Wiki tools in Cambodia
Read more about the project in this post on Diff.
April's GLAM events
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