GLAM/Newsletter/September 2023/Single
Disseminating open culture
Participation on WECUDI congress
We were invited to participate in WECUDI, the first international congress around wikimedia, education and digital culture held in La Plata university, Buenos Aires. The culture and open knowledge team participated delivering a session about "Archivos en Vigilia", the iniciative that seeks for Archives and other cultural institutions to open up their documents and photographs about memory in Argentina. Angie Cervellera (WMAR) and Laura Casareto (UNLP) made a joint presentation to show the work done around this topic and invited to join the next "vigilia" in March 2023.
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On the other hand, Mauricio Genta (WMAR) gave a public workshop around Wikimedia Commons and how to upload documents related to human rights, using images of the Noche de los Lápices, due to its 47th conmemoration. Finally, Shailili Zamora Aray, our partner from the CDI Chaco, presented the work done together towards a better representation of indigenous knowledge on the wikimedia projects which involves the use of wikishootme with bilingual (qom, wichi, moqoit) education centers in the province of Chaco.
Amazonia on Wiki
Wiki Took two cities in the state of Pará
This is the first year that Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) had the opportunity of organizing two Wiki Takes a City in the state of the annual project "Wiki Loves State". There were editions of Wiki Takes in two municipalities in Pará: Bragança (Pará) and Cachoeira do Arari. Each one of these cities brought its singularities to Wikimedia projects: from the caeté region to the marajoara fields, the participants of the event increased the free knowledge on Wikipedia about their history, tradition and culture.
WIKI TAKES BRAGANÇA
August 26th - 27th
In the Pearl of Caeté (affectionate name for Bragança, in the state of Pará), the local community was really interested in the activities: 32 participants took part in the general program. The activities were:
- Digitization of part of the collection of Museu da Marujada with Portable Museum (184 images),
- Collaborative Mapping of historical buildings,
- Edit-a-thon, and
- Photowalk (630 images).
See the photos taken during the event.
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Museu da Marujada
Three local institutions helped WMB to organize the in-person activities:
- Instituto Nova Amazônia (our GLAM-Wiki partner)
- Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas Interculturais Pará - Maranhão (a research group at Federal University of Pará) and
- Irmandade da Marujada de São Benedito de Bragança (our NEW GLAM-Wiki partner).
Irmandade da Marujada de São Benedito de Bragança is the civil society organization responsible for the management of Museu da Marujada and the organization of Marujada de São Benedito de Bragança a traditional celebration in praise of São Benedito, with a strong influence of Afro-Brazilian culture.
See the Marujada de Bragança's GLAM page and the uploaded media.
WIKI TAKES CACHOEIRA DO ARARI
September 2nd - 3rd
The activities in Cachoeira do Arari highlighted the Portable Museum Workshop and the Photowalk that mapped the main symbolic spaces of local culture and heritage. For two days, some experienced wikimedians intensively worked with:
- Digitization of part of the collection of Museu do Marajó with Portable Museum,
- Mapping historical buildings, and
- Taking photos of the city (buildings and aerial photos).
See the photos taken during the event.
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Museu do Marajó
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The local institution that hosted the in-person activities were Museu do Marajó. As we told in our last Newsletter, it is a small museum located in Cachoeira do Arari, at the Island of Marajó, in Pará, Brazil. It was founded in 1972 by the italian Father Giovanni Gallo.
The collection gathers archeological assets (as marajoara ceramic items) that help us to tell the ancient history of this region. Father Gallo defended the museum's mission of being a socio-economic development factor for the region. He also wanted to ensure the connection of the surrounding communities with the museum and its collection. So he (who was also an inventor) created and installed various interactive and unconventional systems in the museum space, that he called "caipira computers": wooden gadgets for the public to interact with the collection.
See the Museu do Marajó's GLAM page and the uploaded media.
First partnership in the state of Mato Grosso
In September, Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) signed its first partnership in the state of Mato Grosso. Patrimônio, Cidades e Territórios is a research group founded in 2013, which current coordinator is settled at Federal University of Mato Grosso. The group gathers researchers from different states of Brazil, who focus their efforts on documenting and disseminating Brazilian cultural heritage.
And the group already uploaded its first batch that is part of a private collection: photographs of Professor Vladimir Benincasa, a well-known researcher on historical coffee plantations. Now 2,789 new pictures of 99 plantations located in 39 cities of the Brazilian states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais e Rio de Janeiro are available on Wikimedia Commons.
See the Patrimônio, Cidades e Territórios's GLAM page and the uploaded media.
Upload from CMU
We also uploaded three new collections from Centro de Memória Unicamp:
Antônio Tossini - Antonio Tossini was a construction worker who lived in the city of Campinas. This collection brings 36 photographs depicting members of Tossini's family, buildings and construction workers from his city.
Sílvia Basílio de Matos - 20 portraits of artists who worked in the city of Campinas, including Hercule Florence who was in the city in the mid-19th century.
Selma Machado Simão - 16 mixed media paintings on canvas depicting views of the city of Campinas, such as Largo do Rosário, Instituto Agronômico de Campinas, and the grave-monumen of Carlos Gomes.
See the CMU's GLAM page and the uploaded media.
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Upload from iPatrimônio
September is the month of Monuments for Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB)! So it is also the month for uploading the images from our partner iPatrimônio. Now you have 1,112 new pictures of listed buildings located in Brasília, São Paulo and other Brazilian cities, including first pics of some of them.
See the iPatrimônio's GLAM page and the uploaded media.
Wikidata and the editing of Ibero-American scientific journals
(English below)
Wikidata y la edición de revistas científicas Iberoamericanas
Estuvimos en la XXIX Reunión Técnica Latindex 2023 en Bogotá, en donde las personas encargadas de las revistas científicas de Iberoamérica se reunieron en la Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. En esta reunión se busca fortalecer colaboraciones inter institucionales y qué mejor espacio para la colaboración que el de uno de los puntos de encuentro de los bienes comunes en el mundo digital: el ecosistema del Movimiento Wikimedia. Leer más sobre esta nota.
Wikidata and the editing of Ibero-American scientific journals
We were at the XXIX Latindex 2023 Technical Meeting in Bogotá, where the people in charge of the scientific journals of Ibero-America met at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. This meeting seeks to strengthen inter-institutional collaborations and what better space for collaboration than the ecosystem of the Wikimedia Movement? Read more (in Spanish).
Celebrating Rugby Herstory and History in Toulouse; Les Lorraines sans pages
Celebrating Rugby Herstory and History in Toulouse
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In Toulouse, the French rugby capital, the Médiathèque José Cabanis and the Archives municipales de Toulouse celebrated the Rugby Union World Cup 2023 with an exposition of André Cros, a photograph that heavily documented Rugby Union and Rugby League and whose entire collection was uploaded to Commons in 2018, thanks to the Open Content policy of the city. In the afternoon, with Les sans pagEs, we had an edit-a-thon dedicated to women rugby in France.
Les Lorraines sans pages
For the second year, Nancy Musées, the Bibliothèque Stanislas and the Archives municipales de Nancy have a monthly workshop around the history of the city of Nancy and the historical region of Lorraine. This september, the thematic was women from Lorraine and the event was co-organized with les sans pagEs.
Wikimedia Commons Contest connects Pune citizens with the rivers Mula & Mutha
Background
The river is the lifeline of any civilization. Fast-growing Pune exploited the rivers as a source of water, and sand and used them as drainage lines for sewage and industrial effluents for the last 60 years. Today there are beautification projects being built around the rivers and their banks, by compromising the existing ecosystem of the river. A large part of the citizen community is ignorant about these issues and thus does not care to protect the river, which is a crucial part of nature. Many civil society organisations are active in the sector of river conservation, river rejuvenation and citizen science initiatives. Various campaigns and outreach programs are also being organised to build the connection between society and rivers. The ‘River Walk’, Adopt a Stretch initiative, and Toxin Free lifestyle is some such initiatives done by the Jeevitnadi organisation in Pune, working on River Rejuvenation.
Pune River Revival is a campaign spearheaded by Jeevitnadi, and backed by many other citizens and organizations like Ecological Society, Samuchit Enviro Tech, Nisarg Sevak, National Society for Clean Cities etc. in Pune. The campaign was started to better understand the River Front project implemented by Pune Municipal Corporation and highlight the deteriorating condition of the rivers due to this project. The 'Jalbodh' project by the Centre for Internet & Society- Access to Knowledge Program (CIS-A2K) to build a water knowledge repository on Wikimedia projects is being implemented in collaboration with similar organisations active in the water sector.
CIS-A2K, in collaboration with Pune River Revival group organised Mula Mutha Nadi Darshan campaign cum photography contest on Wikimedia Commons from 15 May to 31 August. The aim of the contest was to document the Mula & Mutha rivers along with their tributaries in the Pune district on Wikimedia Commons in the form of images and videos. You can see more specific topics in the Rivers and topics section. In this campaign, partner organisations like, Jeevitnadi, Ecological Society, Samuchit Enviro Tech, Nisarg Sevak, National Society for Clean Cities etc. actively participated. The outreach activities were conducted for educational institutes, citizen forums and social organisations to involve them in documentation of Mula & Mutha rivers in Pune on Wikimedia Commons. The awareness drives and technical training programs were organised for the capacity building of the participants.
Exhibition of impactful images for raising awareness
After the contest period, the evaluation of the images was done by four juries using the Montage tool. The orientation sessions to operate the tool were conducted. The first ten winners were declared after the evaluation. Along with this contest, the Pune River Revival group also conducted 'Paint the river', 'Sketch the river' and 'Poster stories on river' drives for citizens. All the works from these campaigns were exhibited in Yashavantrao Chavan Kaladalan, Pune on the occasion of 'World River Day' and 'Ganesh Festival'. On 24 September World river Day, a felicitation program was arranged for the participants, winners and activists. Veteran environmentalist Prof. Vijay Paranjpye and expert photographer Chandrashekhar Bapat felicitated the winners. Wikimedian Dr. Aarya Joshi presented the importance of free knowledge creation on Wiki projects.
Due to this three day open exhibition during the Ganesh Festival, many people visited and awareness about the status of river was increased through visuals. The Wikimedia Commons documentation helped to amplify the feelings about the worsening conditions of the river and urgent need for action. The organisers and contest participants have decided to continue this documentation efforts with more citizen engagement.
Gallery
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Vitthal Temple, Mutha River in August 2019 Flood at Vitthalwadi, Pune -
Fishing activity by locals at Mutha River way to Nilkantheswar road, Pune -
Beautiful Old Bridge -
Mula river- A cursed beauty -
Mula Mutha River exhibition in Pune on the occasion of World River Day (24 September 2023) -
Citizens looking at the status and thinking about the Mula Mutha River -
Water expert Prof. Vijay Paranjpye addressing at Mula Mutha River exhibition -
Images on Wikimedia Commons at Mula Mutha River exhibition -
Citizens' paintings at Mula Mutha River exhibition -
Students depict stories about Mula Mutha River
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10,000 institutions on the Wikimedia projects
Empowering Italian GLAMs project update
In May Wikimedia Italia uploaded the Midterm learning report of project Empowering Italian GLAMs, a project co-organized with ICOM Italia, the Creative Commons Italian chapter, the Department of Economics and Statistics "Cognetti de Martiis" of the University of Turin and cofunded by Wikimedia Foundation.
Empowering Italian GLAMs aims at addressing all Italian museums and heritage institutions in using open tools and the Wikimedia projects for sharing and reusing contents related to their digital collections. The project is structured into 3 workpackages addressing 3000 institutions (invited to join a Wikipedia campaign by providing images of their institutions), triggering 500 institutions (involved in releasing a collection with open license and upload it on the Wikimedia projects) and focusing on 5 case studies, uploading and monitoring content, documenting and evaluating the activities and disseminating the results. Here is a brief outline of what has been done during these months of the project:
- An awareness raising campaign among Italian GLAMs. The project is indeed contacting all Italian museums through a communication campaign, press communicates and media relations at a national and local level, conferences webinars and monthly meetings, networking with stakeholders, emails (mass mailing managed with Wikimedia Italia’s CRM system, CiviCRM with reports on https://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Empowering_Italian_GLAMs/Invii_email_ai_musei) and direct and personal contact.
- It’s been created a system to monitor the implementation of open access by the Italian museums. Here (in italian): https://www.adert.it/musei/report.php https://www.adert.it/musei/report.php
- It’s been created a tool to collect data from institutions, to upload documents associated to cultural institutions and to allow them to review Wikidata data. The tool is designed also for possible future translations. https://glams.wmcloud.org/
One of the most efficient strategies to involve museums and to disseminate open access was the organization of a regional event/workshop to present the project and to increase awareness. The first of these was organized on March 28 by ICOM with the collaboration of Wikimedia Italia, Creative Commons Italia, Department of Economics and Statistics (project's partners) and Lombardy Region. The video made available online allows all interested institutions to find information (https://www.icom-italia.org/webinar-tutti-i-musei-italiani-su-wikipedia-28-marzo/) In fact, 26% of the institutions that joined the campaign are from Lombardy. In September 2023, after the busy summer period for Italian museums, a recall was made and many new museums are joining the initiative.
The project was presented during Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. You can see the registration on YouTube, here: https://www.youtube.com/live/r6J_vNbWLY8?feature=shared&t=6178 and the presentation on Wikimedia Commons.
West Coast Wikipedian at Large
A Wikipedian at large?
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For the third time, I (User:Giantflightlessbirds) have been employed by Development West Coast, a business-development trust on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, as a Wikipedian at Large. The Wikipedian at Large model was invented in 2018, and offers an alternative to the standard model of a Wikipedian in Residence: a Wikipedian at Large is not housed within a single institution, but instead spends a short amount of time (a few weeks) with multiple instutions, training staff, working on small Wikimedia projects, and recruiting volunteers. The role can also involve extensive travel, visiting archives or regional museums, and taking photographs of undocumented places, often with the assistance of local volunteers.
Development West Coast is a charitable trust which seeks to support businesses and increase tourism on the remote West Coast of New Zealand. In 2020, 2022, and now in 2023 they have funded a Wikipedian for 5 to 10 week stretches of work. In 2020, 17 volunteers signed up to assist remotely, and contributions were logged every day, including a daily photo. Volunteers in addition received a virtual postcard each week, which appeared on their Talk page (all postcards are archived here). This was a very successful initiative, but a huge amount of work, with the Wikipedian working seven days a week to keep volunteers motivated and meet requests for photos. Over 1000 photos were uploaded, about 50 new articles created, and dozens improved. Book prizes, donated by Development West Coast, were given to the most productive volunteers. There was a great deal of interest from media in a recently published study by Hinnosaar et al., which suggested improving Wikipedia articles in a region could increase the number of tourist nights, with significant economic implications; comments from the Wikipedian were reported in Forbes and The Telegraph.
In 2022, the Wikipedian at Large worked half-time rather than full-time at a more manageable pace. Reporting was weekly, rather than daily, which put less pressure on volunteers to do something each day, and postcards arrived fortnightly rather than weekly. Despite being half-time, the Wikipedian ended up doing almost as much work as a full-time role, and there was plenty of media interest, with three television interviews and stories in the local papers. Having a Development West Coast staffer feeding press releases to the media and contacting TV producers made a big difference, and the project certainly raised the profile of Wikipedia editing in New Zealand. The remote volunteer team of 11 improved 193 articles and created 25, and 1126 photos were uploaded. Five articles appeared in Did You Know, and a video posted to accompany one received over 405,000 views.
2023 Wikipedian at Large
I began another Wikipedian at Large project with Development West Coast on 11 September. Two volunteers flew from Wellington to Christchurch and joined me on the West Coast for four days. Together we explored the Fox Glacier area, photographing hiking trails and creating them in Wikidata, expanding the article and Commons category for Gillespies Beach, and accompanying White Heron Sanctuary tours on a visit to the only breeding colony of Eastern Great Egrets in New Zealand. This latter trip led to creation of an article on the Waitangoroto Nature Reserve, uploading of numerous photos, and significantly improving the article on the nearby town of Whataroa. The team of 11 volunteers are receiving weekly summaries and fortnightly postcards as before.
- The white heron colony at Waitangiroto
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There has been plenty of support from the local hotel chain and tour operators, who are very keen to see improvements in Wikipedia coverage of the area. The lack of a strong volunteer community on the West Coast means that articles on most places are Stub or Start-quality, and photo coverage in Commons is sparse. From the point of view of the Movement, Development West Coast supporting improving the encyclopedia is making a real difference. It has been important to make it clear to funding bodies and tourism operators that Wikipedia is not a promotional tool for them: volunteers have had free reign to work on what they please, and DWC has at most suggest some general geographical areas that are especially badly covered. DWC have not tried to exert any editorial influence or be back-seat drivers, and have supplied numerous press clippings and hundreds of publication-worthy tourism photos from their image library to be released under an open licence. They've been very pleased with the media attention the project has had, and ordinary West Coasters have been keen to help; several of them have donated photo collections. The Wikipedian at Large model has not had the same effectiveness at recruiting local editors however, a task better suited to a Wikipedian in Residence.
GLAM-Wiki educational activities
Educational recordings for the Media Education Center in Kielce
In September, we also had the opportunity to visit the Media Education Center in Kielce, a very modern and beautifully designed space dedicated to teaching about media and promoting conscious media usage.
During the visit, we recorded educational materials about Wikipedia and our sister projects as part of the Generation of Tomorrow program aimed at young people. These materials can be listened to on Radio Kielce or accessed as podcasts.
Our Open Culture Manager, Kamila Neuman talked about the Wikimedia Commons. She particularly focused on aspects that may be interesting to young people, such as how to find great photos, how to use them legally, why many biographies on Wikipedia are illustrated with tombstone photos, how to creatively utilize resources for school projects, and how to conduct school fundraisers using legal resources.
Additionally, she talked about whether Wikipedia can be helpful during museum visits, why Wikipedia collaborates with GLAM institutions, and in a separate conversation, she delved into the topic of Wikimedia photography contests, such as Wiki Loves Monuments or Wiki Loves Earth—why it's worthwhile to participate in them and how to win.
Promoting the reuse of Wikimedia Commons' open resources through partnership
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Wikimedia Poland is one of the partners of a Mobile Culture’s free online course aimed at cultural animators, educators, and GLAM professionals. The course is designed and produced by the Culture Shock Foundation in collaboration with international partners. It consists of three self-paced modules, each of these is build of seven steps, blending educational videos, visuals, in-depth articles, tutorials, ready-to-use materials, cheat sheets, and templates.
As a partner, our responsibility was to curate and prepare a specific collection of images, videos, and audio materials from the public domain available on Wikimedia Commons for the benefit of the participants. In this manner, we seek to promote open resources and the Wikimedia Commons, which can serve as a valuable asset for reuse in cultural and educational endeavors.
We kindly invite you to enroll in the course. The course content is available now in English and Polish (from November: in Italian, Spanish, and Greek) under CC BY 4.0 licence, except elements described otherwise. Link to the Mobile Culture’s free online course in English and in Polish.
Special thanks to GLAM-Wiki interns in Wikimedia Poland: Agata Stadnicka, Zuzanna Ligor and Sebastian Pierścieniak, who assisted in developing this course material set.
With multiple events, September was a busy month for Wikimedia Portugal
Portugal's National Library welcomed Wikidata Days
The highlight of the month was Wikidata Days, a 3-day event held at the National Library (BNP) which gathered professionals and enthusiasts of open data in Lisbon. The event included a wide array of activities, including round tables, workshops, explanatory sessions, case studies and, of course, a datathon. From SPARQL queries to data modelling, from copyright regulations to OpenRefine, from reflection to actions, it touched on almost any aspect of open data.
WMPT brought together a series of local and international experts in data and culture, including representatives from BNP and Creative Commons Portugal, as well as researchers and practitioners, bridging the gap across different audiences. It was also an opportunity to join communities from other local chapters, such as Wikimedia España, Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia Deutschland, as well as the Wikimedia Foundation, who joined the event to share their expertise on the topic and showcase some of their best work using Wikidata.
Last but not least, the National Library also hosted a Wiki Loves Earth exhibition during the whole month, displaying some of the best pictures of the Portuguese branch of the competition throughout the years.
Portuguese Early Music Database finds its way to Commons and Wikidata
One of the case studies showcased at Wikidata Days was the project we've been developing with the Portuguese Early Music Database (PEM). WMPT has been working with NOVA FCSH to bring PEM to the Wikimedia infrastructure.
The Portuguese Early Music Database is a collection of digitalizations of musical manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula predating 1650. As of now, you can find the detailed metadata of most of the collection are already on Wikidata, including properties such as musical genre displayed, the script style and the material the manuscript is made of, among others. The works are still ongoing, and we expect them to be concluded by the end of the year. Meanwhile, you can already see some of these manuscripts on Commons.
WMPT loves Free Software
September was also time to rekindle the connections with the multiple free software communities that gathered to celebrate FOSS in Portugal. After a five-year break, Festa do Software Livre (Free Software Party) was held at University of Aveiro. WMPT was one of the co-hosting organizations, securing a schedule that included sessions on Wikibase, software localization using MediaWiki as a case study, as well as session about strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) presented by Eduardo Santos, lawyer and president of D3, Portugal's digital rights associations. The line-up also included a mini-hackathon, which served to demonstrate some of the Wikimedia tech tools and workflows.
Global Gathering and ICOM-CC 2023
Wikimedia Portugal was part of the multinational team of Wikimedians who were at ICOM-CC 2023, in Valencia. Along with Wikimedia España, Amical Wikimedia, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Schweiss and the Foundation, our delegate helped to build bridges with museums and other heritage institutions. Our Program Manager for GLAM Partnerships did a presentation on How a Wikimedian in Residence can help GLAM collections reach new and wider audiences, highlighting the potential of having this type of specialized knowledge within an institution.
In other event news, Wikimedia Portugal also sent a delegate to the Global Gathering, an event that brings together digital rights defenders from around the world working on the most pressing issues sitting at the intersection of technology, human rights and social justice.
Wikipedia in education; Continuation at Swedish folk high schools; Wikipedians at the Bookfair
Wikipedia in education
As always this time of the year we are starting up the program where third year secondary school students write their thesis as a Wikipedia article followed by a short report. Going into our eight year we are adding Stockholms Kvinnohistoriska (Stockholm Museum of Women’s History) as a partner to make it easier for the students who choose to close that gap find literature and sources. Some 30 students will spend the fall and winter collecting material and write in their sandboxes, and in February the articles will move on to main namespace.
Continuation at Swedish folk high schools
Our collaborations with Swedish folk high schools in the project Wikipedia for all of Sweden continue and during September we have been to Valla folk high school in Östergötland, Biskops-Arnö folk high school in Uppland and Kvarnby folk high school in Skåne.
Our experiences and reflections are that there are many opportunities for folk high schools to use and work with Wikimedia's platforms in education. To begin with, it is a good basic general education to know how free knowledge and free licenses work in a broader perspective, and then Wikimedia's platforms are a very good example where you can contribute yourself. What is needed to continue the work with folk high schools and other stakeholders are people who both know the platforms and have pedagogical competence to develop the work on site and in symbiosis with other subjects in the education. Editing on Wikipedia can fit well as a sub-moment in many contexts.
We continue the work and the next step is to discuss so called subject packages (in Swedish, Ämnespaket) from various GLAM institutions and offer these to folk high schools in combination with the fact that we can provide support for the initial editing, preferably in close contact with the person who leads the teaching. More about folk high schools in Sweden.
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Aerial photo of the school building at Biskops-Arnö. -
Entrance and the main building at the Biskops-Arnö folk high school. -
A view at the old buildings at Biskops-Arnö.
Wikipedians at the Bookfair
Following the tradition from many years back a bunch of Wikipedians used the Bookfair in Göteborg to walk around to take photos of authors and notabilities, and to talk about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. The themes for this year was Jewish culture, the city, and light.
A new WIR and a very old book
National Trust
National Trust appointed their first Wikimedian-in-Residence, after a successful pilot scheme in 2022. The short-term role will explore the potential of image release and developing training.
Khalili Foundation
Two articles relating to bibliomancy have been substantially improved this month. The Falnama article is eleven times larger than it was a month ago and has passed DYK review. It is scheduled to be linked from the home page on Friday 13 October. Text from this newly expanded article has been used to improve the bibliomancy article itself. A new section on bibliomancy in Islam takes up about a third of that article.
Gulshan-i 'Ishq, the 49th new article created by this project, has gone live and will be submitted to DYK review. We found out this month that the Urdu translation of Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam — a very close translation of the English article I created — has been thoroughly reviewed by the Urdu Wikipedia community and been awarded a Featured Article badge! Only seventy Urdu articles have this rating.
I am continuing to work on articles about exhibitions where the Khalili Collections had a presence. I acquired the printed catalogue of the Empire of the Sultans exhibition and worked through it, finding the catalogue numbers of exhibits. This has two outputs: 1) an image gallery of exhibits on Wikimedia Commons 2) a list of exhibits for which we do not yet have an image on Commons. The image gallery will help with illustrating the Wikipedia article, which I am continuing to work on in draft. The representation of the Empire of the Sultans exhibition on the KhaliliCollections.org web site is a bit patchy, with content spread across a lot of small pages, so I wrote a briefing about how this could be improved.
I spoke at an in-person meeting of the Wikimedia UK board in London. Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation, gave a short talk about how the Wikimedians In Residence programme is Wikimedia UK's flagship activity, then my presentation showed the breadth of the Khalili Foundation work and some of the achievements that we are most proud of. I also underlined the need for the Wikimedia Foundation to provide reliable reporting tools. BaGLAMa2 has not been working properly for many months and we have been using GLAMorgan instead. These volunteer-created tools need to be put on a professional, reliable footing.
There were no new image uploads, but six cropped versions of previously-uploaded images. There are no new translations this month.
GLAMorgan reports 4,840,290 image views in September.
Wikimedia New York City Election 2023; San Diego/September 2023; Climate Change and Food Safety
Wikimedia New York City Election 2023
Wikimedia NYC held their annual meeting, NYC/Election 2023
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Celebrating new caps, I ♥ Q60
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San Diego/September 2023
San Diego Public Library, and San Diego User Group held a meetup, San_Diego/September_2023
Climate Change and Food Safety
USDA National Agricultural Library held a lecture by Dr. Jodi Williams and Dr. Sheila Fleischhacker, and a workshop, led by Jamie Flood, NAL/Climate Change and Food Safety
OpenRefine and Wikimedia Commons: train the trainer course participants and two surveys
OpenRefine train-the-trainer course: participants selected
See this month's WMF GLAM report for an update about the selection of participants of OpenRefine's Wikimedia train-the-trainer course.
Two surveys for users of Wikimedia Commons features in OpenRefine
In addition, in October 2023, there are two surveys to help the OpenRefine team with decisions around future improvements of the Wikimedia Commons features in OpenRefine.
- A first, classical, survey (fully anonymous) where you can tell how you use the Commons features in OpenRefine, and how you (want to) learn to use them better;
- A second, more experimental survey (also fully anonymous) in which you prioritize the features that matter most to you.
European photo contest finalists, Local Contexts Wikiproject at GLAMhack
The finalists of the European Photo Contest are chosen
The finalists of the Wiki Loves Safeguarding Living Heritage in Europe contest have been chosen. The contest is organized by the European Network of Focal Points for the 2003 Convention (ENFP) and focuses on the safeguarding practices of living heritage. Through this campaign the ENFP wishes to contribute to the documenting of not only living heritage but also of the tremendous importance of people making efforts to take care, transmit and safeguard the living heritage of humanity.
The contest attracted 1 729 photos from different European countries.
The Finnish contest winner Traditional Finnish sauna whisking and löyly by Ville Kurki was announced in the Finnish main event of Living Heritage theme year in Oodi Helsinki Central Library 9 October 2023. The image represents Sauna culture in Finland, one of the heritage elements inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. At the same event, 22 new entries were added to the Finnish National Inventory of Living Heritage.
The winners of the European contest will be announced on the week starting 16 October, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on 17 October.
Wiki Loves Living Heritage × Local Contexts at GLAMhack in Geneva
We wanted to explore how we could make Local Contexts labels and notices available on Wikimedia Commons. Traditional Knowledge labels (TK Labels) are an initiative for Indigenous communities and local organizations that allows them to express conditions for sharing their materials and engage in research in ways that respect community rules, governance and protocols for using, sharing and circulating knowledge and data. As the TK Labels are for the indigenous communities to assign, we looked more closely at the Notices, that can be applied to content by others.
In preparation, we arranged a meeting with Corrie Roe, Outreach Manager of Local Contexts, to discuss what would need to be done, and what challenges there might be. The discussion resulted in a Wikiproject where we welcome anyone to join, and a presentation about the findings.
Thank you everyone who joined, including Corrie Roe, Carine Ayélé Durand, Sandra Becker, Iolanda Pensa, Sadik Shahadu, Thomas Guignard, Flor Méchain, Jonas Lendenmann, Levyn Buerki, and Susanna Ånäs.
See all the challenges at GLAMhack
Wikisource Loves Manuscripts, ICOM outreach, Flickr Foundation partnership, OpenRefine adoption, new sources in The Wikipedia Library, Image Description Month events, and the GLAM Wiki Conference
ICOM conference in Valencia
We supported Wikimedia Spain and other European affiliates (Amical Wikimedia, Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia Germany, Wikimedia Switzerland, and Wikimedia Portugal) to engage with museum professionals at the ICOM conference in Valencia. In the lead-up to the conference, we collectively developed content for Meta, highlighting past collaborations with ICOM and museums and the particular opportunity of ICOM's new definition of museum. Our call to action for the conference was 'Help us share museums' knowledge with communities everywhere.' Let us know if you're contacted by an ICOM member as a result of the conference.
Wikisource Loves Manuscripts learning partners network
- We formed a learning partners network of 21 members representing seven different regions across the world. The first meeting is scheduled for 10 October and will introduce the main topics, such as an advanced introduction to Wikisource, partnership building, and digitization and transcription practices.
- Transkribus, which is integrated within Wikimedia OCR (optical character recognition), now supports 27 Wikisources.
- READ-COOP published a blogpost on about the Wikisource-Transkribus collaboration
- Our partner, IIIT Hyderabad, updated their Seamformer model, which is a high precision line text segmentation for handwritten documents that was tested on Sundanese manuscripts.
- Our technical fellow produced a technical patch so the Wikisource contest tool now supports multilingual Wikisource.
- We co-authored a blog post with the British Library, linking their Wikimedia collaborations to cultural restitution.
- We hosted the Wikisource community meetings, covering topics such as Google not indexing Wikisource.
OpenRefine adoption
There were more than 80 applicants to the Wikimedia Foundation-funded OpenRefine Train-the-trainer program, leading to a cohort of more than 12 people, with staff and Wikimedians connected to the Wiki Education Foundation, meemoo - Flemish institute for archives, Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Portugal, Wiki Movimento Brasil, and Wikimedia District of Columbia, plus individual contributors from Algeria, Germany, India, Indonesia, and New Zealand.
Flickypedia
Inspired by Flickr2Commons, which supported around 2,000 users to upload 5.4M Flickr images to Wikimedia Commons, the Flickr Foundation is building a new bridge between Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. To understand what improvements they should prioritise, the Flickr Foundation surveyed >60 potential users of Flickypedia and attended a meeting of the Commons Photographers User Group. They have published their first UI sketches and a data model for community review. Like the Wikimedia Foundation's own Upload Wizard Improvements project, they are hoping to reduce the proportion of images leading to deletion requests.
The Wikipedia Library content partnerships
We're focused on diversifying the languages represented in the Library. To achieve this, we're connecting regularly with Wikimedia groups like Wikimedia Deutschland and the Wikimedia UAE user group. We're pleased to share two new partnerships in languages other than English: De Standaard and Duncker & Humblot.
Image Description Month
From October 1st to 31st, we are promoting Image Description Month, a month-long invitation to improve the description of visual content on any of the Wikimedia projects. The goal is to make these images more accessible, discoverable, connected, and usable in different languages.
You, your group, or your organization can participate by just adding an event to the table on the Image Description Month page. You don't need to ask to participate. Simply add your event and we will promote it and provide support in any way we can.
At the time of publication of this newsletter, we're expecting events in English from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the National Archives and Records Administration. In Spanish, we have two seminars by Wikimedia Colombia as part of their Seminario Abrir la Cultura y el Patrimonio and an event by Wikimedia Argentina to address different guidelines in order to generate accessible descriptions for artistic and historical images on Wikipedia articles. CIS-A2K is organizing a description-a-thon in many Indian languages on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. Other events are still being organized and added, so there is more to come.
GLAM Wiki Conference
In September, we contributed to scholarship and program reviews for the GLAM Wiki Conference, which is being organized by the Wikimedistas de Uruguay. We're really excited by the final conference program, which will be shared soon. You can now register to attend the conference in person.
We're also supporting the organizers to host a series of Towards GLAM Wiki Conference meetings to understand the needs of the whole GLAM Wiki community. The next meetings are on October 11th (register here) and November 2nd. There will also be regional meetings, which started with the European GLAM coordinators group on October 3rd. Dates are still to be determined for other regions.
October's GLAM events
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