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Wikipedia in African Libraries Project
Wikipedia in African Libraries
The Wikipedia in African Libraries project will use an adapatation of the OCLC Libraries + Wikipedia Better Together Curriculum and will be delivered online. With the adaptation of the curriculum, a call for participants to test it was therefore made and enrollment is open to all African librarians in all library types. Get more details about it here
Open Access Week
The theme for the 2020 Open Access Week was - Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion. For multilingual societies such as African communities, equity and inclusion as integral strands of Openness have deep meanings and off the grid perspectives. Between 19-25 October and in partnership with the AfroCine Project, AfLIA therefore led African librarians to translate articles about film/cinema on Wikipedia into local African languages with the sole objective of increasing access to such articles by making them available in mother tongues using the translation software on the platform.
You can view the project results here
Abre-te Código hackathon, Wikidata related events and news from our partners
Wikidata birthday celebrations
Wikidata Lab XV
The 25th Wikidata Lab were taught in partnership with Tainacan, a flexible and powerful collection management plugin for Wordpress developed for providing an easy and professional repository platform for cultural institutions and more. The theme was interoperability and data access and the presentation is available here. For the practical activity, Wikimedians worked on Tainacan platform and the Taincan team worked on Wikidata. You'll hear more about this partnership soon!
Wikidata Party
On October 24th, WMB hosted a Wikidata Party (Festa do Wikidata, in Portuguese), a hybrid event: online and in person. It was the first time since early March that the professional team from WMB gathered in person. Due COVID-19 preventive measures, we had only 7 people attending the event, hosted at one of the only certified spaces in São Paulo for holding corporate events. It was very emotional! Around other 20 people from the Lusophone community attended the event thorugh its online interface.
The program included 3 live presentations via YouTube and one hands-on activity of improving a Museu Paulista collection dataset. The first presentation was an introduction to Wikidata, addressing a Lusophone community request, followed by a special presentation for the Abre-te Código hackathon (see below) participants on Wikidata for cultural institutions and GLAM partnerships. To wrap the day, we delivered Wikidata presents on a live sharing how we contributed to Wikidata in 2020. Oh, and we had an amazing chocolate cake!
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Updates on Abre-te Código hackathon
Abre-te Código is the Global South edition of the Coding da Vinci hackathon, being held simoutaneously in Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia. The idea is to gather cultural institutions around open data culture and provide space for creativity and innovation with their datasets. Wiki Movimento Brasil have been involved in the Brazilian hackathon since the begining and after several months of formative content creation, October carried the actual development of the prototypes. After 3 days of intense online mentoring and brainstorming, the participanting teams delivered 15 viable projects to be further developed throughout November. In December, the jury will announce the winning teams, to be awarded with grants and trips to Germany!
WikiCite Conference
Érica Azzellini and Célio Costa, members of the Wiki Movimento Brasil UG, organized two sessions at the WikiCite Virtual Conference. They were awarded an e-scholarship and delivered sessions focused on bringing Global South voices under the scope of structuring projects on Wikidata, bibliography and library data.
The first session called Global annotation of the scientific literature on viral epidemics using Wikidata gathered the team from OpenVirus project, mainly based in India. We also had the participation of the Redalyc and Open Access, representing Latin America, and INA-rxiv project, from Indonesia.
There were 13 speakers from at least 3 different timezones. The presentations occurried mainly in English, but also in a bit of Hindi and Spanish. The session approached Scholia interfaces, technical demonstrations and different practical discussions on access to academic publications and the exclusion of voices from the Global South.
The second session revolved around structuring projects on Wikidata, with presentations about libraries GLAM and queries, the Wikidata WikiProject COVID-19 and the Mbabel tool for Brazilian elections. There were three presentations in Portuguese and one in Spanish.
Both video sessions are available now on Wikimedia Commons! It is also on YouTube - both on Wikipedia Weekly and Wiki Movimento Brasil channels.
A special thanks goes to Liam Wyatt for supporting this endeavor since the begginning!
Wiki Loves Monuments
We're proud to share with the community that Wiki Loves Monuments Brasil reached the 5th position at the general WLM campaign this year! We received over the month of October more than 15 thousand images depicting 802 monuments - from which 417 were depicted for the first time on Wikimedia Commons. There were 135 participants throughout the contest - 86 of them participating for the first time. The images count up to 50 thousand views already!
We'll announce the national winners by the end of November.
Paulista Museum GLAM
During the month of October, WMB members also uploaded more than 100 thousand pieces of metadata on Wikidata, enhancing a previous batch made available on the platform: a collection from Museu Paulista with works by the photographer Militão Augusto de Azevedo.
The purpose of this upload was to improve the depicts property (P180) of more than 12 thousand items by the photographer, including photographs and postcards. This activity was part of the GLAM partnership with the Paulista Museum and was important to improve the gamified application What clothes should I wear?, also created by WMB members, and that improves the information on clothes and garments of people portrayed in the works from this museum.
University of São Paulo Libraries GLAM
We're also happy to inform that the first upload by the GLAM from the University of São Paulo Libraries also took place at the beginning of November. The items about 337 professors from the School of Communications and Art at the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP) were made available, in three different batches (first, second, third), with all metadata collected and made available on Wikidata in the most complete way possible.
The metadata was provided by the Biblioteca da ECA and the intention is to use the items to structure the works of the institution's own collection that will be made available on Commons and on Wikidata soon.
NeuroMat GLAM portal
Also during October, WMB members finally created a portal for a long time GLAM partnership held with RIDC NeuroMat (Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics). The project by this research center was the largest producer of mathematical content on Wikipedia, in addition to supporting several other Wiki partnerships, GLAM projects, events, edit-a-thons, technical training (such as Wikidata Labs), and even hosting several Wikimedians-in-Residence.
The portal will not only be a space to gather all the Wiki activities developed and supported by NeuroMat in recent years in one spot but also intends to be a space for action and adhesion of possible volunteers interested in contributing to the activities carried out. There, users can now find all the material made available, including images, videos, GIFs, events, audio files, courses, tools, queries, and much more!
Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência
As we announced in the July's Newsletter, Wiki Movimento Brasil is partnering with Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (SBPC), an organization that cares about the development of the scientific, technological, educational and cultural environment in Brazil.
At first, the partnership will include an edit-at-thon aimed at members of Brazilian scientific societies. However, the purpose of the event will not be to edit entries themselves but to form lists that will help to solve content gap problems found on Wikipedia in Portuguese, especially in scientific subjects, related to the different work areas of the participants.
After this first event, the goal is not only to organize more edit-at-thons but possible also to carry out a GLAM-Wiki project with the organization. SBPC has in its archive an important collection of Brazilian scientific knowledge.
Creative Commons Virtual Summit
During October, Wiki Movimento Brasil also participated in the Creative Commons Virtual Global Summit 2020. Two members of the group presented in the OpenGLAM track.
João Alexandre Peschanski carried out a short presentation during the CC Open GLAM Platform Meeting about Wiki Loves Bahia, a project to diversify content in the Open Knowledge Brazilian Ecosystem.
On October 22, Giovanna Fontenelle presented the case of the Brazilian OpenGLAMs partnerships on Wikipedia. The page for the lecture is available here.
The videos for the presentations will be available on the Creative Commons YouTube channel soon!
Postponed Hack4FI GLAM hackathon turned into an online global Hack4OpenGLAM
Avoin GLAM - The Finnish Open GLAM working group has organized the Hack4FI Open GLAM hackathons since 2015. This year, in March, meals had been ordered and the staff of the Finnish National Gallery were prepared for a long weekend when the precautionary measures to limit the Coronavirus pandemic forced to cancel the event.
Together with the Creative Commons Open GLAM platform and backed by Wikimedia Finland, Avoin GLAM decided to propose the hackathon for the Creative Commons Global Summit, which had also been postponed and transformed into a virtual event. The result was the inauguration of a new online GLAM hackathon, Hack4OpenGLAM.
The event spanned over five days 19–23 October, starting one day before the CC Summit with a workshop program, running parallel with the program as an online hacking space and culminating in a Final Gala after the Summit days.
We had 102 signed-up participants and altogether 32 workshop and kickoff session presenters who spoke 32 languages including R, SQL, Python and Java. A clear majority identified as open culture advocates, and a third as wikimedians as well as GLAM professionals.
Kickoff events
Students of the H2020 European Training Network POEM facilitated the two kickoff sessions that introduced the thematics of GLAM hackathons. What is a GLAM hackathon? lead by Franziska Mucha brought together the different views and experiences of co-creation events from Ilias Kyriazis from Coding da Vinci, Ivonne Kristiani from Retas Budaya Indonesia and Tuomas Nolvi from Hack4FI.
The session Accessing cultural heritage – Approaches from high to low lead by Angeliki Tzouganatou and Quoc-Tan Tran looked at Open Access to cultural heritage and the machine-readable Commons from different perspectives as Jolan Wuyts from Europeana, Anni Saisto from the Pori Art Museum in Finland, Thomas Flynn from Sketchfab, Alden Page from Creative Commons Search, Ryan King from the Smithsonian and Henrik Summanen from the Swedish National Heritage Board presented their angles.
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GIT IF UP: Jan Ainali as Vincent van Gogh -
Saara Valle making cheese and baking bread in Nirrola. Images from the depictathon. -
Musings of a Cat by Arunesh Varade. Special mention in GIF IT UP India 2020.
The workshops
The workshops were organized in a breathtaking 14-hour streamed event. Vahur Puik and Kimmo Virtanen presented Ajapaik.ee, a crowdsourcing platform for enriching pictorial content. In their workshop Aleksandra Strzelichowska from Europeana and Medhavi Gandhi from The Heritage Lab, India inspired folks to participate in the ongoing #GIFITUP2020 campaign by exploring simple animation techniques and free tools available online. The Open GLAM translation sprint by Evelin Heidel from the Creative Commons Open GLAM Platform and Ariadna Matas from Europeana was a huge success, with translated articles being published in the Open GLAM Medium publication. In the Depictathon Suvi King and Inker-Anni Linkola-Aikio from The Sámi Archives, Finland, Anne Seipijärvi from the Inari Sámi Wikipedia, Bas Nederveen from the Rijksmuseum, and Isla Haddow-Flood and Florence Devouard representing the ISA Tool were invited together to explore decolonizing collections metadata in Wikimedia Commons. Albin Larsson and Jan Ainali brought the sessions of Wikipedia Weekly to Hack4OpenGLAM. In this episode, they edited Wikidata and displayed some SPARQL queries as well as timeline and map visualizations. The idea of the Open Geo Commons was explored by Arun Ganesh. The workshop was simultaneously part of the celebrations for the 8th birthday of Wikidata arranged by WikiProject India. Louise Hisayasu from Tactical Tech explored the world of persuasive design and design tricks in her workshop Keep Calm and Spot the Design Tricks. Sam Oyeyele arranged Months of African Cinema Wikipedia editathon as part of the contest happening throughout October and November. Kat Thornton presented Science Stories, the winner of the LODLAM 2020 Challenge, in the workshop Telling the stories of amazing scientists with open data. Sandra Trostel concluded the day by presenting and screening her openly licensed documentary film All Creatures Welcome where the members of Chaos Computer Club, Europe's biggest association of hackers, define hacking as a mindset.
Shoutout to Inari Sámi Wikipedia
Monday 19 October was also the birthday of the Inari Sámi Wikipedia, which was established on the very same day. Congratulations to the small indigenous language community of only around 350 speakers for doing this amazing work!
Pitching, hacking and celebrating
The hackathon brought together creators, ideas, and open cultural heritage ready to be reused. 31 GLAM collections included lists of openly available resources collected from the internet and from fellow hackathons, but also from institutions who presented their collections in person. All the projects and materials can be reviewed and participants contacted through the Dashboard, which will also include the video documentation as soon as it is available.
Institutions, their collections and projects
The Finnish institutions joined the international event and invited people to hack their projects. Taika Dahlbom and Hanna-Leena Paloposki from The Finnish National Gallery presented their brand new API that can access the CC0 data and images of around 12 000 artworks from their collections. Tomi Ahoranta from The National Archives of Finland organized a crowdsourced drive to identify fallen Finnish WW2 soldiers by their identification tags. Anni Minkkinen and Helena Schulman from the The National Museum of Finland presented their project from prison: the collection to be hacked was a preserved prison cell. Petri Leskinen and Jouni Tuominen from Linked Data Finland presented BiographySampo - a linked data resource mined from Finnish biographies and Mikko Koho the Mapping Manuscript Migrations Knowledge Graph.
The event gathered sprint projects from the world over: Sum of all Indian paintings datathon by Jane Darnell and Bodhisattwa Mandal, Visualizing WWII art dealer networks in 60,000 artworks by Laurel Zuckerman and Upgrade Source links in Image Collection South East Asia by Liesbeth van Wijk from the Leiden University Library.
Special mention
It is rare to see in-copyright artworks being openly licensed. Konstsamfundet and the Amos Rex museum made the works of Birger Carlstedt (1907–1975) openly available in their collections and shared them on Wikimedia Commons, aided by Lina Winqvist Normoyle at Projekt Fredrika and Wikimedia Finland.
Hack projects
Many projects were created during the hackathon and many more were finding new connections for working together. Sandra Fauconnier presented the workflow she had set up to import cultural heritage 3D models from Sketchfab to Wikimedia Commons and describing them with Structured Data on Commons statements. Katri Niinikangas created a calendar for 2021 from openly available images of animals, and it is available in Wikimedia Commons. Arunesh Varade took one of openly licensed images from the collections of the DAG museums and turned it into an AR experience. Andrew Lih worked on the Knowledge Grapher, an easy tool to create a knowledge graph of an artist's works and what they depict. The projects Fortepan Iowa by Bettina Fabos, Isaac Campbell and their team, Art Pluriverse: Balkan community archives presented by Mariana Ziku and Wikidocumentaries by Susanna Ånäs share synergies about local history. None of our team members were able to complete their hackathon projects, but we were enjoying creating the event! Ranjit Menon had brought Ravine - modern rock video. Tuomas Nolvi and Pekka Kauranen from Yle had planned to work on a Twitter bot for Yle's Wikimedia Commons images whereas Tove Ørsted from the Aalto University Archives missed working with the Student life during 100- years project.
Thank you also to everyone whose projects were not mentioned, from DIY science tools to a virtual museum! Find out more and get in contact with interesting projects by browsing the Dashboard. If you missed the event, the recordings will be available there soon. All links are additionally stored in a Zotero folder.
Thank you all for joining, and thank you for the organizers of the CC Summit for the opportunity and support!
Partnership with BNU Strasbourg
Partnership with BNU Strasbourg
The Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg and Wikimedia France have signed a partnership. The library aims to improve librarians, documentalists, and other professionals' skills on the Wikimedia projects.
Coding da Vinci cultural data hackathon heads to Lower Saxony
Playing with cultural data
October saw the kick-off of Coding da Vinci Niedersachsen, the latest edition of our cultural data hackathon. Co-founded by Wikimedia Germany together with partners the Germany Digital Library, the Forschungs- und Kompetenzzentrum Digitalisierung Berlin (the Berlin Senate’s office for digitalisation) and Open Knowledge Germany back in 2014, this is the 10th edition of Coding da Vinci, which brings together cultural institutions and their data with digital creatives and open data enthusiasts. The creative projects that result show the potential of digital cultural heritage for institutions when they open it and invite co-creation.
With funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation Coding da Vinci has been able to continue its journey touring the country, supporting regional partners to run their own edition of the hackathon. This time we explored the north-western state of Niedersachsen, bordering with the North Sea and the Netherlands. The regional organisers - from the Open Science Lab at TIB, the Hannover Kulturzentrum Pavillon and further partners - did an incredible job reaching out to local GLAMs and brought in a record-breaking 45 open datasets from 36 institutions. The datasets were pitched to hackathon participants during a remote 2-day kick-off weekend which was hosted variously in parallel webex sessions, in a wonder.me lounge, and streamed over youtube live. Ideas were pitched, and teams were built, and we now enter into a 12-week long sprint phase with 20 project teams.
10th GLAM conference "Shaping Access!" on COVID and cultural institutions
By Lilli Iliev
On October 29&30, the first all-digital edition of "Shaping Access!" took place, broadcasted from the offices of Wikimedia Deutschland. 25 speakers talked about innovation, copyright, public freedom & data protection in the crisis. For two days, the participants discussed new paths that cultural institutions must take due to the pandemic. The videos of the conference (in German) are online:
Conference day 1, innovation and copyright After a greeting from Abraham Taherivand, digital cultural projects were presented that were created during the months of contact restrictions. Later, the role of Open Data in the cultural sector was discussed, and interested people were able to join in the discussion in thematic focus groups.
Conference day 2, public domain and data protection What is in the public domain must also remain in the digital public domain! This WMDE demand was reaffirmed in the Wikimedia salon "Who owns art?" We also dealt with data protection hurdles in digital cultural projects - and how they can be overcome.
Mapping GLAM in Maharashtra, India
About the mapping report
CIS-A2K published the research report on a study of seven GLAM institutions located in two districts (Pune and Kolhapur) in Maharashtra, with the support of three active Wikimedians. Research was undertaken by Aaryaa Joshi, Dnyanada Gadre-Phadke, Kalyani Kotkar and Subodh Kulkarni; the report has been authored by Subodh Kulkarni with editorial oversight and support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and external review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019–2020. The main objective was to document digitisation efforts, views towards making collections free & open, institutional challenges and opportunities. The methods for the study included desk research to identify major GLAM institutions across the state and their online presence, and data collection from seven key institutions through a survey and field visits to document information related to the history and objectives of institutions, archival management practices, resources and challenges, future digitisation plans and potential collaborative projects. The volunteers also created Wikipedia articles and image galleries in Wikimedia Commons. The analysis of data and discussions lead to set of recommendations for different stakeholders such as volunteers, GLAM institutions, facilitating organisations and Wikimedia affiliates. These include several learnings on the need for awareness of copyright and open licenses, training resources in local languages, streamlined digitisation practices and better collaboration with policy makers to foster collaborative work in the sector.
See also
Gallery
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View of Pune Nagar Wachan Mandir -
Apte Vachan Mandir, Ichalkaranji -
Art gallery at Apte Vachan Mandir -
Music instruments section in Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum -
Mastani Mahal restored at Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum
Bulan Sejarah Indonesia 2.0; Structured data edit-a-thon; Proofreading mini contest
Bulan Sejarah Indonesia 2.0
As part of WikiSejarah campaign, Wikimedia Indonesia held a Wikipedia writing challenge at Indonesian Wikipedia under the name of Bulan Sejarah Indonesia 2.0. This challenge invited Wikipedians of Indonesia to write any articles, mainly focuses on the topic of Indonesian history. This challenge started on October 1 and ended on October 31, 2020, resulting 27 new articles were created by six contestants.
For detailed information who participated and what articles were generated, see this tool.
Bulan Sejarah Indonesia 2.0 is the second version of the same theme in 2017, organized by Wikimedia Indonesia, in collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland.
Structured data edit-a-thon
Wikimedia Nederland and National Museum of World Cultures have been generously publicized plenty of images to Wikimedia Commons related to Indonesia pre- and post-independence. The images are uploaded to Category:NMVW files Indonesian Independence 2020-09 on Wikimedia Commons, in the total of 376 images in September 2020.
To make use of the images, Wikimedia Indonesia organized structured data edit-a-thon inviting Wikimedians of Indonesia to add depicts and caption data to the images by using ISA tool. The edit-a-thon started in September and ended on October 30, 2020.
There were 13 contestants participated, 12,244 contribution were made during the event, and 4,083 edits were made to add/modify caption data. For more detailed statistics, view this infographics made by GLAM Indonesia on Twitter.
Proofreading mini contest
A proofreading mini contest was done in Indonesian Wikisource to proofread Boekoe Peringatan dari Staatsspoor-en Tramwegen di Hindia-Belanda 1875-1925.pdf. The contest started in September to October 2020. Six Wikisource users were participated in the contest, resulting 56 pages were validated. More details is available on this tool.
National History Month: East to West, Dutch libraries and Wikipedia
History Month
October traditionally is the Month for National History in the Netherlands. The subject this year was "East to West", and because of the Dutch history with colonies in the Caribbean and Surinam to the west of the Netherlands, and Indonesia to the east this was an opportunity to develop activities on Wikimedia projects in the context of Month of National History.
With a writing week on the Dutch language Wikipedia we asked people to write articles on Wikipedia, but also to add data on Wikidata, and pictures on Commons. Over 100 articles were expanded or created in the past month, together with their data.
Images donated in the context of Month of History
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Professors, professors and students of the Indological Society -
Building of the Indische Instelling at the Oude Delft 69 in Delft -
Governor palace in Makassar, Celebes. -
Oil painting, 'Tiger Hunt', Raden Saleh -
'Smithy at the first industrial exhibition in Yogyakarta', photographer unknown, 1925
Nationaal Museum voor Wereldculturen
Within the context of Month of History, the Nationaal Museum voor Wereldculturen donated images of approximately 375 photographs and objects from Indonesia in the period 1940-1950, mainly objects and photographs related to the struggle for independence. A large number of photographs show important buildings: Monumen Nasional (Monas, the monument commemorating the struggle for independence) and Istana Negara (former Rijswijk Palace of the Governor General) at Medan Merdeka (Freedom Square, former King's Square) in Jakarta, and wreath laying near monuments (e.g. by Soekarno).
Celebrations of Independence Day have been captured by several photographers. Henk van Rinsum photographed a series of paintings for the Royal Tropical Institute in 1985 for the 40th anniversary of independence along the road to Medan Merdeka. There are also photographs of Istana Bogor - the former Palace in Buitenzorg and now one of the six presidential palaces.
Other photos show important events. At Hotel Majapahit (former Oranje Hotel) in Surabaya the flag incident took place in September 1948 - the hoisting of an Indonesian flag as a resistance against the Netherlands as a colonial ruler. In 1948, delegations discussed the future administrative structure during the Federal Conference for a Federal Indonesia. There are also photographs of Indonesia shortly after the Second World War. Besides the photographs there are a number of objects and drawings of the freedom fighters Diponegoro and Teuku Umar.
A collection of matchbox labels - in Indonesian or Dutch, or with Chinese or Japanese characters - reflects colonial rule, Japanese occupation and struggle for independence.
In addition, NMVW donated footage of three major cities: about 1,125 images of photography and objects from Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bukittinggi. The photographic material of these three cities has been collected from the historical photo collection (from the beginning of photography until 1950) of the National Museum of World Cultures. This photography shows the period before the independence of Indonesia. Photographs from the period 1970-1990 have often been made by Henk van Rinsum, Jaap de Jonge, Boy Lawson, Janneke van Dijk and Paul Romijn. They worked at the photography department of KIT and made trips with the aim of photographing large parts of the world and thus creating an image archive, especially of the big cities.
Stadsarchief Delft
Stadsarchief Delft donated images that have relations with the Indische Instelling (Indian Institution) (1864-1901), an educational institution for future government officials in the Dutch East Indies. It concerns about twenty photographs, of the building, teachers, professors and students, partly from the archive of the Indische Instelling, which is kept in the Stadsarchief.
Dutch libraries and Wikipedia
Libraries and Wikimedia have a common goal: making knowledge available and sharing it with the public. Working together on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata offers opportunities for libraries, librarians and their audiences. That's why OCLC, a global alliance of libraries, and Wikimedia Netherlands are working together to see how we can further support libraries in the Netherlands in this regard.
This video (in Dutch) was created as an introduction about the partnership for an online symposium of the OCLC in November.
West Coast Wikipedian at Large
From 5 September to 26 October 2020 I was a Wikipedian at Large on the remote West Coast region of New Zealand. In September I was based in Hokitika, Greymouth, and Westport, and in October in Ōkārito, Franz Josef, Fox Glacier, Reefton, and Arthur's Pass. The project was largely funded by Development West Coast, with additional support or accommodation supplied by Westland District Library, Grey District Library, and Glacier Country Tourism.The brief was to do the following:
- Working with heritage organisations such as museums and libraries to organise uploads of public-domain photos into Wikimedia Commons.
- Improve articles on iconic West Coast features, places, and people using the resources of non-profits, tourism agencies, and individual tourism operators.
- Running a public Wikipedia event in each location, where people could learn the basics of editing Wikipedia and donating photos to Commons.
- Running training for gallery, library, museum, and archives (GLAM) staff in each location – introducing them to Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata, and helping each develop a Wikimedia strategy for their collections.
- Giving presentations to tourism organisations and operators in each area on improving Wikivoyage, making print media coverage available to Wikipedians, and donating high-quality photos to Commons.
Achievements
I ran over a dozen talks, workshops, and meetups over the six weeks; the Grey District Library has organised two edit-a-thons as a follow-up to these. Seventeen volunteers signed up to assist with the project. Most were working remotely, from Australia, Wellington, Dunedin, and Christchurch and reported their achievements each day. Prizes (donated by Development West Coast and Friends of Waiuta) were given out for the most and best contributions in different areas. Dozens of articles and Wikidata items were created, dozens of articles improved, and numerous Commons categories were cleaned up. For more on the participants and what they achieved, see the Final report on the project.
Over 1000 photos were added to the category Uploads by West Coast Wikipedian at Large in the course of the project. Here are a selection:
- Walking trails
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Cockayne Nature Walk -
Lake Gault track -
Lake Matheson Walk -
Point Elizabeth Walkway -
Canoe Cove Walk
- Stewart Nimmo photos for Tourism West Coast
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Reefton -
Lake Brunner -
Hokitika Gorge -
Tuatara at West Coast Wildlife Centre
- Historic Buildings of Greymouth
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Clock Tower -
Grey Country Chambers -
Dispatch & Garlick -
High Street Barber -
Waitaiki House -
High Street Auto Centre
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- Images from History House Museum
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Amalgamated Association of Reliable Drivers, 1925 -
Greymouth Opera House, 1958 -
The Opera House burning down 9 Feb 1958 -
Union Hotel flooded, c. 1900
Media coverage
In an interview with the Christchurch Press, I mentioned that the Wikipedia coverage of some towns and localities on the West Coast was so incomplete that tourists would be dissuaded from visiting. This led to a TV interview, and my comments were quoted in international reporting of the Hinnosaar et al. 2019 study on the effect of Wikipedia article improvement on visitor numbers. I've subsequently been approached by two NZ tourist organisations wanting to know what they can do to work with Wikipedia.
- Jesse Mulligan interview (4 September 2020). "The West Coast is next on the Wikipedian's mission". RNZ Afternoons (audio, 8′07″).
- Carroll, Joanne (12 September 2020). "NZ tourism's Wikipedia problem: Fox Glacier page dominated by deaths, rural NZ non-existent". Stuff.
- Seven Sharp interview (16 September 2020). " Why does Wikipedia paint such a bad picture of New Zealand’s top towns?". (TV, 4′03″). Best line: "Surely there's more to East Cape than the bridge upgrade of 2017."
- Johnstone, Charlotte (18 September 2020). "How sprucing up your town's Wikipedia page can boost tourism." The Telegraph.
- Sherman, Janna (30 September 2020). "Wikipedia focuses on West Coast articles". Hokitika Guardian. p1–2
- Ledsom, Alex (3 October 2020). "Improving Wikipedia Pages Can Wildly Increase Revenue For Cities". Forbes.
- Mills, Laura (11 November 2020). "50 new Coast pages added to Wikipedia." Otago Daily Times.
The Sámi Languages on wiki
Giellevakkhu, Sámi Language week, in October 2020
Wikimedia Norge marked the Sámi Language week, Giellevakkhu, with different activities. Together with The National Library in Norway and Giellatekno at UiT The Arctic University of Norway we launched a collaboration om Sámi place names. There is a project page for the collaboration here in Norwegian and the press release from The National Library can be read here.
During Giellavakkhu Inari Sámi Wikipedia was launched. Congratulations! We have written about the Inari Sámi Wikipedia project on the Wikimedia Foundation blog, Diff.
The goal of the Sami language week is to raise the status of the Sámi languages, and to increase knowledge of Sámi languages and culture. The Sámi Language Week is a collective volunteer effort to highlight and increase knowledge of the Sámi languages throughout society. Private and public institutions, businesses, organizations and other actors are invited to make Sami languages visible during Giellavakkhu to make sure the Sámi languages are being heard, spoken and used in all areas of society.
Many activities are in our way
We are pleased that even in these difficult times, we manage to maintain a number of activities and improve the accessibility of the cultural heritage of Serbia in various ways.
Wikipedian in residence at the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia
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We signed with the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia a Memorandum of Cooperation in August and we already accomplished great results. The Wikipedian in residence project was implemented during September and October and during which we realized digitized collections of 98 catalogs of Spring and Autumn exhibitions of the Association from 1945 to 1999, which is why adequately presented the artistic scene of Serbia after the World War II. This is just the beginning of the activities and big plans are ahead of us.
The Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS) was founded in 1919 and is the largest art association in Serbia, with about 2,000 members. The goal of the Association is to promote artistic creativity and it is a free and voluntary association of artists. Throughout history, the association has been joined by numerous artists who have left a deep mark on the art and culture of the world like Uroš Predić, Đoka Jovanović, Simeon Roksandić, Milan Milovanović, and numerous others.
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Catalog of the 1st exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (1945) -
Catalog of the 59th exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (1977) -
Catalog of the Autumn Exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (1997) -
Catalog of the Spring exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (1992)
Our first six-month Wikipedian in residence project is at Belgrade City Library
A six-month Wikipedian in residence at Belgrade City Library project has begun. So far, 30 have been written articles, while 405 files was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. This is the first six-month internship project Wikimedia Serbia will cooperate with this cooperation as well to further strengthen the perennial cooperation with Belgrade City Library. Cooperation with Belgrade City Library has been at a high level for several years due to the Wiki Librarian project and the #1Lib1Ref editing campaign. Due to the very good cooperation and the multitude of content they have, to the satisfaction of both parties, the internship was set at six months.
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Aleksa Šantić -
Ilija Kolarac -
Jovan Jovanović Zmaj -
Katarina Ivanović
Great results in Wiki editathons within the Wiki Librarian project
The first editathon took place from 9th to 18th September on the topic of Serbian humorous-satirical periodicals of the 19th and 20th centuries. This activity achieved great results and 15 Wikipedians participated, 71 new articles are written, 5 articles are supplemented significantly and 430 files are uploaded.
The second editathon took place from 19th to 26th October and the topic was My street. Librarians were extremely diligent during this period and wrote as many as 64 articles, uploaded 250 files to Wikimedia Commons, while 12 of them participated.
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The front page of Iskra magazine -
Recycling bicycle for cans in Belgrade -
The street of Stepa Stepanović
Participation in the CEE Online Meeting 2020
This year we were active at the CEE online conference and enjoyed the lectures of our colleagues from the region.
The first session was Opportunities for 1Lib1Ref in CEE where the strategy for improving the #1Lib1Ref campaign with Felix Nartey from The Wikimedia Foundation was presented. This session announced activities to increase the number of branches participating in this campaign, presented the results of the May campaign in Africa, but also learned lessons on how to lead this campaign and achieve great results. Through his experience, Felix presented how the activities related to this campaign in Africa have significantly improved during this year, and we have pointed out tips&tricks through examples from previous years, with which we have been at the very top of Wiki communities so far.
In the second session, we presented the ways in which GLAM fights during the COVID-19 crisis. Through our examples, we have tried to present that activities, despite very challenging times, are possible and that now, when we are forced to stay at home, online activities are more important than ever. We presented the results of our online activities, the ways we organized it, the advantages and disadvantages of such events.
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Presentation of Opportunities for 1Lib1Ref in CEE -
Video of Opportunities for 1Lib1Ref in CEE
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Presentation of How did GLAM survive COVID-19 and what did we learn -
Video of How did GLAM survive Covid-19 and what did we learn?
#StaySafe
Librarians learn about Wikidata; More Swedish literature on Wikidata; Online Edit-a-thon Dalarna; Applications to the Swedish Innovation Agency; Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete; Librarians and Projekt HBTQI; GLAM Statistical Tool
Librarians learn about Wikidata
As part of our collaboration with the National Library of Sweden, in October Wikimedia Sverige organized a webinar about Wikidata for librarians and others working in the library and information science field. The National Library reached out to its network to inform about the webinar, resulting in over 50 participants from all over the country, from Piteå in the north to Ystad in the south. We had participants from all parts of the library world, from National Library catalogers curious about the development in the linked open data landscape, to university librarians interested in scientometrics, to public librarians who want to share their knowledge about the Wikimedia projects with the patrons.
The main reason why we organized the webinar was that while there is a great interest in and curiosity about Wikidata in the library sector, there had been a lack of comprehensive information material in Swedish. That's why we have shared the video presentations created for the webinars on Wikimedia Commons. The three presentations cover the topics: A basic introduction to Wikidata, Bibliographic metadata on Wikidata (aimed specifically at librarians) and An introduction to SPARQL.
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Part 1: An introduction to Wikidata.
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Part 2: Bibliographic metadata on Wikidata.
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Part 3: An introduction to SPARQL.
More Swedish literature on Wikidata
Wikimedia Sverige has started a collaboration with the Swedish Literature Bank, a non-profit organisation that makes older Swedish literature available to everyone as both scans and e-books. Our focus right now is increasing their visibility on Wikidata by adding the Litteraturbanken edition property to items, as well as creating new items and filling them with openly licensed data from the National Library of Sweden's catalog. The edition property had only been used in a handful of items, but now there are over 1,200 items that contain not only links to their entries in the Swedish Literature Bank, but also direct links to the e-pub versions – so that you can download them directly!
Online Edit-a-thon Dalarna
As a result of the uploads of music from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency to Wikimedia Commons, there have been edit-a-thons arranged. Dalarna is a province that is next to Hälsingland and there can often be friendly competition neighbors between. For Hälsingland, there was already an article about their local folk music, so now it was time to write a similar one for Dalarna.
The article Folk music from Dalarna was written in an online edit-a-thon and is now published! So now there are two detailed articles about folk music in the Swedish provinces so the musicians that are mentioned here are probably the best in Sweden! Let’s see if there are more provinces that can write about the local folk music and musicians!
Applications to the Swedish Innovation Agency
A few months ago we at Wikimedia Sverige, together with GLAM partners, submitted two project applications to the Swedish Innovation Agency (Vinnova). Both projects focus on how Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons can function as crowdsourcing platforms where GLAMs can collaborate with volunteers - or citizen scientists if you will. Sadly, neither application was selected for a grant. Even so, the applications as such may be of interest to the community and so we've decided to share them - perhaps they can be reworked and repurposed for use in other bids for funding.
Kulturhistoria som gymnasiearbete
In September, we started the fifth year of Cultural heritage as Secondary school project. It is a collaboration between the Nordic Museum, Wikimedia Sverige and two participating schools from Skellefteå and Stockholm. Students write or expand articles on different aspects of the Swedish cultural heritage from approximately 1850-1930. This year, we look forward to seeing articles about a variety of topics such as the Swedish history of jazz, personal hygiene and the first Swedish union. Just over 30 participants are engaged this year, and the aim is to publish the contributions in the beginning of 2021.
Librarians and Projekt HBTQI
At the start of October, the librarians who had started Projekt HBTQI together with some volunteers organized a weekly contest on the theme and also hosted an online edit-a-thon. 12 participants created or improved more than 50 articles about prominent members of the LGBTQ community, rights in different parts of the world, organizations and other topics.
GLAM Statistical Tool
Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia Israel has in collaboration continued with localization and development of the GLAM Statistical Tool created by Wikimedia Switzerland (and reported here earlier). The localization will both allow RTL-languages and make it easier to add more languages to the user interface, and the development will make sure other GLAM institutions can be added to the tool and have an easier way for them to find external links from articles and references to their own platforms.
Enamels of the World
Khalili Collections
The Khalili Collections partnership got its first Good Article this month- Khalili Collection of Japanese Art passed GA and is the first article about a private collection to get this status. The biography of Basque metalworker Plácido Zuloaga has been put up for GA review. We also had our first Featured Picture of the Day on English Wikipedia: A Composite Imaginary Landscape of Japan was on the front page on 1 November.
The Khalili Collections have shared catalogue data and high-resolution images relating to 400 items from six of the eight Khalili Collections. This is the first installment in a set that will eventually reach about 1,000. A few dozen images are of objects too recent to be eligible for Commons, a few are duplicates of those already uploaded, and some are higher-resolution versions. For example, this image has gone from half a megapixel to about 10 megapixels. I am working through the set creating data sets on Wikidata and then bulk uploads with Pattypan. Categorising the images on Commons is the last step: a complex one since some of the collections are very diverse in terms of the objects and artists included. Help is appreciated! The first image set is from the Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World and includes 104 enamels from China, Japan, Russia, Europe, Iran, India and Turkey. 110 items have been created on Wikidata to cover these objects and some that are too recent for their image to be hosted on Commons. The article about the enamels collection passed Did You Know review: the 12th DYK'ed article to come out of this project. While writing this article, I also expanded the vitreous enamel article with a section on Japanese enamels.
Adding the catalogue data to Wikidata has enabled queries including this Histropedia timeline and this map of origin of the enamels.
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Garniture from a Vanderbilt house in New York. Made in Paris, circa 1880 -
Dish presented to Émile Loubet by the residents of Tsarskoye Selo, 1902 -
Hookah cup, Iran, circa 1860 -
Cabinet holding 32 enamel panels, Tokyo, circa 1895 -
Panel from a set of eight bearing poems by Yu Minzhong
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American Archive of Public Broadcasting; Smithsonian Women in Finance Edit-a-thon; Black Lunch Table; San Diego/October 2020; WikiWednesday Salon
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Wikimedia DC held a workship, American Archive of Public Broadcasting: 2020
Smithsonian Women in Finance Edit-a-thon
The Smithsonian Institution, and Wikimedia DC held a workshop, Smithsonian Women in Finance Edit-a-thon
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DC Women in Finance slides
Black Lunch Table
Black Lunch Table held several workshops, at UMBC Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts, Vancouver Art Book Fair, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Pennsylvania College of Art & Design
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Bingo -
Black Lunch Table - Wikidata Onboarding
San Diego/October 2020
Wikimedians in San Diego held a zoom call, San Diego/October 2020
WikiWednesday Salon
Wikimedia NYC held a wikisalon, NYC/October 2020
November's GLAM events
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