GLAM/Newsletter/January 2015/Single

This Month in GLAM – Volume V, Issue I, January 2015

Belgium report • Czech Republic report • France report • Germany report • Italy report • Netherlands report • Spain report • Sweden report • UK report • USA report • Open Access report • Catalan areas report • Calendar

SOIMA 2015; Wiki Loves Art; European Commission; Mons 2015; Mundaneum; FOSDEM

By Romaine & M0tty

SOIMA 2015

In September Wikimedia Belgium is the partner in the international conference of SOIMA 2015, organised in Brussels. SOIMA 2015: Unlocking Sound and Image Heritage is an international conference on ensuring a safe and creative future for sound and image heritage. In the days before the conference workshops are organized.

Wiki Loves Art

In January and February we are discussing and preparing the organisation of Wiki Loves Art in Belgium. Already multiple partners in the field of open data and cultural institutions have indicated they are willing to organise the project with us. The plan at this moment is to organise the contest in February 2016, while we like to start the project in March to begin with contacting cultural institutions and other organisations that are possible interested in participation.

European Commission

On 19 January we had organised a workshop for the representatives of the European Commission. We explained how Wikipedia is organised and how should be dealt with issues in Wikipedia articles. The project will continue in coming months.

Mons2015 & Mundaneum

On 14 January we had organised a discovering workshop for the staff of Mons 2015 and the Mundaneum. Following this, Mons 2015 decided to organize two publics wikipedia workshops per month throughout the year 2015. For its part, the Mundaneum, has upload many pictures from his collections (Category:Mundaneum).

FOSDEM

On 31 January and 1 February Wikimedia was present with a professional stand at FOSDEM, the yearly Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting in Brussels. The stand was organised by Wikimedia Belgium and the Wikimedia Shop provided us materials to be used at our stand, including stickers, pens, flyers and buttons. Wikimedia Belgium and Wikimedia Deutschland provided also some materials. Participants at the conference who Twittered about the Wikimedia Shop or provided some proof of being an editor of Wikipedia/Wikimedia, got a free Wikimedia T-shirt. Editors could also choose a water bottle or a hoodie.

At the stand we got, besides the questions about Wikipedia and Wikimedia, a lot of questions about Wikidata and MediaWiki. At the conference software developers from MediaWiki and Wikidata were present, and also gave some talks about these subjects. The focus of the stand was this yearly mainly on Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Next year we like to expand this also with more materials related to MediaWiki and Wikidata, as that would attract more attention to the software in what most people here have interest in.

Even while the gendergap at FOSDEM is larger than in the Wikimedia movement, we had the chance to speak with a lot of female Wikipedia contributors. The impression I got from these conversations and my experiences with organising writing sessions is, that to attract female contributors like

in-person workshops/edit-a-thons to have a social interaction.
social software on-wiki to enable users easily to form groups so they are not feeling alone, but easily can work together with other users in a group. Groups will have a central discussion page, there are recent changes to be able to see the activities of other group members, being able to create tasks, having a wish list, and so on.

At FOSDEM Quim Gil and Andre Klapper had a talk with the subject Wikimedia adopts Phabricator, deprecates seven infrastructure tools - First hand experiences from a big free software project on a complex migration. (link)

Links:

Czech GLAM discusses why institutions are afraid to release their media

By Vojtěch Dostál

While several small Czech museums and other institutions took a brave step to release their media (such as photographs) under a free license, larger institutions such as nationwide museums are usually afraid. In a discussion with a manager of one of these institutions, we were told that he had a notion that "their museum was forbidden to do it". We decided we need to look deeper into it.

In an inquiry to the Parliament Institute, we asked if there is a legislation preventing institutions from releasing their content under a free license. The official reply states that there is, of course, the Copyright Law. The reply goes on to say that, essentially, 70 years after death of the author, there is no other hindrance to the release of the works owned by the institutions. Before stating that, the author of the official report had gone through several laws which relate to museums, galleries and other institutions.

On 10th January 2015, we discussed these promising news in the Wikimedia Czech Republic's office. Together with our friends from Creative Commons Czech Republic, we thought about it and planned for future strategies. While we know that no legal opinion is a definitive truth and we still need to look into the matter, we now have a strong argument for museum managers who hesitate to start a collaboration with Wikimedia.

Celebrating public domain and more

By Anne-Laure WMFr

A great "Festival du domaine public" !

3 editathons, 4 bookscanner demo sessions, 2 photo hunts, 2 partnerships, various conferences ...The Public Domain Festival was highly productive thanks to the involvment of Wikimedians, WMFR volunteers & staff. Celebrating new works entering public domain through many activities, it was also an opportunity to have art students design the whole visual identity of the event, and raise awareness about public domain as a great source of creation and inspiration.

Wikipedia illustration workshop at the Toulouse Municipal Archives

A workshop was run with the staff of the Toulouse Municipal Archives. They were trained to illustrate Wikipedia articles by a volunteer. The partner had done a lot of preparatory work prior to the workshop: institutional communication relayed by the city council, special Saturday opening, special installation of 10 terminals + overhead projector and creation of temporary accounts, guided tours of the reserves... the workshop went well and was attended by people from different backgrounds: archivists, librarians, etc. The workshop leader used a 4-stage methodology: photo insertion demonstration, exercice where you “simply” had to copy/paste the image from Commons to Wikipedia; second exercise where you had to search for or insert an image (from a selection of images chosen for their relevance) and write the caption yourself; autonomous use of the Commons category An aide-memoire had been organized to support this.

Outreach session with the staff of the Musée des Arts et Metiers

The Musée des Arts et Métiers, a partner to the 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest and host for the prize award ceremony, and Wikimédia France organized a half-day session for its different audiences to raise awareness of the work of Wikimedia France and the free dissemination of knowledge. Two of Wikimedia France’s current partners, the Musée National du Moyen-Âge and Sèvres-Cité de la Céramique, travelled to the event to share with their peers the actions they have carried out with the association. Other institutions also attended, including the Musée du Quai Branly, ICOM (International Council of Museums), and CLIC France (Club Innovation et Culture) with a view to discussing future collaboration. The session was led and prepared by volunteers and an employee from WMFR, working with the Museum’s Audiences and Communication department, to answer the questions put by representatives of the Museum’s different professions and encourage them to move towards a lasting global partnership. A questionnaire was handed out to those present – to assess the relevance of the session content, their level of knowledge and understanding of the work of the association, the most useful talks, etc.

GLAM on Tour in Wuppertal

By Lilli Iliev (WMDE)

30 participant event during impressionist art exhibition at Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal

The project GLAM on Tour, which aims to initiate cooperations between GLAM volunteers and cultural heritage institutions, dropped anchor in the city of Wuppertal from January 29 to february 1. The well known and prestigious Von der Heydt-Museum served as a host institution for 30 Wikipedia authors from January 29 to February 1, during the exhibition "Camille Pissarro - The father of impressionism". During an editathon in the art library of the museum, articles around the institution, impressionism and works of artists were created or extended. The museum also provided free tours for the exhibition, to learn more about the historic context of pissarro and his work.

Part of the event, as always, was a Wikipedia workshop for interested newbies around the institution. After an introduction, a vivid discussion about the conditions for cooperations between cultural institutions and Wikipedia. This question also served as the central topic at the "Wikipedian Salon", a regular event for discussing relevant issues of the Wikiverse, which took place in Wuppertal this time. The curator of the museum, a cultural editor and Wikipedia authors who write about art a lot discussed about perspectives, threats and advantages of a close collaboration between museums and Wikimedia projects. In the end, all the participants agreed that all the involved players can benefit from a further cooperation. Find more information from a participants perpective on the event in the WMDE blogpost (in german).

1600 usages for BEIC images in 165 wikis

By Federico Leva

Partnership with European Library of Information and Culture continues

The partnership between Wikimedia Italia and BEIC was renewed for 6 months (more in Italian). This piece contains excerpts from the January report (in Italian).

In the first half of the month, we completed the upload of ~70 new selected images, with simple free software scripts which we made on purpose and which integrate with existing tools. We then proceeded to verify what need there is for such illustrations, by surveying existing Wikimedia projects pages and by adding images where images were lacking or of inferior quality (e.g. upgrade from JPG to raw TIFF).

The outcome is that the ~120 files we uploaded so far were useful, and are now used, over 1600 times across 165 Wikimedia projects; almost all files are used on at least 2. In the process, we performed 4000+ edits across 170+ wikis.

The interpretation is that, among the Wikimedia projects pages on authors and works covered by BEIC, many have few or no illustrations, or contain images in very low resolution, sometimes uploaded over ten years ago. Therefore, the BEIC collections can provide a significant benefit, even in topics which may be taken for granted and sufficiently covered (like Dante Alighieri). The impact is guaranteed when we upload TIFF images (rarely available online) or create new articles (where we can provide images and bibliographic information).

Two training sessions were held with BEIC employees, in preparation for their confidence and editing to get up to speed, especially on Wikipedia and Wikisource.

Europeana Sounds edit-a-thon; Symposium & Erasmus Prize; Honorary doctorate for Wikipedia; New years drink

By Harrrij & Romaine

Europeana Sounds edit-a-thon

On January the 10th the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision organised the very first Europeana Sounds edit-a-thon. This event was organised in collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland and Xeno-canto, the online community for on collecting all existing bird sounds. The edit-a-thon aimed to allow participants to share ornithological knowledge and to upload bird sounds to relevant articles on Wikipedia.

Seven voluntary participants joined the five organisers to edit and expand bird related Wikipedia articles in both Dutch and English. The voluntary participants included a psychologist, a local politician, and a former archivist, all united by their same enthusiasm for birds. One participant is the author of several books about the sound of birds - some of which are accompanied by a CD, to help readers recognise the different bird song recordings.

A list of relevant and re-useable sources was provided during the edit-a-thon. The participants were invited to engage with the Sound and Vision’s wonderful audio and video collection, a huge sound collection provided by Xeno-canto, and vivid images from the National Library of the Netherlands. Thanks to these combined resources, the participants had access to more than 750 sounds, over 500 videos and 42 images in order to enrich relevant Wikipedia articles. This was in addition to using their knowledge to update and expand the written aspects of the articles. Throughout the day, participants were provided with a number of workshops in order to inspire them and to provide the proper tools for working on Wikipedia.

The day started with a short presentation by Maarten Brinkerink on Europeana Sounds and Sound and Vision’s role in the project. Maarten illustrated why events like this are held and emphasised the value of sharing knowledge and cultural heritage on platforms such as Wikipedia. This was followed by a presentation from Sander Pieterse, one of the board members of Xeno-canto and who also works for the Naturalis Biodiversity Center. He told the participants more about online resources for biology and natural history, and how to use them as sources on Wikipedia. Sander presented a variety of online platforms that can be used as resources for refining articles Wikipedia, and enriching written information about birds and bird sounds with correct species names and classifications.

To kick-start the actual editing process, Sebastiaan ter Burg, gave a small workshop about writing on Wikipedia. Sebastiaan also provided instructions on how to reuse audio recordings within an article on Wikipedia (for illustrative purposes). Reusing audio recordings in this way (as part of a Wikipedia article about a specific bird species for instance), these recordings themselves are contextualised in a meaningful (and hence valuable) way, thus achieving one of the fundamental aims of the Europeana Sounds edit-a-thons.

The day was not only fun and informative, but also very productive. The 12 participants made 133 edits to Wikipedia articles, uploaded 53 bird sounds were added to relevant articles and shared 20 additional sounds on Wikimedia Commons. Furthermore, there was an interesting discussion on using your own published material as a resource for updating Wikipedia.

Bird fanatics, and other people interested in birds, who use Wikipedia as a source for information can now listen to the sounds of the Common redpoll, Short-eared owl, Common crane, Eurasian skylark, Chilean flamingo and many other birds that are described in Dutch Wikipedia articles. Extra information and resources where added to several articles, like the Dutch article on the Brambling.

The participants were enthusiastic about the edit-a-thon and appreciated the fact that they learned how to use Wikipedia so they can continue writing about birds and other subjects. After the edit-a-thon, four of the seven participants remained active on Wikipedia.

Links:

Symposium & Erasmus Prize

At 15 January 2015 a symposium with the title Wikipedia as a research tool was organised at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. One of the speakers who gave a presentation was Jimmy Wales.

This day was a special day for the Wikipedia community, also because at 15 January 2001 Wikipedia was founded.

At the symposium the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation announced that the 2015 winner of the Erasmus Prize is the Wikipedia community.

Wikipedia receives the prize because it has promoted the dissemination of knowledge through a comprehensive and universally accessible encyclopaedia. To achieve that, the initiators of Wikipedia have designed a new and effective democratic platform. The prize specifically recognises Wikipedia as a community — a shared project that involves tens of thousands of volunteers around the world who help shape this initiative.

By distributing knowledge to places where it was previously unavailable, Wikipedia also plays an important role in countries where neutrality and open information are not taken for granted. With its worldwide reach and social impact, Wikipedia does justice to the idea of a single yet diverse world. It is a digital reference work available in various languages, undergoing permanent development. Through its open character, Wikipedia highlights how sources of knowledge are not neutral and must always be weighed. With its critical attention to text, sources and the expansion of knowledge, Wikipedia reflects the ideas of Erasmus, the world citizen after whom the prize is named.

— Press release Praemium Erasmianum Foundation

After the symposium and the announcement if the Erasmus Prize, the Dutch community had organised a meeting. Afterwards Jimmy Wales appeared in a live Dutch talk show.

More information:

Announcement of the Erasmus Prize
Panel
The public got the opportunity to ask questions

Honorary doctorate for Wikipedia

At 16 January 2015 Jimmy Wales received a honorary doctorate from Maastricht University during the Dies Natalis. A honorary doctorate can only be received by an individual, but symbolical the whole Wikipedia community is honoured by the doctorate.

In 2014 community members had organised several workshops for students at the Maastricht University.

Photos of the Dies Natalis

Arrival at the Dies Natalis
Dies Natalis
Jimmy receives honorary doctorate
From the Dies Natalis to the drink afterwards
Who knows Latin?
A drink afterwards

New years drink

At 17 January 2015 Wikimedia Netherlands organised at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision a new years drink. After some talks, the participants got a tour through the iconic building.

Photos of the day

One of the 6 guided tours through the building
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Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon; Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 Awards ceremony; Benito Prieto Coussent

By Millars & Rodelar

Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon

On Saturday, January 24th, 2015, took place in Madrid an edit-a-thon on fashion, fashion world personalities, Spanish designers, Madrid Fashion Week Pasarela Cibeles, clothing arquitecture and Spanish regional costumes, promoted by Europeana Fashion in collaboration with the Museum del Traje, DIMAD and Wikimedia España. 16 new articles were created, 51kb added (38% more of content than existed previously) and 132 edits done in 20 articles. About 20 editors participated and 6 wikimedians worked as volunteers.

Initial talk
One of the participants
Group photo

Editatón Europeana Fashion, coordination page on Spanish Wikipedia. Stats can be found there.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 Awards ceremony

On Saturday, January 10th, 2015, Wikimedia España, with the collaboration of Paradores de Turismo, celebrated the Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 Awards ceremony. Paradores offered one of his hotels, the one in Alcalá de Henares (near Madrid), to celebrate the event. The winners of the top prizes in the contest attended, besides several volunteers of WMES. After the awards ceremony, Diego Delso did a short talk about Wikimedia Commons.

First prize
Second prize
Third prize
Paradores prize
Group photo

Benito Prieto Coussent

The first days of January, and through the mediation of Wikimedia España, Benito Prieto Coussent Foundation freed 31 paintings under a CC-BY-SA-3.0-es license. Benito Prieto Coussent paintings in Wikimedia Commons.

Europeana; Working Life Museums

By Jan Ainali & Axel Pettersson

Ingestion to Europeana

As a part of the Då och Nu competition, one task was to ingest the images into Europeana. This was completed last year and reported earlier. However it turned out to reuse that script to also ingest all images from the Swedish Wiki Loves Monuments competitions. Now that have been done and over 14 000 images in Commons are now also searchable through Europeana. The image sets of the different competitions are available here:

Working life museums workshops

In January two workshops to volunteers from Working life museums were held. The first one in Kristianstad with 14 participants and the second one in Trollhättan with six eager students showing up. The aim is to get volunteers involved in different small museums to participate with both their knowledge and also with images and other material they have in their archives. Through the cooperation with the Council of Working Life Museums we have found more then new editors, they have also been a great partner in Wiki Loves Monuments by providing both lists with museums and prices for the contest.

Armenian Genocide; Diversity in Film; Residency Hat-Trick

By Jonathan Cardy (WereSpielChequers), Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing), Ally Crockford (ACrockford), Sara Thomas (lirazelf) & John Byrne (Johnbod/Wiki CRUK John)

Royal Society of Chemistry

Andy Mabbett's residency at the Royal Society of Chemistry is ongoing.

Sixty-one Royal Society of Chemistry staff received training in editing Wikipedia (and in avoiding CoI issues). Feedback was very positive. Thirty-six new articles were created during the training sessions, and a similar number of others were improved.

Andy spoke about ORCID in Wikipedia, at the Jisc-ARMA ORCID Pilot Final Project meeting, wearing two hats - he is also Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID.

The first editors granted free RSC Gold access - including some from non-English Wikipedias - received their log-in details. More slots are still available.

See the project diary and the blog (aimed at non-Wikipedians) for other news.

Thinktank

In addition to his work at the Royal Society of Chemistry and ORCID, Andy Mabbett became the Wikipedian in Residence at Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum, part of Birmingham Museums Trust. See the project page at en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Thinktank. An editathon is planned for 7 March.

BFI

The BFI and Wikimedia UK hosted an editathon on 26 January, and the BFI then blogged it

Targetted photo requests

After receiving a request from an editor who was interested in memorials of the Armenian genocide and wanted a photo of the memorial in London; Chris McKenna took some photos of it:

Scotland

January saw the launch of the second Wikimedian in Residence programme in Scotland, as Sara Thomas (User:lizarelf) officially took up the post with Museums Galleries Scotland on 26 January. The post begins with a four-month secondment to Glasgow Museums, where the post will be used as a kick-start to generate curators' enthusaism and understanding, with a view to developing further work in future. The residency will begin by looking at the collections surrounding the Kelvin Hall project. In addition to working with MGS and Glasgow Museums, the resident will be helping to support the growing ScotWiki community, providing assistance at volunteer-organised events around Scotland like a forthcoming editathon for students and staff at Edinburgh Napier University on 4 March.

The resident would be interested in anyone who might be interested in becoming involved, and invites you to leave a note on the project page.

Wales

On the 19th of January the National Library of Wales and Wikimedia UK were delighted to announce the appointment of Jason Evans (User:Jason.nlw) as the second Wikipedian in Residence in Wales. Jason's first language and most of his work is Welsh; he has worked at the National Museum for nearly 10 years and is a keen genealogist.

The NLW's website announced: 'Today, the National Library of Wales celebrates Wikipedia’s fourteenth birthday by announcing the appointment of a Wikipedian in Residence in partnership with Wikimedia UK. The post will last a year and aims to establish a sustainable relationship between the Library and Wikipedia. The Wikipedian will look at new ways of engaging with users and will organise activities such as ‘editathons’ to assist Library staff and users to contribute to Wikipedia. Jason will also work closely with staff throughout the Library to identify materials from the Library’s collections that can be contributed to the Welsh and English versions of Wikipedia in order to raise awareness of Wales and its people.'

To date the NLW have uploaded nearly 4,600 images on Commons and won the GLAM of the Year Award in 2013. The Welsh language Wicipedia Cymraeg is the most popular Welsh language website, with nearly 3 million hits every month, making it more than ten times as popular as the BBC Wales website.

This post follows the appointment of Marc Haynes, the Wikipedian at the Coleg Cymraeg, (the "National Welsh College", coordinating Welsh-medium teaching at universities). What a wonderful way to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday!

Yorkshire

Some of the latest uploads from Shandy Hall
An original 'Literary Map of Yorkshire' by JL Carr
A panel from Martin Rowson's graphic novel version of Tristram Shandy
One of John Lawrence's woodcut illustrations from the Folio Society edition of Tristram Shandy
Writer Jonathan Meades reading on Laurence Sterne's grave

Lots of great progress in Yorkshire: a training session at the University of Northumbria, meetings with Rotherham Museum services, Malton Museum and the Hepworth Wakefield. Plus, a second image donation from the Laurence Sterne Trust and a first from Harrogate Museums and Arts.

The training session with students from Northumbria's departments of English and Heritage Studies was run in conjunction with curators from Shandy Hall and focused on material related to Laurence Sterne. The session led to a second image donation from the Laurence Sterne Trust (Shandy Hall) including copies of specially commissioned recent artworks. This means Commons now has images by cartoonist Martin Rowson, illustrator John Lawrence and JL Carr.

The first donation from Harrogate Museums and Arts highlights their fantastic Egyptology collections and includes their unique Anubis mask, a sarcophagus and other rare items. This was a fantastic victory for a local authority museum that struggles with bureaucracy and opening up its collections online in particular.

The first upload from Harrogate Museums
Amenophis III Blue Glazed lion hunt Scarab
Granite headrest for a mummy
The Harrogate Anubis Mask
Wooden cobra figurine
Sarcophagus of a priest from Thebes

Meetings held with Rotherham Museums Services and Malton Museums will hopefully lead to image donations and training in the near future with their collections covering Romano-British archaeology, the history of the York and Lancaster Regiment and an array of other topics.

Finally, the Hepworth Wakefield will be hosting an event for the Art+Feminism global edit-a-thon on March 8th. I (Pat Hadley) will be running some training on the day and we hope to involve other museums in the region whose collections or expertise cover the topic. Experienced Wikipedians are more than welcome and can find out more here: Wikipedia:Meetup/Wakefield/ArtandFeminism/HepworthWakefield

Cancer Research UK

After a 2 month extension, my term finishes in mid-February, so I've been finishing various things. In particular helping to embed Wiki collaboration into normal working practices at CRUK. For example the latest additions to the highly successful medical diagrams uploaded to Commons were done by the department concerned with me only being told about it later, which is great! Much puzzlement as to how to format animation files for upload to Commons, which we finally cracked on Feb 2, with these (for some browsers anyway). Some of the earlier images have had their legends translated into German & are used on the German Wikipedia.

The Pancreatic cancer FAC finally succeeded, after a very busy nomination process - altogether about 15 editors were involved, as well as internal and external CRUK experts giving me review comments.

I spent a lot of the month doing 30 research interviews, asking members of the public to find out about Pancreatic cancer (our new FA subject) on the internet while I watched and recorded their screen, and then interviewed them afterwards, while the screen recording was replayed. Fascinating, and AFAIK a novel approach to Wiki research, giving very good results I thought. If they didn't look at Wikipedia "naturally" (and most didn't), they were asked to look at it at the end of the session. I hope to be able to present preliminary results at Den Haag in April, and then publish at some point in the future. Dr Henry Potts aka User:Bondegezou has been super-helpful, providing expertise and a neutral location for the interviews at UCL's Farr Institute of Health Informatics.

Philadelphia & New York

Wikipedia in Philadelphia (and Ocean City, MD!)

By Mary Mark Ockerbloom

GLAM Cafés for 2015

Philadelphia's GLAM Cafés, for Wikipedians and others interested in digital humanities and GLAM, are continuing in 2015 on a rotating basis at the University of Pennsylvania, the Library Company, Temple University, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. The schedule indicates where and when events will occur. Come to the next meeting, on Tuesday February 10 at Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, and edit articles about small museums! In March, bring your favorite #ArtAndFeminism project.

Wiki Loves Small Museums

On Sunday, February 15, 2015, Wikipedians from Philadelphia, D.C., New York and Delaware will converge on the Small Museum Association (SMA) Conference in Ocean City, MD, for the Wiki Loves Small Museums Workshop at the Small Museum Association Conference. After an introduction by Wikipedian Abram Fox, volunteers with scanners, computers and flash sticks will upload images brought by attendees. Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Wikipedian in Residence at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, has organized the event, and worked with the OTRS noticeboard to develop procedures for uploading to "Wiki Loves Small Museums 2015" on Wikimedia Commons. We would like to thank Wikimedia D.C. for their support of volunteers at this event. If you can't come to Ocean City, you can still upload images you've taken of your own local small museums, and improve or create pages about Small Museum attendees.

ArtAndFeminism Events

Planning is underway at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for an #ArtAndFeminism event, tentatively scheduled for Saturday, February 28, 2015. Watch the Philadelphia Meetup listings for more information. Last year's event at UArts was wonderful: organizers and library staff did a terrific job of keeping everyone supplied with resources.

January New York City Wikipedia Update

By Dorothy Howard

#Black Lives Matter Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

See: Wikipedia:Black WikiHistory Month
On Saturday February 7th, a #BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was held at the NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem with the purpose of adding Black History into Wikipedia. Other #BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-thons were also held at SUNY Purchase College Library, and the Nashville Public Library, with two other events being planned in D.C. for the Month of March at Howard University and at the NPR headquarters. The Schomburg’s event in New York was co-hosted with: The New York Public Library, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, Wireless Harlem, and the West Harlem Art Fund. On the day of, a training for beginners was held early in the day, followed by about five hours of group editing, and a concluding reception for attendees. Attendance reached over 50 people, with about 1/3 of this number being experienced Wikipedians that had volunteered to help out and floated around the room offering support. Articles created on that day include: Eliza Healy, Harlem Book Fair, Lawrence Benjamin Brown, and Greater Bethel AME Church (Harlem). This event also generated a buzz, with significant press coverage, including the following:

Cassano, Jay. "Black History Matters so why is Wikipedia Missing so Much of it." FastCompany. January 29, 2015.
Solis, Gustavo. "Schomburg Center Hosts Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon for Articles on Black Culture." DNAInfo. January 30, 2015.
Gebreyes, Rahel. "Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon Reinforces The Value Of Digitizing Black History," Huffington Post Blackvoices. February 2, 2015.
Lewis, Taylor. "Wikipedia Is Getting a Lesson in Black History." Essence.com
Mccalister, Jared. "BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2015 : New York celebrates African-American culture and heritage with an abundance of events." NYDaily News. February 05, 2015.
Murphy, Carla. Can ‘Black Wikipedia’ Take Off Like ‘Black Twitter’?. Colorlines. February 14, 2015.

The same weekend, another Black History Month Wikipedia events took place in Brooklyn, with AfroCROWD (Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia) Kickoff Edit-a-thons on Saturday February 7th and Sunday February 8th. The event was staffed by members of Wikimedia NYC.

Art+Feminism Campaign

The Art+Feminism Campaign, based in New York, is gearing up for its main coordinated effort on the weekend of International Women's Day, March 7th and March 8th. In New York, at least two events are being planned, which include the Main event at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Education and Research Building at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, and a simultaneous event at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. For more information about the campaign, and its some 36 satellite events, see:Art+Feminism Campaign.

Metropolitan New York Library Council

METRO's part-time, Wikipedian-in-Residence, Dorothy Howard completed her 6-month WMF PEG Grant on January 12th: Grants:PEG/Metro/Institutional Growth and Community Fellow. She will be back down to a 2-day schedule at METRO and will continue working in an outreach and support capacity to New York libraries, archives, and other institutions interested in partnering with Wikipedia.

On January 12, 2015, METRO hosted its final Pt. 3/3 webcast "Reference and Citation on Wikipedia," with guests Jake Orlowitz of the Wikipedia Library; Max Klein of WikiProject Open Acess; and Andy Mabbett of ORCID.

Wikidata for research: proposal submitted; Open Access Media Importer: featured media

By Daniel Mietchen

Wikidata for research: H2020 proposal submitted

On January 14, the H2020 proposal "Wikidata for research" was submitted to the European Commission. As outlined in the December's Special story, it was drafted in the open and has a strong GLAM component. In particular, Task 4.5 (coordinated by Europeana, with contributions from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin) is specifically about "Wikidata for cultural heritage".

The proposal served as a seed for the new WikiProject Wikidata for research, whose aim it is to stimulate interaction between the Wikidata and research communities. In February, Wikidata for research meetups will take place at EuropeanaTech in Paris and at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin to plan followup activities, for which further GLAM participation is welcome.

Submitted version

Title: Enabling Open Science: Wikidata for Research (available via ZENODO: doi:10.5281/zenodo.13906 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License). Due to many copyrighted letterheads, the letters of support from the Associate partners could not be made available under an open license, which precluded inclusion in the Zenodo repository or upload to Wikimedia Commons. They are available separately.

Part B, sections 1-3
Part B, sections 4-5

Open Access Media Importer: frog quickenings, orang clicks, and drinking songs of zebra finches

The following represents a selection of the files that have been uploaded by the Open Access Media Importer this month, bringing the total to over 18,700. The first one on the list was featured under media of the day on Wikimedia Commons on January 16, as was another video uploaded by the bot on January 5. If you can think of wiki pages where these files (or other files from the same source articles) could be useful, please put them in there or let us know.

Catalan Network of Public Libraries

By Kippelboy

New round of Wikipedia workshops to Catalan Network of Public Libraries

2 years ago we started a experimental project with the Catalan Network of Public Libraries, expecting they will become our real network on Catalan territory. We did a round of 5 Wikipedia workshops in counties central library branches to train the librarians. Two years later, more than 100 Catalan Public libraries are somehow active on Wikipedia, and some of them are even self-organizing edit-a-thons, activities, workshops or Wiki takes. That's why this 2015 we did a new second round of 4h long Wikipedia workshop to public librarians in the cities on Lleida, Barcelona, Tarragona, Tortosa and Girona so we can train a new generation of wiki-librarians. And yes, with Visual Editor is much more easier!! As a commitment from their side, each one of them took the "assignment" to create/expand a Wikipedia article before Feb 20. here is the list of the articles that are being created.

February's GLAM events

Make sure we cover what matters to you — just add your story and start in the newsroom.

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