On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 3:01 AM, Stephen Wanjau <stevewanjau@wikimedia.or.ke> wrote:
Thats tremendous progress Abbas!
Yes, thanks, Abbas, for this report, and I applaud your decision to share it in this manner with the WMKE membership!
One point I'd like to highlight is that we should be quick to offer mass volunteer effort _for the commercial repository_. We should generally stand for the principle of "cultural artifacts created with public funds should belong (and be made accessible) to the public", and (at least somewhat) resist the commercialization of these old photos. We should also remind everyone that at least the pre-colonial ones are no doubt out of copyright and _do_ in fact belong to the public.
Of course, if it's either a commercial repository or no digitization at all, it's certainly better to have a commercial repository, to at least ensure the survival of this material given the deterioration of the physical sources. But it is not in our interests to provide free labor to commercial enterprises.
One way to go about it would be to do our best with the "small subset" of images that would be donated to Wikimedia, per Stephen's excellent suggestions quoted below. After a while, we could present glowing results with the small subset -- improved metadata, dating, setting in context, etc., -- and contrast them with the inert digital objects in the commercial repository. Perhaps that would make our point and convince decision-makers to free up additional content.
Cheers,
Asaf
Some things we can do in return as Wikimedia volunteers:
*Perform digital image restorations for free.
*DYK's (Did You Knows) are also a good way on Wiki to tell the world
of that unique piece of photo we have in Kenya.
*Write articles around the media files /photos
*Almost certain(since I can't speak on behalf) that the Foundation
shall put up a blog entry highlighting the donations.
*And the recent punchline by the US Archivist ,David Ferriero;
: "If Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States,
maybe it should be good enough for you."
Twende mbele.
//Stephen.
--
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
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