Danny, this is quite important for NGLs (non governmental languages). It
would be great to get a press release for this.
There are many ressources that would help NGLs to get a writing standard
(often there is no official one) .
Example: the National Library in Naples has loads of texts in
Neapolitan, all out of copyright, but they are simply not accessible if
you don't go to Naples .... and getting a copy costs 0,50 EUR for 1
scanned page. If we can get one press release per Institution that gives
out the contents we can step by step collect these, add others and we
will get an ever stronger position. People may give us the contents more
easily.
I believe it is the case to forward this mail to the com com - I hope
this is ok for you.
Best, Sabine
daniwo59(a)aol.com schrieb:
Hello
As some of you may know, Brad and I were in DC for most of this week,
where we werre joined by Mindspillage and NullC for some fascinating
meetings with people from the Smithsonian, the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum, the Library of Congress, and the National Geographic Society.
One of the primary purposes of these meetings was to identify content
that we can use for our projects, including Wikisource. The meetings
were very informative and productive.
Given that there are certain legal issues involved, I will wait for
Brad to describe in greater depth the outcome of these meetings. I
will, however, describe two meetings that may have more immediate
results for the Wikisource and Commons communities.
Mindspillage and I had a great meeting with Lawrence (Larry) Swiader,
the Deputy CIO of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has given us
permission to use any and all of the material created and licensed by
that Museum according to the terms of our license. This includes
images, video, video transcripts, audio, and text, including the
new Holocaust encyclopedia that they are building on line (in seven
languages), and which they plan to be the most
comprehensive encyclopedia of its kind in the world. All they are
asking for in return in attribution. Essentially, although this was
not said in so many words, they are releasing all of their in-hourse
material according to the terms of the GNU-FDL. Larry was especially
excited by the prospect of our people participating in the translation
effort. I would like to point out that this is an outstanding
repository of material, not just about World War II and the Holocaust,
but about other modern instances of genocide, including Armenia,
Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. They have no problem whatsover with our
translating their proprietary formats into free software formats such
as .ogg files.
At the end of our meeting, we discussed the need for a contract to
formalize this agreement. Brad will be drafting one to send to their
counsel, and things should be underway quickly. In the meantime, I
encourage you to look through their materials and see what is there.
The Library of Congress meeting was also quite spectacular. They also
have enormous archives which they are willing to share, but I am
noting here that some of their materials still fall under copyright so
greater caution must be exercised. Over the next few weeks, we will
better identify what is there for the taking.
During our talks, they made mention of the fact that many important
historical documents may have been scanned, but they have not yet been
transcribed. One of the repositories mentioned was the Thomas
Jefferson archives at Monticello. Speaking of this particular archive,
they told us that the work was so daunting that the Jefferson people
(and other groups as well) have taken to outsourcing the transcription
work to India. I would like to suggest to the current Wikisource team
and additional volunteers that we jump at this opportunity to help in
the realtime preservation of these documents, which are of enormous
historical importance. My other suggestion is that we contact these
organizations in an organized manner, rather than as individuals, so
that we appear organized and do not duplicate efforts.
Finally, we have now contacted some of the most important repositories
of content in the United States and we were welcomed by them. I
encourage Wikimedians in other countries, representing other
languages, to make the same coordinated effort with their local
repositories in their respective languages.
More to come,
Danny
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
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