Hello, everyoneǃ
Here are the status updates for the past 2 weeks, transcluded from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BHL/Our_outcomes/WiR/Status_updates/2025-03-.... Thanks for reading!
07 March 2025 - 21 March 2025
As the residency approaches an end (*only 1 month and a half left*), the focus for the next weeks will be on making workflows future-proof, providing high-quality training material and documenting everything. If you have any requests or ideas, this is a great time to bring them upǃ
[image: image.png]
South-American Orchids in the Toolforge app BHL-Wiki-GBIF Image Gallery, reachable at https://bhl-gallery.toolforge.org/?taxonKey=7689&continent=SOUTH_AMERICA
General updates
- The thoughts on how to show the value for Structured Data on Commons led to a *portal/gallery for BHL images with GBIF filters https://bhl-gallery.toolforge.org/* at is an application that usesǃ It uses the GBIF API to navigate taxa and locations for the species on the 18.6k depicts statements on BHL images on Commons https://w.wiki/DVLX. - The next few weeks will see the *1Pic1Bio events, promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation* to increase usage of BHL images on Wikipedia. The events will happen with live translation to English, but natively in Spanish on March 26 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:1Pic1Bio_(Spanish), in French on March 28 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:1Pic1Bio_(French) and in Portuguese on April 2 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:1Pic1Bio_(Portuguese). Anyone interested may join the events by clicking on those links.
Technical updates
- *Bot for plant depictions*ː A bot/automatic operation was approved https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bots/Requests/TiagoLubianaBot to infer depicts (P180) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P180 statements from Commons categories. The bot script finished running, updating 55k files containing botanical illustrations, including at least 8.1k BHL images https://w.wiki/DVLj. These had been previously manually catalogued to particular species by the Commons community in a tremendous tour-de-force. Next stepsː (1) try and add BHL Page IDs for the BHL Images missing it and (2) try and reproduce this for other taxaǃ - *BHL images missing page ID:* This maintenance query for images in the BHL category that have a depicts statement, but miss a page ID https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=incategory%3A%22Files+from+the+Biodiversity+Heritage+Library%22+haswbstatement%3AP180+-haswbstatement%3AP687&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Ir&type=image may help prioritize targets for adding Structured Data. The are just one BHL page ID (P687) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P687 away from appearing in tools like the BHL Image Explorer https://bhl-gallery.toolforge.org/ . - *WMF's Research Fund grantː* The WMF's Research Fund grant https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Research_%26_Technology_Fund/Wikimedia_Research_Fund is open for applications and the submission deadline is April 16, 2025. I did write some thoughts on *Mapping Indigenous and Common Names in Latin American Biodiversity Texts https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bPQSx7fldXFi2zlQbt_73CCfLdnnGguRsfUpDEVUCog/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.5se1ghll4grh* for this grant. They changed a bit the scope, though, and seem to be more focused on social sciences and computer sciences inquiries yielding generalizable insight on the Wikimedia ecosystem. I likely *won't* send an application, but if anyone thinks differently, just let me knowǃ - *Adding public domain statements to images: *After conversation in the BHL-Wiki working group meeting (thank you, Bianca, for bringing up the subjectǃ), we decided to use the public domain (Q19652) https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19652 value on Commons for works deemed Public Domain on Commons. The Commons community has very strict requirements on copyright https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules, so this decision was harder than it may seem! - *Removing wrong CC-BY statements**: *We also decided to remove inaccurate CC-BY statements, a decade-long legacy from Flickr limitations at the time. The Structured Data script is removing those https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Histoire_naturelle_des_poissons_(Pl._111)_(7950004098).jpg&diff=prev&oldid=1011280335 from structured data, and the new best-practices were reflected on the Minimum BHL Image Metadata Model https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ocqDQBFaKAQvPsP3HMlrh52faiHiaDU-D9P3yz1oV_M/edit?gid=0#gid=0, which now reached v0.1.6. There remains, though, a need to remove the statements from the Wikitext. Changing Wikitext in batch would need different bot code, but seems doable. - *Technical details of the Image Gallery:* The BHL Image Explorer or BHL Image Gallery — I am still looking for a name — (source code here) https://github.com/lubianat/bhl-gallery started as an all client-side page in javascript, but after quite some tech work, it is a simple-but-functional Flask application hosted on Toolforge https://bhl-gallery.toolforge.org/. It has some fun perks, like sharing the links for particular taxa or location (e.g. parrots from Africa https://bhl-gallery.toolforge.org/?taxonKey=1445&continent=AFRICA). It is still in testing so, expect some bugs — and not of the good, *Coleoptera* kind. If you find them, do let me knowǃ - *Continued uploads of structured metadataː* The directed structured data uploads https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YhMSb_iBylJaWPX37kZbVzdyWoFidT9a31Pl0oY3buc/edit?gid=0#gid=0 continued, now covering >7,5k images, about 2,5k more than in the last reportǃ The code for uploads is available at github.com/lubianat/bhl_sdc_data_curation. I am improving the docs, but it is a somewhat complex workflow, as there are a lot of corner cases. I will still try and refactor and make it usable for other tech-savvy volunteers in the future. I considered making a web app but that would take a lot of time to do well. - *BHL Day Workshopː* It will soon be BHL Day (April 9-10 https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/get-involved/events/bhl-day-2025/) and Siobhan and Sabine will be in Berlin to discuss all kinds of nice Wiki thingsǃ I'll attend remotely and share more news on the next update, on April 4 ː) - *Internet Archive and Machine Learningː* I had a quick call with Mike Trizna about BHL and ARCH (Archives Research Compute Hub) https://webservices.archive.org/pages/arch/ in preparation for a meeting to happen on March 25th with Karl Blumenthal, from the ARCH team. He brought up some good ideas and told me a bit about what he and others at the Smithsonian have been doing. Let's see what we can do with ARCH!
That is it and once again thank you for reading it throughǃ If you have any comments or questions, just let me know and see you soonǃ
Tiago
*——————————————————————————* *Tiago Lubiana* *Wikimedian-in-Residence, Biodiversity Heritage Library https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/*
*tiago.bio.br https://tiago.bio.br*
