Working group Cultural Heritage
A working group on cultural heritage has recently become active. The group
has made contacts with the Rijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE), which
is the national organization for cultural heritage in the Netherlands. As a
result of this, the RCE has agreed to donate an exhaustive database with the
geographical locations and more metadata of the over 60.000 national
monuments in the Netherlands for use in Wikimedia projects. The working
group is currently processing this data and inserting it into the Dutch
language Wikipedia at a rapid pace, so that it can be used in Wikipedia
articles, but also in other project such as *Wiki loves monuments* (a
photohunt competition akin to *Wiki(pedia) loves art*). As the group
progresses, omissions and errors that are found in this data can be
corrected, and the improved data is made available to the RCE again. The RCE
has also offered to help in answering questions that might arise when
processing the data and when writing articles on Dutch cultural heritage.
Working Group Copyright lobbying
With general elections in sight and a new European Commission in place, two
board members have taken the lead in setting up a working group on copyright
lobbying. As copyright legislation is under reconsideration at various
levels at this moment, now seems a good time to try and influence these
developments in a favorable direction for free culture.
Wiki loves monuments
On the Dutch language Wikipedia, volunteers have been working on creating
extensive and complete lists of all national monuments in the Netherlands,
sorted by location. They also try to add for each monument at least one
photo under a free license. There are more than 60.000 monuments in the
Netherlands, and to help get a freely licensed photo for each of them, a
photo competition will be organized. The contest, *Wiki loves monuments*,
will be organized in September by Wikimedia Netherlands together with the
volunteers from the Cultural Heritage project. The general public will be
encouraged to visit monuments during that month and take photographs of them
for use on Wikipedia. Photos will be uploaded through a special project
website, and appealing prizes will be available for outstanding photographs.
EDRi Workshop
Esther Hoorn participated the EDRi workshop in Brussels at begin of February
on behalf of WMNL. The workshop was about lobbying on a European level, and
aside from sharing her experience on copyright, she has made some useful
contacts.
Wiki loves Bieb
Together with the Public Library of Vlissingen, WMNL has initiated a pilot
project on media literacy and local cultural heritage that should lead to a
closer cooperation between Wikimedia and libraries. The topic on *media
literacy* will involve the development of educational material for schools
on the use of Wikipedia. For example, the booklet "Wikipedia i skolan" (by
Lennart Gulbrandsson) is being translated and adapted from Swedish for use
in Dutch education.
Board interest meeting & General Assemblee
To give candidate board members an opportunity to get to know the
association and each other a bit better, Wikimedia Nederland organized a
board interest meeting a few weeks before the elections at the annual
general assembly. Based on this meeting, they could then decide whether they
wanted to actually put themselves up as a candidate or not.
In March, the Annual General Assembly was held, and therefore also elections
for a new board. Four board members from the previous board were re-elected
and two new board members were elected out of eight total candidates.
Dutch Government goes CC-zero
Although there is no direct involvement in this decision by WMNL, we think
it is good to mention that the Dutch Government launched its new website,
www.rijksoverheid.nl, in April under CC-Zero! This not only includes the
text, but also the images and video available on that website.
Presentations, CPOV
On the *SPE Intelligent Energy Conference 2010* in Utrecht, board members
Hay and José gave presentations on how Wikipedia and Wikimedia let people
collaborate. Hay attended a conference on digitization in libraries where he
gave a presentation on free licenses and collaborative authoring.
Organized by the *Institute for Network Cultures*, this two day conference
about the academic study of Wikipedia took place in the public library of
Amsterdam on Friday 26 and Saturday 27 March. A number of Wikipedia editors
and WMNL board members attended the conference. Videos of the sessions are
available at this page <http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/videos/>.