2008/12/3 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
Dear Commonists,
Starting on Thursday Dec 4, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100.000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.
Got to love any email that starts out with "dear commonists" ;-). Many, many heartfelt congratulations to WM-DE on this. I don't think it can be easily overstated how significant this is: I've talked to many organizations over the years about media donations, and the awareness and understanding of open access is still very limited. I can very much imagine the kinds of conversations you've been having. Kudos to the archive as well for "getting it" and taking this bold step.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing these files used in Wikipedia and elsewhere.