Hello!
I'd like to invite you to the next edit-a-thon at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which will be focused on The Civil War and American Art<http://www.americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/art_civil_war/>. The event will include: new editor training, a tour with the curator, Eleanor Harvey, of The Civil War and American Art exhibition, and a group edit-a-thon.
When: Friday, February 15, 2013
Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum<http://www.americanart.si.edu/>, Located at 8th and G Streets, NW, in Washington D.C. We will meet in the G Street Lobby (enter at 8th and G Streets) at 9:15 a.m.
What to bring: photo ID, a laptop, coffee and snacks if you wish (lunch is provided)
Advanced RSVP Required! RSVP to Georgina Goodlander, goodlanderg(a)si.edu<mailto:goodlanderg@si.edu>, 202-633-8532, Due to the limited space, sign up is required. Space is limited to 20 non-staff participants.
Hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
Georgina
Georgina Goodlander
Web & Social Media Content Manager
Smithsonian American Art Museum
(202) 633-8532 | GoodlanderG(a)si.edu
Follow @PaikBot<http://www.twitter.com/paikbot>
This isn't specifically on the topic of GLAM, but is a follow up to
one of the discussions that we had at last weekend's GLAM wiki
bootcamp, and something I'm very interested in, and maybe others will
be, too. I don't know a lot about this topic -- I'm hoping that
others can provide me with some pointers to the communities and
discussions on the mediawikis, where I might learn more.
Jarek, during his presentation, talked about the problems with
categories on Wikimedia Commons, using the example, "Painted portraits
of men of France". The main problem he described had to do with all
of the possible permutations of subcategories, and the difficulty of
consistently maintaining that subcategory tree.
A related problem also applies to a category we've been hearing a lot
about recently, "American women writers". In this case, there are (at
least) two problems that have been discussed: that this is an
asymmetric category (there is no "American men writers"); and that
people who are in this category are not also in "American writers",
although they should be.
Another problem with this method of categorization is that it doesn't
allow easy access to lists that might not correspond to a direct
category, but might be interesting, and could be derived from the
other categories. For example, all women writers who are *not*
American.
IMO, this is a fundamentally flawed way of adding semantic information
to articles. Jarek suggested that these should be tags, and I agree
that that would be simpler. So, for example, instead of having a
category "American women writers", there would be separate tags for
"American", "female", and "writer". Then, the original category would
be the union of these three. That would also solve the problem of the
asymmetry in the way male writers and female writers are categorized,
which is part of what led to the recent uproar.
But even better, IMO, would be true semantic tagging, in the sense of
the Semantic Web. (I'm not an expert in this topic, but have read
just enough to be dangerous.) Semantic linking lets you express
simple truths about things, such as, "this is a person", "this is
female", "this person is the author of Wuthering Heights", etc.
Furthermore, ''ontologies'' allow people to express relationships
among relationships. For example, "anyone who is the author of x is a
writer", "all authors are also humans", etc.
Having heard a little bit about the Semantic MediaWiki and Wikidata, I
just dug a little bit to see if there is work afoot to try to
re-implement Wikipedia categories in some kind of scheme like this.
The Semantic MediaWiki is a MediaWiki extension that's designed to
allow this kind of tagging, but it was never integrated with any of
the Wikipedias. Instead, Wikidata is being developed and integrated.
There's some info on the relationships among Wikipedia, SMW, and
Wikidata on the Wikipedia entry for SMW [1] and on the SMW FAQ [2].
I know Wikidata has tackled inter-language links first, and next on
the agenda are infoboxes, but I'm not sure if anyone anywhere is
planning on reimplementing categories with this kind of scheme. Of
course it would be an enormous undertaking, and wouldn't happen
anytime soon. But, it does seem to me there's the potential of a much
more robust system. If anyone had any pointers to where I might learn
more, or join in some of those discussions, I'd be very interested. I
just posted a question to the wikidata-l mailing list.
----
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki#Semantic_MediaWiki_and_Wiki…
[2] http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_the_relationship_between…
----
Cheers!
Chris
[pardon the cross-post and English-only post at this time]
Hello everyone,
*This is a reminder that there are 2 days left to apply to attend the first
Program Evaluation & Design Workshop, which will take place in Budapest,
June 22-23. Applications close at 12 AM PST May 17.*
Please review this recent blog announcing the event:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/09/program-evaluation-workshop-budapest/
*Wikimedia community members, chapter staff/volunteers, solitary volunteers
- anyone who is a program leader is encouraged to apply. Please note, we
have only 20 slots available and limited funding to support attendees. If
you do apply, you must email me at sarah(a)wikimedia.org if you are
requesting funding before/after you apply. *
We will be filming our workshop, so don't fret if you cannot attend this
first one, or aren't accepted to attend this time.
*You can get a better taste for the event through our evolving Meta Event
page: *
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/June_2013_Work…
Thank you Wikimedia Magyarország for your support and assistance.
-Sarah
--
*Sarah Stierch**
Wikimedia Foundation Program Evaluation & Design Community Coordinator
*Donate<http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Donate/en&utm_source=&utm_…>
today
and keep it free!
Visit me on Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>!
Thanks Lodewijk for being so enthusiastic that you beat us to posting our
recap first. ;-) Lori and I have been a bit worn out the last couple of
days. Ed's Signpost article is a good start, especially since he was in
attendance (link<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-04-29/News_a…>);
please do read it. I wanted to talk a little more about this event, which
took place this past Friday and weekend, from April 26–28, in Washington,
D.C.
The idea for GLAM Boot Camp was first proposed and developed at GLAMcamp
London last September, as some of you may remember. You can see our
original notes from GLAMcamp here:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_Boot_Camp. The event we just held
was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp. The stated,
ambitious goal of the first GLAM Boot Camp was to broaden the participation
of the general Wikimedia community in GLAM-Wiki movement by inviting and
training key Wikimedians I think that we were successful in taking a big
step towards that goal. Another goal was to establish a model for future
similar events, and I hope that as we work on our documentation, others
will be able to use our experiences to guide them in making another GLAM
Boot Camp elsewhere.
All of us who have been to events like GLAMcamps or Wikimanias know that
oftentimes the most important thing is not the structured sessions, but
just being with a group people for a couple of days and sharing
perspectives—even over coffee or back at the hostel—so both of the main
takeaways for me were about the attendees. The fact that *we fully funding
all attendees* from across the US and Canada was integral to ensuring we
were able to bring in fresh people. Second, we *specifically invited the
people we thought would be key*, rather than hoping people would sign up.
This ended up making even more sense in retrospect, because we were so
happy with who came, but if the idea was to reach people who were not
normally part of GLAM-Wiki projects, we were trying to reach people who
wouldn't already be following our normal channels and who might not sign up
even if they heard about it because for some reason they haven't already
gotten involved whenever they have heard about GLAM-Wiki already. This also
allowed us to try to get a diversity in terms of geography (especially
folks in areas without chapters or meetups) and in people's types of
on-wiki activities.
As co-organizer, I want to tease out a few more important points:
*Attendees:*
*
*
We posted a list of
attendees<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp#Attendees>
to
the page; the names in green were those who we invited as full participants
for the entire event. Of these, only about 3 had actually signed up or
registered interest before we started inviting. For the others, I spent
hours looking asking for opinions of others and looking through user
contributions of people who had participated online in any GLAM
WikiProjects, participated in meetups, or participated in any of various
other Wikimedia activities or subcommunities, like administrators, featured
content writers, Wikisource/Commons editors, Did You Know writers,
WikiProject organizers, education program participants, and so on.
Participants came from all over the US (New York, Maryland, LA, SF,
Portland, Philadelphia, Kansas, Michigan, and Chicago) and Canada (Halifax,
Vancouver, and Winnipeg), not one from the same metropolitan area, and most
from areas without regular Wikipedia events. For more than one attendee,
this was their first time at a Wikipedia event of any kind. The size of the
group, 12 regular attendees with about 5 more at any given time with guests
and organizers, was the perfect amount to allow for productive discussions.
*
*
*Program:*
*
*
We designed a program very unlike GLAMcamp, and a lot more both structured
than a lot of Wikimedia unconference-type events are, but more practical
than a traditional conference—it was something between a Wikipedia Academy
and a campus ambassador training. You can see our program here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp#Program. We generally
moved from presentation-heavy to discussion-heavy sessions. Generally, the
first day was our high-level overview of and introduction to cultural
institutions and the history and present circumstances of GLAM-Wiki.
Michael's inspiring talk to lead off was really to give them an insider
perspective of cultural institutions, and we talked a lot about
institutional missions and how to connect the work of Wikimedia with that
of cultural institutions. The second day we moved into more practical
matters, going through the whole "lifecycle" of a Wikimedia project, and
talking about specific events and projects. By the third day, we spent more
time in discussion, and getting the boot campers to articulate their own
visions of GLAM-Wiki, and how they personally could improve upon or
contribute to it. We ended up having unplanned breakout sessions a couple
of times because attendees were so exited ideas they had as we showed them
things like our one-pager or the portal pages they wanted to actually have
time to edit them. If you would like to dig into the etherpad notes from
each day, they are listed at the top of the program.
*
Logistics:*
The event was possible for us in the US because logistics and funding were
largely handled by James Hare and Wikimedia DC. They funded us with
approximately $8000 USD from their 2013 Outreach
grant<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_US-DC/Outreach_2013> to
the WMF, as well as covering group dinners and some incidental costs over
budget from general funds. The large majority of the money (about $5500 out
of $8500) went towards funding the travel and accommodations of attendees.
All attendees were fully funded, and this was an essential characteristic
of the event. Most of the travelers had their flights booked by WMDC and
stayed in a hostel (same as used for Wikimania 2012 and GLAMcamp DC). WMDC
also hosted two dinners and provided coffee/refreshments throughout the day.
*Speakers:*
*
*
The ambitiousness of the workshop, with three full days of programming,
meant a lot of talking from Lori and I. We broke things up a little by
inviting special speakers in certain topic areas, often where they had as
much or more expertise as either of us did. Some of these speakers were
locals from the DC area that agreed to come in, and some were attendees we
invited to present to the group on something they are skilled at. Examples
include the Wikisource and Commons workshops, a session on event planning,
a session on grants and chapters. We also led off with special GLAM
professional guests: David Ferriero gave a welcome and Michael Edson, who
just got back from keynoting GLAM-Wiki London gave an epic talk for most of
the first morning. At least half of the sessions were led by Lori or I,
though, and future GLAM Boot Camps probably would want to find ways not to
give so much work to two individuals, for their own sanity. ;-)
*Venue:*
The venue was provided by the U.S. National Archives, though there were
pros and cons for this. The main pro was that there was no cost associated
with securing a venue! We might have been able to find a room elsewhere
without a cost, but 3 days, all day for no cost is a big ask. The other
main benefit was that we were in a good location and were able to take
advantage of having David Ferriero make appearances. We did face typical
problems with working with a bureaucratic venue, like catering and security
all taking more time than we wanted.
*Outcomes:*
For me, the most important outcome was seeing the attendees who were all
*not* the same old faces as at every other GLAM-Wiki event come in excited
and gradually take more ownership and responsibility for GLAM-Wiki, as they
began to feel more empowered and a part of the effort. There were practical
outcomes, like specific documentation or project pages to improve. More
than that, though, most attendees came away intent on contacting local
institutions or organizing their local Wikipedia community. I am as excited
by the overall community-building I think we did around GLAM-Wiki, which
will help it be more successful as it is more accepted and integrated with
the Wikipedia community, as I am by any specific skills attendees may have
learned or GLAM projects they may go off and start.
The need to reach out more to the Wikimedia community, as much as to
cultural institutions, is something I feel very strongly about, so I am so
glad we were able to hold this event, and grateful to everyone who made it
possible and attended.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.
Dominic
Here is the public link to the GLAMout -- happening now:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/EgDTDkT3NFA
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Lori Phillips
<lori.byrd.phillips(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> *Forwarding this to the Cultural Partners list in case you missed it on
> the public GLAM list.*
> Please join us for our first-ever "GLAMout" Google Hangout On Air, hosted
> by the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium TOMORROW Friday May 3!
> Details below.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Proffitt,Merrilee <proffitm(a)oclc.org>
> Date: Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 5:56 PM
> Subject: [GLAM] GLAM-Wiki US Consortium to host a GLAMout, May 3rd, noon-1
> Pacific
> To: "Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public]" <glam(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> **
>
> ** **
>
> The GLAM-Wiki US Consortium will be hosting the first GLAMout May 3rd
> noon-1 PDT. This is mostly an effort to get (and keep) momentum for our
> work, exchange information with one another. This is a forum for cultural
> professionals, Wikimedians, or any interested parties to learn and chat
> about GLAM activities. Our goal is to have an anchor topic each month and
> then to leave time for information exchange. We’ll be using Google Hangout
> on Air as a platform (which will also allow the sessions to be recorded).
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/GLAMout ****
>
> ** **
>
> Connection details to come but plan to join!****
>
> ** **
>
> Best,****
>
> ** **
>
> Merrilee****
>
> Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer
> OCLC Research
> 777 Mariners Island Blvd Suite 550
> San Mateo, CA 94404 USA
> +1-650-287-2136****
>
> Merrilee blogs at hangingtogether.org
> Follow me on Twitter @merrileeiam****
>
> ** **
>
> _______________________________________________
> GLAM mailing list
> GLAM(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam
>
>
>
>
> --
> Lori Byrd Phillips
> Digital Marketing Content Coordinator
> The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
>
> 703.489.6036 | http://loribyrdphillips.com/
>
>
>
> --
> Lori Byrd Phillips
> Digital Marketing Content Coordinator
> The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
>
> 703.489.6036 | http://loribyrdphillips.com/
>
--
Lori Byrd Phillips
Digital Marketing Content Coordinator
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
703.489.6036 | http://loribyrdphillips.com/
This is just a note to draw attention to the fact that the archives of this
mailing list, which you can view at <
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam-us> should now be public.
This list has always been intended to be public, and uses open membership
settings, so the fact that the archives were not already public to
non-subscribers was an oversight. Thanks to Chris Maloney for help setting
it up.
Dominic
Forwarding this to the GLAM-US folks as well. Please join us for our
first-ever "GLAMout" Google Hangout On Air, hosted by the GLAM-Wiki US
Consortium TOMORROW Friday May 3!
Details below
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Proffitt,Merrilee <proffitm(a)oclc.org>
Date: Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 5:56 PM
Subject: [GLAM] GLAM-Wiki US Consortium to host a GLAMout, May 3rd, noon-1
Pacific
To: "Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public]" <glam(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello everyone!
**
** **
The GLAM-Wiki US Consortium will be hosting the first GLAMout May 3rd
noon-1 PDT. This is mostly an effort to get (and keep) momentum for our
work, exchange information with one another. This is a forum for cultural
professionals, Wikimedians, or any interested parties to learn and chat
about GLAM activities. Our goal is to have an anchor topic each month and
then to leave time for information exchange. We’ll be using Google Hangout
on Air as a platform (which will also allow the sessions to be recorded). **
**
** **
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/GLAMout ****
** **
Connection details to come but plan to join!****
** **
Best,****
** **
Merrilee****
Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Program Officer
OCLC Research
777 Mariners Island Blvd Suite 550
San Mateo, CA 94404 USA
+1-650-287-2136****
Merrilee blogs at hangingtogether.org
Follow me on Twitter @merrileeiam****
** **
_______________________________________________
GLAM mailing list
GLAM(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam
--
Lori Byrd Phillips
Digital Marketing Content Coordinator
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
703.489.6036 | http://loribyrdphillips.com/