Following closely on the news of our Barbara being elected to the Europeana members council[1] and the GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting that we're hosting at UNESCO in two weeks[2], I am pleased to also formally announce the official launch of the Europeana 1914-1918 Wikimedia campaign. It's something that many of you are already aware of (and have helped me to design/prepare over the last few months!) so it's great that it's finally "open".
Until the end of July, the campaign asks Wikimedia Affiliates to produce a "portfolio" of actions they've organised - both current and past - around the theme of 1914-18. If your affiliate would like to participate, please link it + contact name alongside the others already participating, on the project page linked above!
This is not only about military history. Some affiliates are already planning activities to do with: The centenary of women's suffrage in their country; the October revolution; migration & refugees... Also, the range of valid activities is not only Editathons. Anything that relates to the theme is allowed (e.g. photo expeditions, mapping parties, transcribathons, content donations) so long as at least one activity is with a Europeana partner-GLAM or uses a Europeana service (such as the API, or the crowdsourced personal items digitised at "collection days" across the continent for Europeana 1914-1918[3] - some of which is already on Commons). Projects collaborating between multiple affiliates would be particularly cool, and activities already planned/underway/passed which have relevance to the theme can be counted too - doesn't have to be 'new' things!
Europe is obviously the target of this campaign, but non-European affiliates are certainly also welcome to contribute their own portfolio and participate (Europeana's sister organisation in America - the DPLA - is preparing a resources page to help).
At the end, Europeana will showcase the collection of portfolios to demonstrate the *diverse*, *innovative*, and *high-quality* ways that this important period of Europe's history can be understood through open-access heritage. And yes, there ARE prizes, including a scholarship to present at the 2017 Europeana conference in Amsterdam.[5]
Any questions? Thoughts? There is an FAQ on the project page[4] and lots of 'ready to go' activity-ideas, but feel free to reply here too. My colleague Ad Pollé and I can also help with introducing communities to local partner GLAMs if that would be helpful.
Sincerely,
-Liam / Wittylama
[5] Note, this major prize includes travel costs from within Europe only