The National Library of Scotland has cleared about 2500 images to be released to Commons as part of the Wikimedian in Residence programme – which is fantastic! The tricky part is that I as the Wikimedian in Residence don’t have the technical experience that seems to be required to go about doing that myself.

 

I’ve looked through some of the previous successful uploads, and am having trouble tracing the process through from conceptualisation to realisation. I was hoping to use the GWToolset but I’m lacking the documentation that tells me how to go about preparing the metadata and the files and how to (reasonably) successfully execute the upload. I know that the BL has recently had a successful batch upload and I’ve spoken to Andrew about this, but I also am aware that things have been evolving since then and I’m keen to do this as efficiently and quickly as possible. I’m therefore reaching out for any assistance to make this happen.

 

The idea was to do a series of smaller large uploads (between a couple hundred and a thousand images at a time) that would be grouped according to theme – this is partly an attempt to facilitate their use on Wikipedia and elsewhere once on commons. I will work on this end with anyone who can give me ideas and/or flat out dummy’s guide directions to get things organised, I mainly need a hand getting started.

 

We are entirely flexible in the output of the metadata, as it’s currently just sitting in a database, and the files are already sitting in an open webspace, so it’s just a question of getting things from point A to point B with all of the appropriate information attached, really. If this works, then the NLS would be able to use this process in the long term to hopefully upload thousands more images, maps, and other digitised content, so while the trial run is small it will have a large impact in the end.

 

Any help/ideas either onlist or on my Commons talk page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ACrockford would be fantastic.

 

Cheers,

Ally

 

 

Ally Crockford

Wikimedian-In-Residence

National Library of Scotland
George IV Bridge
Edinburgh EH1 1EW
Scotland, UK

 

e: a.crockford@nls.uk

t: (0) 131 623 3797

w: http://www.nls.uk