Interesting followup from the work at WMIL.

Cheers,

Alex

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Michal Lester mlester@wikimedia.org.il Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 11:18 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Agreement Reached Between Wikimedia Israel and Israeli Archives To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Hello all,

I'm happy to share with you that last Monday, nearly four months after Wikimedia Israel’s extraction of nearly 28-thousand public-domain photographs http://wikimedia.org.il/image-mining-project/ from archives affiliated with the State of Israel and the Zionist movement, an agreement was finally reached to reconcile the differences between the parties and to assure future cooperation.

The archives from which the photographs had been extracted last November questioned the legitimacy of Wikimedia Israel’s move and demanded an apology for the misuse of their websites. They agreed, on the other hand, to enhance access to public-domain material stored in their archives and to further cooperation with Wikimedia Israel.

Following the agreement, Wikimedia Israel released a statement saying it “regrets the situation that has resulted from lack of communication between the archives and Wikimedia Israel”. The statement further says that “different world-views and organizational cultures harmed the dialogue and distorted the understanding of the intentions of the archives and of Wikimedia Israel”. The statement ends by saying that “this is not how the affairs should have been conducted, and we wish to apologize to anyone who sees themselves offended by the move”.

The agreement calls for better access to public material, while maintaining better sensitivity, and “respecting the rights of those who deposited the material and the Israeli law”. In addition, Wikimedia Israel offered its help in the effort to digitalize the material and make it more accessible. This should serve not only Israelis, but also people throughout the Middle East, who could find interest in historical photographs taken decades ago in neighboring countries and territories.

I hope that in the near future this agreement will lead to a better collaboration and releasing of materials.

Michal

*Michal Lester,*

*Executive DirectorWikimedia Israel* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe