Hi all! Is anyone doing anything with public domain day and Wikipedia? We are running an edit-a-thon on Wikipedia Day centered around 1923 books we digitized here at MIT libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Public_Domain_Day_2019
but I am struggling with what kinds of articles to work on or activities to do.
Any ideas? Is anyone doing something similar in their libraries? I think it would be fun to go through the Hathitrust 1923 collection, which is now open, to see what would be good for Wikipedia: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?c=149827760;a=srchls;q1=*
cheers, Phoebe
Hiya Phoebe,
For me, the big issue with preventing 20 years worth of material going into the public domain is that it probably hindered a lot of creative activity, and also denied corporations from deriving benefit from new creations. So if I was going to do a public domain editathon, in addition to creating/enhancing articles on the issues, I would select articles that show works' dependency of previous works - part of the nature and cycle of creation. Think jazz. Looking at the article 1923 in music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_music, I see pop songs lacking articles such as "Milenberg Joys," "My Sweetie Went Away" and "Some Sweet Day." All of these songs were covered by others. "Milenberg Joys" *in particular* became a well-kinown jazz standard - I'm surprised there's not an article on it already.
There's already an article on the song "Charleston" which was a major hit and is still occasionally used in film and tv to denote the 1920s. But there's no article on the musical from which it comes, "Runnin' Wild." I note that the composer of this show was the African American composer James P. Johnson - it was still pretty rare for such a composer to have a Broadway show. With Black History Month around the corner, it might make a good project.
I know Duke's Public Domain Project has links to lots of articles. It would be nice if Wikipedia could have an article entitled like "How the public domain enhances the economy."
Good luck!
All the best,
Bob
Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts blog: http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44 Twitter: @kos2 Listowner: OPERA-L ; EXLIBRIS-L ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users - My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions -
*Inspiring Lifelong Learning* | *Advancing Knowledge* | *Strengthening Our Communities *
On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 4:40 PM phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all! Is anyone doing anything with public domain day and Wikipedia? We are running an edit-a-thon on Wikipedia Day centered around 1923 books we digitized here at MIT libraries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Public_Domain_Day_2019
but I am struggling with what kinds of articles to work on or activities to do.
Any ideas? Is anyone doing something similar in their libraries? I think it would be fun to go through the Hathitrust 1923 collection, which is now open, to see what would be good for Wikipedia: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?c=149827760;a=srchls;q1=*
cheers, Phoebe
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For the benefit of anyone (like me) who doesn’t know what public domain day is, read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Domain_Day
If you have newbie attending, remember that newbies face a huge learning curve in terms of both “how to do it” (the mechanics of editing) and “where to do it” (not familiar with the article space) and “what to do” (don’t know policies), so this all has to be risk-managed. You need to provide instructions on creating their account (tell them it is important to provide an email address, that we don’t spam them and it’s needed for password recovery) and setting preferences to keep the VE enabled (or at least not disabled). This one-page cheat sheet produced by Wikimedia Nederlands is useful for “how to”
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cheat_sheet_Visual_editing_on_Wikipedia.pdf https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cheat_sheet_Visual_editing_on_Wikipe... (this is the English version, but it is available in a couple of other languages too, and if anyone out there is multilingual, it would be a great resource to translate into other languages)
For newbies, you need to make the tasks very well-structured. I find list-type resources very good for this: “Use this resource to add this kind of information to this set of articles and here is a worked example showing how to do it”. By repeating this task, they will learn the skills, and, as there tends to be natural variation even among articles of a similar topic kind, they start to have to make judgements about how best to do the task. “You said to add it to the section on Amenities but I don’t see an Amenities section but there is a Facilities section that seems to providing that sort of information, will that do or should I create a new Amenities section?” “Is it too much detail to add the opening hours in 1923?” (Probably yes!) Answering such questions by talking to the group can be helpful, as others are probably encountering or likely to encounter similar situations so a discussion helps all of them.
You simply can’t teach all the policies newbies need to know at an event, but you should always mention copyright violation and biographies of living people if applicable (as they are instant-revert situation) but if this is new-to-public-domain material from 1923, I am guessing copyvio and BLP aren’t likely to be an issue. Make sure the tasks given to newbies is likely to be highly conformant with policy or of a nature not particularly constrained by policy (e.g. don’t get them to add external links), and your worked example should always be MoS-perfect in every way :) (some will slavishly copy it down to the unwanted extra punctuation you overlooked, while Others WILL Use Their Normal Writing Style regardless)
You need the set of articles that the newbies are likely to work on to be low-risk. By this, I mean two things:
* low engagement with other editors, e.g. not known to be real-world- or Wikipedia-controversial, not a lot of recent edit activity, low number of page watchers, in order to minimise bad experiences at the hands of “gatekeepers” and other over-zealous rule enforcers with the article on their watchlist
* low daily readership so any serious errors made by the newbies have least impact on the readers
Do not suggest or encourage newbies to start articles. Even if you provide a list of topics (which you know to be notable) and provide them with some “reliable sources”, and confirm their accounts so they can avoid Article for Creation, the risk is that straight after the event, they will use their new-found article creation skills to create articles on topics of their own choosing, with the risk of speedy deletion or Articles for Deletion for failing notability due to unreliable sources. We know many newbies drop out due to bad experiences, which is why I try to structure their early contributions to minimise bad experiences. While you cannot protect them against everything and, while we have automated bots and regular contributors who thinks it is OK to bite the newbies, keeping your newbies working out in the “long tail” of articles certainly minimises the risk. If the articles you are suggesting for the newbies are likely to be within a WikiProject, it can sometimes be helpful to let that WikiProject know about the event in advance, asking them to “thank”, “welcome” and generally assist the newbies. I say “sometimes” because this does run the risk of alerting the gatekeepers and rabid rule-enforcers in that WikiProject to be hyper-vigilant. For this reason, I often try to structure my newbie engagements into WikiProjects where I am a regular or semi-regular member as that means I tend to know the community’s level of tolerance for newbies (and hopefully have some respect within that community) so my request don’t fall on deaf ears or actively-hostile ears.
For the regular “come to events but don’t do much in-between” contributors (aka occasional contributors), they still will benefit from some introduction to Visual Editor (if they haven’t previously seen it). And also, some pointers to some of the resources that you think have high potential to contribute to certain types of article, but the task won’t need it to be expressed quite as specifically as for the newbies. E.g. you might point to some books with biographies and suggest they expand or create an article on those people (a biography written in 1923 is unlikely to involve anyone still living today unless they were famous as a young child!)
With regular contributors, many will just grab the content and do their own thing with topics that interest them in most cases, but still might like to be pointed at resources that you see as real jewels in your 1923 collection in order to make the most of the new collection.
I hope you have great success with the event.
Kerry
From: Libraries [mailto:libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of phoebe ayers Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2019 7:40 AM To: Wikimedia & Libraries libraries@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [libraries] public domain day & wikipedia
Hi all!
Is anyone doing anything with public domain day and Wikipedia? We are running an edit-a-thon on Wikipedia Day centered around 1923 books we digitized here at MIT libraries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Public_Domain_Day_2019
but I am struggling with what kinds of articles to work on or activities to do.
Any ideas? Is anyone doing something similar in their libraries? I think it would be fun to go through the Hathitrust 1923 collection, which is now open, to see what would be good for Wikipedia: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?c=149827760;a=srchls;q1=*
cheers,
Phoebe
Hi Phoebe and all,
In my class at the School of information sciences and librarianship (Université de Montréal) we are doing a triple activity a little bite like the MIT libraries. I invite wikipedian friends on Tuesday, January 15, in my class to celebrate:
* The 18 years of Wikipedia * The launch of the # 1lib1ref campaign * and the public domain day :)
From 8:30 am to 10:00 am, I will present the bases and, from 10:00 am, some wikipedians friends will come and say a few words about their commitment and help the students apply these basics during a edit-a-thon workshop. There are 70 students.
This activity will continue in the afternoon, either at the School or in the libraries of UdeM - this will be decided shortly - around public domain. The issue of public domain is very important for Canada too this year for rather different, and even dramatically opposite reasons.
Last fall, under the new United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA),https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico%E2%80%93Canada_Agreement Canada succeeded in preserving the Canadian cultural exemption but, against all odds, this exception now excludes the duration of the copyright terms. Canada will join the "life + 70" category in the same way as the United States and France currently - instead of the international standard of "life + 50 years" of which Canadians had benefited under the Berne Convention which had governed it so far. Canada will therefore experience a freeze on the mass expiration of copyright for the coming two decades. The bright cortege of public domain works will be suspended for the next twenty years.
So in this rather sad context, we will celebrate what could be our last year of public domain before long, writing articles, using images and texts on Wikipedia and other projects. We prepare for this with an Advent Calendar for the public domain (https://domainepublic.savoirslibres.ca/2019/) that we produce all month of December through the 1st of January, Public domain Day.
Cheers !
Marie
Marie D. Martel, M.S.I, Ph.D Philosophie
Professeure adjointe École de bibliothéconomie et sciences de l’information (EBSI) Faculté des arts et des sciences Université de Montréal C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal (QC) H3C 3J7
Groupe design ∩ société www.gds.umontreal.cahttp://www.gds.umontreal.ca
[cid:4BBDFA1F-7683-4A65-B4C9-D5C2AAF147DD]
Le 2 janv. 2019 à 16:40, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.commailto:phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> a écrit :
Hi all! Is anyone doing anything with public domain day and Wikipedia? We are running an edit-a-thon on Wikipedia Day centered around 1923 books we digitized here at MIT libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Public_Domain_Day_2019
but I am struggling with what kinds of articles to work on or activities to do.
Any ideas? Is anyone doing something similar in their libraries? I think it would be fun to go through the Hathitrust 1923 collection, which is now open, to see what would be good for Wikipedia: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?c=149827760;a=srchls;q1=*
cheers, Phoebe
-- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.comhttp://gmail.com/ * _______________________________________________ Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
The English Wikisource is busy adding books, starting of course from the ubiquitous Gibran: https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_texts&diff=9024...
Federico
- Nemo - cool! - Marie - that is fantastic, best of luck. I am sad to learn about the Canadian copyright issues. But I am very glad to learn about any initiatives involving Wikipedia editing and library & information science schools - we need much more of this! - Kerry - thanks for all the good advice, good for any event. I have run many editathons, but usually I pick a somewhat looser topic that is easier to find a variety of articles to work with. Side note: I would like to challenge our community to host more editing events that *don't* involve writing biographies - though they are easy to start with, there is so much more to do! All of your advice about Wikiprojects is good for this. - Bob - it sounds like we need a jazz project! I was thinking of at the very least playing 1923 jazz during the event :)
Any other public domain related events or ideas? PS: here are the books we digitized in honor of the day: https://archive.org/details/mitlibrariespublicdomain
best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 2:08 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
The English Wikisource is busy adding books, starting of course from the ubiquitous Gibran:
https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_texts&diff=9024...
Federico
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
That's great that MIT is such a supporter of open source.
Is there a list of the titles that have been digitized? When I look at the link it only shows a partial title and some of the authors do not show at all, for instance, what to make of "Reference" or "The Outline of", or "Vol 1: The". It looks like you would have to click at least a hundred times to see what is there, which might be frustrating for newbies. You might think about a list organized by subject, for instance chemistry or music, so people can pick a topic they are interested in.
Is there a special template for the organization or the collection? I have just started seeing this at events, mostly used for photographs donated as a group. I try to use these if they are available as think it helps the people who evaluate uploads for copyright status.
One thing I have noticed about streaming music (or hatnote) during events is that it can slow down the internet considerably, even if you only have a few people editing.
It was interesting to see the first volume of Sigrid Undset's "Kristin Lavransdatter" trilogy. https://archive.org/details/bridalwreath00unds_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Lavransdatter HathiTrust has the original Norwegian in full view https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158001902476;view=1up;seq=1 but the English editions only have limited view https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006055797
It looks like the North American Free Trade Agreement (USMCA or "NAFTA 2.0") may not get passed - it still has to be ratified by U.S., Canadian, and Mexican legislatures, and there has been a lot of negative publicity recently (but none of it so far AFAIK about Berne or copyright). Still, some are still taking it very seriously, there is some rumor that Wikilivres has moved their domain out of Canada.
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 10:50 AM phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- Nemo - cool!
- Marie - that is fantastic, best of luck. I am sad to learn about the
Canadian copyright issues. But I am very glad to learn about any initiatives involving Wikipedia editing and library & information science schools - we need much more of this!
- Kerry - thanks for all the good advice, good for any event. I have run
many editathons, but usually I pick a somewhat looser topic that is easier to find a variety of articles to work with. Side note: I would like to challenge our community to host more editing events that *don't* involve writing biographies - though they are easy to start with, there is so much more to do! All of your advice about Wikiprojects is good for this.
- Bob - it sounds like we need a jazz project! I was thinking of at the
very least playing 1923 jazz during the event :)
Any other public domain related events or ideas? PS: here are the books we digitized in honor of the day: https://archive.org/details/mitlibrariespublicdomain
best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 2:08 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
The English Wikisource is busy adding books, starting of course from the ubiquitous Gibran:
https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_texts&diff=9024...
Federico
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
--
- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com * _______________________________________________ Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
Actually for newbies and 1lib1ref, I don’t usually do biographies but save them for those with a little more experience. For newbies, I use lists. Every public library in Queensland , Australia, is mentioned in the Wikipedia article for the applicable town, suburb or rural area, even down to mobile library service points. If you believe public libraries are important civic amenities (and I presume I’m preaching to the choir here), get their existence onto Wikipedia. All it takes is one or two sentences. E.g. for the town of Miriam Vale ...
The Miriam Vale Library is at 41 Blomfield Street; it is operated by the Gladstone Regional Council.[15]
If we knew when it opened, we added that too. Or some other interesting fact about it (not opening hours). For example for the town of Mackinney
The McKinlay Shire Council operates a public library at Middleton Street; it is claimed to be Queensland's smallest public library.[9][10]. (The article has photos if you want to see just how small it is)
Schools are another great list of topic. Librarians generally think schools matter too. What you can say depends on what easily accessible data you have. But all of our governments schools have a link from the home page of their website to their last annual report which tells you what years of schooling are offered, number of enrolled kids, and number of teachers, which is all good factual material for Wikipedia.
If you wanting to celebrate new public domain manual, look for list-of resources like almanacs and tourist guides, which are full of information about tiny towns like the name of their mayor or the number of hotels and beds therein and the price of a week’s stay with full board, or other factoids. Such books were the Wikipedia of their times, and provide interesting tidbits for the history section of any town article in Wikipedia today.
Kerry
Sent from my iPad
On 4 Jan 2019, at 5:49 pm, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- Nemo - cool!
- Marie - that is fantastic, best of luck. I am sad to learn about the Canadian copyright issues. But I am very glad to learn about any initiatives involving Wikipedia editing and library & information science schools - we need much more of this!
- Kerry - thanks for all the good advice, good for any event. I have run many editathons, but usually I pick a somewhat looser topic that is easier to find a variety of articles to work with. Side note: I would like to challenge our community to host more editing events that *don't* involve writing biographies - though they are easy to start with, there is so much more to do! All of your advice about Wikiprojects is good for this.
- Bob - it sounds like we need a jazz project! I was thinking of at the very least playing 1923 jazz during the event :)
Any other public domain related events or ideas? PS: here are the books we digitized in honor of the day: https://archive.org/details/mitlibrariespublicdomain
best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 2:08 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote: The English Wikisource is busy adding books, starting of course from the ubiquitous Gibran: https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_texts&diff=9024...
Federico
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
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- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com *
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
Hi all,
We also have a Commons page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Public_Domain_Day
All images restored are posted here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Public_Domain_Day/2019
Greetings, Romaine
Op do 10 jan. 2019 om 04:43 schreef Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com:
Actually for newbies and 1lib1ref, I don’t usually do biographies but save them for those with a little more experience. For newbies, I use lists. Every public library in Queensland , Australia, is mentioned in the Wikipedia article for the applicable town, suburb or rural area, even down to mobile library service points. If you believe public libraries are important civic amenities (and I presume I’m preaching to the choir here), get their existence onto Wikipedia. All it takes is one or two sentences. E.g. for the town of Miriam Vale ...
The Miriam Vale Library is at 41 Blomfield Street; it is operated by the Gladstone Regional Council https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladstone_Regional_Council.[15] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Vale#cite_note-15
If we knew when it opened, we added that too. Or some other interesting fact about it (not opening hours). For example for the town of Mackinney
The McKinlay Shire Council operates a public library at Middleton Street; it is claimed to be Queensland's smallest public library.[9] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinlay,_Queensland#cite_note-9[10] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinlay,_Queensland#cite_note-10. (The article has photos if you want to see just how small it is)
Schools are another great list of topic. Librarians generally think schools matter too. What you can say depends on what easily accessible data you have. But all of our governments schools have a link from the home page of their website to their last annual report which tells you what years of schooling are offered, number of enrolled kids, and number of teachers, which is all good factual material for Wikipedia.
If you wanting to celebrate new public domain manual, look for list-of resources like almanacs and tourist guides, which are full of information about tiny towns like the name of their mayor or the number of hotels and beds therein and the price of a week’s stay with full board, or other factoids. Such books were the Wikipedia of their times, and provide interesting tidbits for the history section of any town article in Wikipedia today.
Kerry
Sent from my iPad
On 4 Jan 2019, at 5:49 pm, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- Nemo - cool!
- Marie - that is fantastic, best of luck. I am sad to learn about the
Canadian copyright issues. But I am very glad to learn about any initiatives involving Wikipedia editing and library & information science schools - we need much more of this!
- Kerry - thanks for all the good advice, good for any event. I have run
many editathons, but usually I pick a somewhat looser topic that is easier to find a variety of articles to work with. Side note: I would like to challenge our community to host more editing events that *don't* involve writing biographies - though they are easy to start with, there is so much more to do! All of your advice about Wikiprojects is good for this.
- Bob - it sounds like we need a jazz project! I was thinking of at the
very least playing 1923 jazz during the event :)
Any other public domain related events or ideas? PS: here are the books we digitized in honor of the day: https://archive.org/details/mitlibrariespublicdomain
best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 2:08 AM Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
The English Wikisource is busy adding books, starting of course from the ubiquitous Gibran:
https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_texts&diff=9024...
Federico
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
--
- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
Libraries mailing list Libraries@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries