Hi Jane,
great idea, but unfortunately, those lists are useless: they were created in
a hurry when the ministry responsible for cultural heritage decided they
wanted to know about all cultural heritage monuments by the end of the year,
so a small team of experts drove through every village and literally decided
by rule of thumb which building fit the categories provided by law. The
lists consist of nothing more than a really short description (one or two
words) and a street address, they actually showed some of the folders to me.
With further investigation, a not so small number of buildings listed won't
be considered a monument anymore, some of the buildings have been teared
down or modified over the past two-and-a-half decades... Not even the
government agency uses those lists anymore, they will always have a look at
the building when they're asked wether it's a monument or not.
In Hesse (and most other german states), it's the law and not an
administration that decides which building is a cultural heritage monument.
Therefore, there's no need to have lists everywhere. They're working on it,
but it takes about 5 years to cover 500 monuments, since they take a really
detailed look at the architecture, search in archives etc. Since the lists
are not needed to protect the buildings, they have plenty of time and only
very few people are working on it (usually just one guy per county, if at
all). They won't complete the work until 2030 if they keep up the current
pace.
For all areas of the state, we can however rely on a series of books called
"Dehio", which lists _very_ special buildings like churches and town halls,
who clearly fall under what the law considers a cultural heritage monument.
During the Central Hesse project, we'll spend a weekend in an area just
covered by those books and try to photograph as many of those monuments.
Best regards,
Kilian
On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Kilian,
*****"dot matrix printed lists from the 1980s"*****
I am impressed! This sounds like a perfect opportunity for some
crowd-sourced lists on Wikipedia. It would be awesome to start a WikiProject
specifically to do just this one set of lists in this one section of the
country, and then maybe others will follow...
It could give a whole new meaning to Germany's nomination of "Wikipedia for
World Heritage"!
Jane
2011/8/1 Kilian Kluge <kilian(a)k-kluge.de>
Hi Maarten,
On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Maarten Dammers <maarten(a)mdammers.nl>wrote;wrote:
Awesome events! I love to see a blogpost about
this. I will try to add
the Hesse lists this week. How are the lists coming along in other parts of
Germany?
I'm not sure, but there's a slow but steady progress. I'll try to get an
overview until mid August, but I fear that there are many blank spots left.
Hesse is as complete as it gets, for many areas not even the administration
itself has usable lists (I visited them and they showed me some dot matrix
printed lists from the 1980s that even they can't use as a tool to figure
out which building is a monument).
While we have little problems converting pdfs and excel sheets we get,
collecting the data in the first place is our biggest issue. Many
organizations are hesitant to release their digital lists (even though it's
publicized already) and we just don't have the capacities to talk to all of
them personally.
I'll keep you updated.
Kilian
_______________________________________________
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
WikiLovesMonuments(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu