Hello,
I want to share with you a very great work made on several Wikimedia projects in the previous weeks in collaboration between Wikim=C3=A9dia Fran= ce and the General Delegation for French Languages and Languages of France ( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9l%C3%A9gation_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_%C3%A0= _la_langue_fran%C3%A7aise_et_ aux_langues_de_France- DGLFLF), a department dedicated to the Languages in the French Ministry of Culture. This collaboration is (imho) an example of what we can do with an administration, and a source for contributors.
In may 2011 Wikim=C3=A9dia France was asked by the DGLFLF to write a report about french language on the wikimedia projects. Some volunteers of the chapter have doing this report, which was well received, up to be shared with all the deputies of the French Parliament (in a general report about the state of the french language) and frequently cited by the french ministry of culture to show the importance of being present on the internets to sustain a language.
After that, we were contacted again by the DGLFLF about the regional and native languages of France (called "Langues de France" --> Languages of France). We were invited in a big conference in Cayenne (french Guyana) on december 2011. I was with Guillaume G., a volunteer, at this conference called "General estates of the mulilinguism in the overseas" to explain Wikimedia projects, with conferences and workshops.
The DGLFLF was very interested by our way of work and the philosophy of the Wikimedia movement. After the conference we have discussed together and decided to publish the acts of the conference by collaborative work on a Wikimedia project : Wikibooks. You can see the result here (not totally finished) : http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du_multilinguism= e_dans_les_outre-mer(andhttp://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du_multilinguism=e_dans_les_outre-mer%28and the linked pages)
We trained to contribute for 10 people from the DGLFLF and other departments of the Ministry of Culture. They have now more than 500 contributions on Wikibooks, and they contribute on Wikipedia now. The idea was to publish on Wikibooks to make a lot of links to Wikipedia, illustrations from Commons etc, to promote the contribution for people interested for the languages issues : linking to Wikipedia is a good way to promote the contributions. Content about French overseas territories and native languages is not so good and we (DGLFLF and WMFR) do a real effort to promote better contributions.
Since one year, the DGLFLF has decided to publish its content with a free license, especially made for open-data and open-content for the french administration, the Etalab license (it is like au CC-BY license). After they have published the content about the General Estates with this license, we have uploaded the content on Wikim=C3=A9dia Commons. It is good= to illustrate the Wikibooks, but now it is free for you too, to reuse and share on the different Wikimedia projects, especially Wikipedia (to enrich the articles about languages of France).
* We have all the videos of the Conference : more than 12 hours of scientifical content about multilinguism and french languages : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videos_from_the_%C3%89tats_g%C3%= A9n%C3%A9raux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer
* We have content produced by the DGLFLF about the different languages : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linguistic_card_from_the_%C3%89t= ats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer
* We also have a great kind of content : 18 audio files with languages of the overseas ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du= _multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-merhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du=_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer ). Some languages are spoken by a lot of people, especially for the Cara=C3=AF= b Islands, but some other are from very little languages, without written, and with a very little number of locutors, like the "Nemi", a language non-written from New-Caledonia, spoken by less than 300 people. And we have a small part of this language now on Wikim=C3=A9dia Commons ! ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nouvelle_Cal%C3%A9donie_Gilbert_Th%C= 3%A9in_Nemi.ogg). We work to have other files of content about native languages like that.
So the reason to share with you this very nice collaboration is double :
* First I want to share a project which is - for me - an example of what we can do with an administration when they are open to free culture and free share of knowledge. It is a real pleasure for me to work like that and share this good experience with you. And I hope that it could be benefit for you and your discussions with your administrations to have an example of a good project, in an other sector than GLAM or education, about free knowledge. * Secondly I wanted to share this links with you because it is a good content for the projects and if we reuse a lot this content, it will be an example for other administrations, in France and maybe in other countries, to do like the General Delegation for French Language and Languages of France.
All the best,
Adrienne