In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not sure if any grant applications ever got submitted. In any case, it's been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia): http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
From the program description, they want:
"...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural institutions. These grants will support collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind. The grant range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
-User:Ragesoss
This suggestion looks worth to investigate. As for commons, certain areas are weakly covered, there might be some people willing to purchase a collection into the public domain. I'll ask a question there.
teun
On 1/9/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not sure if any grant applications ever got submitted. In any case, it's been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia): http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
From the program description, they want: "...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural institutions. These grants will support collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind. The grant range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
-User:Ragesoss
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 11/01/07, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
This suggestion looks worth to investigate. As for commons, certain areas are weakly covered, there might be some people willing to purchase a collection into the public domain. I'll ask a question there.
teun
Note that the funds specifically cannot be used to purchase collections, and the proposal must specifically include a collaborative partner such as a university, library, some institution basically. I think it does seem worth our time investigating though.
cheers, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
I'd be interested in helping to prepare an application, particularly if we can brainstorm a specific innovative project that would help improve the quality of our content.
-- Seth
On 1/8/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not sure if any grant applications ever got submitted. In any case, it's been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia): http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
From the program description, they want: "...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural institutions. These grants will support collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind. The grant range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
-User:Ragesoss
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I went through the application information and I think we could definitely be a strong contender, if we had a good partner and a sound project.
Please contribute ideas here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NEH_Advancing_Knowledge_grant
Basically, we can't use it to purchase existing collections, and we need to have a specific project with a partner such as a library, museum or archive. So we need to brainstorm on either what good projects would be (and then, who would be good to approach as a partner?) or on who good partners would be (and then, what would make sense as a collaborative project?).
After mulling over this a bit, it just screams LIBRARY + WIKISOURCE to me. We need a partner who is sympathetic to open content and not putting restrictions on public domain material.
If you have ideas for good partners and/or projects, please put them on the meta page!
thanks, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
Brianna Laugher schreef:
I went through the application information and I think we could definitely be a strong contender, if we had a good partner and a sound project.
Please contribute ideas here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NEH_Advancing_Knowledge_grant
Basically, we can't use it to purchase existing collections, and we need to have a specific project with a partner such as a library, museum or archive. So we need to brainstorm on either what good projects would be (and then, who would be good to approach as a partner?) or on who good partners would be (and then, what would make sense as a collaborative project?).
After mulling over this a bit, it just screams LIBRARY + WIKISOURCE to me. We need a partner who is sympathetic to open content and not putting restrictions on public domain material.
If you have ideas for good partners and/or projects, please put them on the meta page!
thanks, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects is with our use of maps and geospatial data. I have seen ideas here and there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to work through.
I have background in geography/GIS, ability to use state-of-the-art software such as ArcGIS (http://www.esri.com) that is generally beyond the means of consumers, and knowledge/skills on how to use it to make maps for Wikipedia. But, the potential demand for maps on Wikipedia is very high, the process of making them can be time consuming, and the number of Wikipedians to fulfill it is limited. I did one a while back for Shoshone National Forest. I could refine the look of this map, come up with some standard, and given lots of time could make one for every protected area in the U.S. (and then there's Canada and other countries). Despite this possibility (with significant effort), I'm not entirely sure having only static, non-interactive maps (quickly can become outdate) is the way to go. I could probably write scripts on the GIS-end of things to help automate it, and a bot on the wiki-end to ease the process. I have also played around with the MediaWiki source code and been learning about writing extensions.
Also it would be fantastic to be able to use resources such as the "collection of rare maps of Africa, dating from 1530 to 1915" that's been mentioned. Depending on the map, sometimes it is helpful to georeference them (geoTIFF is the format for this). Also, check out http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/faq.html#3.html (see "Where are the rest of your maps?") And, the map library at Penn State ( http://www.libraries.psu.edu/maps/) is quite extensive.
I know it's a significant undertaking to develop/integrate any capability beyond static maps. It's beyond the scope of what Brion and the current developers can handle, given our current resources. But, I think we could use some discussion to learn what kind of maps/mapping/geospatial data capability that people would like to see with Wikipedia? If given more resources, such as support from a grant, along with well developed and thought out ideas, and interest from the community, I think there is possiblity to improve from the status quo.
I have put some more detailed thoughts about this issue here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AudeVivere/GIS I mention issues concerning locator maps for articles, offline maps/resources, GIS data resources available, copyright issues with data from some sources, open source mapping/GIS capabilities that exist, previous/current efforts - such as geocoordinates in articles, and other ideas. Feedback welcome!
If this interests people, I think we could work to develop specific, feasible ideas. I also have knowledge about writing grant applications and would be glad to help.
I woul consider integration of wikimedia projects with geographical information a major asset.
When I go to flickr.com, I can go add my photos to the map and see what other pix have ben taken in the neighbourhood. To have a similar facility would enable commons to become a major player along with flickr.com. Also the integration with the wikipedias could enable visitors to see what has ben written about subjects in the neighbourhooud. We would become a major travellingguide, and more than that. Ithink we would become a major researchtool. Wikiversity would have a possibly to see what other researches have been carried out in, for example, the same nature reserve.
On 1/12/07, Aude audevivere@gmail.com wrote:
One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects is with our use of maps and geospatial data. I have seen ideas here and there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to work through.
I have background in geography/GIS, ability to use state-of-the-art software such as ArcGIS (http://www.esri.com) that is generally beyond the means of consumers, and knowledge/skills on how to use it to make maps for Wikipedia. But, the potential demand for maps on Wikipedia is very high, the process of making them can be time consuming, and the number of Wikipedians to fulfill it is limited. I did one a while back for Shoshone National Forest. I could refine the look of this map, come up with some standard, and given lots of time could make one for every protected area in the U.S. (and then there's Canada and other countries). Despite this possibility (with significant effort), I'm not entirely sure having only static, non-interactive maps (quickly can become outdate) is the way to go. I could probably write scripts on the GIS-end of things to help automate it, and a bot on the wiki-end to ease the process. I have also played around with the MediaWiki source code and been learning about writing extensions.
Also it would be fantastic to be able to use resources such as the "collection of rare maps of Africa, dating from 1530 to 1915" that's been mentioned. Depending on the map, sometimes it is helpful to georeference them (geoTIFF is the format for this). Also, check out http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/faq.html#3.html (see "Where are the rest of your maps?") And, the map library at Penn State ( http://www.libraries.psu.edu/maps/) is quite extensive.
I know it's a significant undertaking to develop/integrate any capability beyond static maps. It's beyond the scope of what Brion and the current developers can handle, given our current resources. But, I think we could use some discussion to learn what kind of maps/mapping/geospatial data capability that people would like to see with Wikipedia? If given more resources, such as support from a grant, along with well developed and thought out ideas, and interest from the community, I think there is possiblity to improve from the status quo.
I have put some more detailed thoughts about this issue here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AudeVivere/GIS I mention issues concerning locator maps for articles, offline maps/resources, GIS data resources available, copyright issues with data from some sources, open source mapping/GIS capabilities that exist, previous/current efforts - such as geocoordinates in articles, and other ideas. Feedback welcome!
If this interests people, I think we could work to develop specific, feasible ideas. I also have knowledge about writing grant applications and would be glad to help. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Aude, I will look a bit at your GIS links, but remember that they specifically won't fund projects that are only digitising existing collections. Quote: "We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources." Hm... actually some kind of GIS project might work well, especially if it making them more accessible. OK, two things to think about: What will the benefit to a potential partner be? Anything besides a credit acknowledgement? Secondly how would such a project exploit the benefits of using a wiki? Or would it not at all?
cheers, Brianna
On 13/01/07, Aude audevivere@gmail.com wrote:
One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects is with our use of maps and geospatial data. I have seen ideas here and there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to work through.
Getting wiki to be able to handle geographic areas/features would begin to make mapping Wikipedia content more useful and increase the potential for integrating it with other geographic information - such as old historic maps and materials held by map libraries, government data, and gps data . The historic maps would be available in a more accessible form for the public, and allow us to perhaps use certain historic maps from one map library, others from other archives/libraries, and combined with other geographic information and wikicontent. People could find material more easily to use for articles.
We could possibly develop a "map generator" that adds value, extract, and synthesizes information from the historic maps and other data. People could make maps and use them with articles, and/or add "atlas" type pages somewhere (on commons, on wikipedia, somewhere) to augment articles, and the wiki format would allow people to add descriptive information and collaborate. That, in turn, would allow us to develop "atlas" type material about particular places.
Maybe as a pilot project effort, we could (1) pick one or two places (2) see what historic maps and other material would be useful for that place, and find basic base map data (3) develop a way for mediawiki to handle area/polygon geospatial data (gml files?) (4) make a set of historic maps for those particular places more available as an article supplement (5) make some thematic maps for the place, using information derived from the historic maps and other sources.
Another thing the libraries likely have is historic census data, which can often be mapped out in thematic maps. So, not just their map holdings but other records and material they have could be useful. I think that Penn State would be willing to work with us - I know folks there and they have done innovative things with GIS.
The benefit to the library/archive would be that their materials are available to the public in a more accessible way. Wikipedia tends to "summarize" things, and as always there would be links to the references and sources used for people that want more details beyond our summaries.
-Aude
On 1/13/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Aude, I will look a bit at your GIS links, but remember that they specifically won't fund projects that are only digitising existing collections. Quote: "We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources." Hm... actually some kind of GIS project might work well, especially if it making them more accessible. OK, two things to think about: What will the benefit to a potential partner be? Anything besides a credit acknowledgement? Secondly how would such a project exploit the benefits of using a wiki? Or would it not at all?
cheers, Brianna
On 13/01/07, Aude audevivere@gmail.com wrote:
One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia
projects
is with our use of maps and geospatial data. I have seen ideas here and there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to
work
through.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hoi, I do not know if OmegaWiki has already registered on your radar screen for this. What it allows you to do is to include attributes to in essence relational records. It means that if you have coordinates or other attributes, they could go with cities, rivers, countries etc. The translations of many of the subject is something that comes with the package .. :)
The advantage of using OmegaWiki is that you only need to define the information once and it can be available for any project. This is already demonstrated; you can have a look at the same data and change the user interface and see much of the data in the other language.
Thanks, GerardM
Aude schreef:
Getting wiki to be able to handle geographic areas/features would begin to make mapping Wikipedia content more useful and increase the potential for integrating it with other geographic information - such as old historic maps and materials held by map libraries, government data, and gps data . The historic maps would be available in a more accessible form for the public, and allow us to perhaps use certain historic maps from one map library, others from other archives/libraries, and combined with other geographic information and wikicontent. People could find material more easily to use for articles.
We could possibly develop a "map generator" that adds value, extract, and synthesizes information from the historic maps and other data. People could make maps and use them with articles, and/or add "atlas" type pages somewhere (on commons, on wikipedia, somewhere) to augment articles, and the wiki format would allow people to add descriptive information and collaborate. That, in turn, would allow us to develop "atlas" type material about particular places.
Maybe as a pilot project effort, we could (1) pick one or two places (2) see what historic maps and other material would be useful for that place, and find basic base map data (3) develop a way for mediawiki to handle area/polygon geospatial data (gml files?) (4) make a set of historic maps for those particular places more available as an article supplement (5) make some thematic maps for the place, using information derived from the historic maps and other sources.
Another thing the libraries likely have is historic census data, which can often be mapped out in thematic maps. So, not just their map holdings but other records and material they have could be useful. I think that Penn State would be willing to work with us - I know folks there and they have done innovative things with GIS.
The benefit to the library/archive would be that their materials are available to the public in a more accessible way. Wikipedia tends to "summarize" things, and as always there would be links to the references and sources used for people that want more details beyond our summaries.
-Aude
On 1/13/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Aude, I will look a bit at your GIS links, but remember that they specifically won't fund projects that are only digitising existing collections. Quote: "We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources." Hm... actually some kind of GIS project might work well, especially if it making them more accessible. OK, two things to think about: What will the benefit to a potential partner be? Anything besides a credit acknowledgement? Secondly how would such a project exploit the benefits of using a wiki? Or would it not at all?
cheers, Brianna
On 13/01/07, Aude audevivere@gmail.com wrote:
One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia
projects
is with our use of maps and geospatial data. I have seen ideas here and there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to
work
through.
Brianna Laugher wrote:
I went through the application information and I think we could definitely be a strong contender, if we had a good partner and a sound project.
Please contribute ideas here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NEH_Advancing_Knowledge_grant
Basically, we can't use it to purchase existing collections, and we need to have a specific project with a partner such as a library, museum or archive. So we need to brainstorm on either what good projects would be (and then, who would be good to approach as a partner?) or on who good partners would be (and then, what would make sense as a collaborative project?).
After mulling over this a bit, it just screams LIBRARY + WIKISOURCE to me. We need a partner who is sympathetic to open content and not putting restrictions on public domain material.
The Internet Archive? They're widely recognised and have existing partnerships with some libraries...
I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.
Archives are starting to put their material on the web, but still it's only used sparingly. Which is a pity, because it means there is much archival material that historians (both professional and amateur) are interested in that is not available to them because it is in an archive far away, and perhaps even unknown to them.
My idea was to scan these materials, put them on the web, and then make it available to some wiki-like collaborative effort. Volunteers from all over the world could then make themselves useful by doing the transcription of the material (I am thinking in the first place of manuscript material here - printed material is probably easier to transcribe through machine character recognition) and by creating descriptions, indices etcetera.
My idea would be to have something wiki-like, where the main pages would consists of a scan, its transcription (if available) and an area for comments.
Andre Engels
2007/1/9, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com:
In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not sure if any grant applications ever got submitted. In any case, it's been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia): http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
From the program description, they want: "...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural institutions. These grants will support collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind. The grant range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
-User:Ragesoss
On 16/01/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
My idea was to scan these materials, put them on the web, and then make it available to some wiki-like collaborative effort. Volunteers from all over the world could then make themselves useful by doing the transcription of the material (I am thinking in the first place of manuscript material here - printed material is probably easier to transcribe through machine character recognition) and by creating descriptions, indices etcetera.
My idea would be to have something wiki-like, where the main pages would consists of a scan, its transcription (if available) and an area for comments.
And the original images would still be available next to the transcription in case of dispute (or a bad transcription). I seem to recall at least one major genealogical project is doing this - a Canadian census? - and it might be worth looking into that for information on how they work it
[checks]
http://automatedgenealogy.com/census/cache/index.html - using free(?) images from a government body, I think.
They don't use a wiki, but they do have the split-screen thing and what looks like a line-by-line database to feed material into. The line-by-line nature of the source adapts itself easily to this, of course, but it would still work with anything you can chop into reasonably discrete segments. And a wiki does seem the obvious tool to use, though I know we say that about almost everything!
It wouldn't be perfectly accurate, but it would be searchable, which is basically what most people are doing with scans of printed material now; giving it a quick OCR pass to get a mostly-searchable version of the text and then handing an image of the page to the searcher. (And I suppose there is always the possibility for using the results of large-scale distributed transcription to help work on historic-handwriting OCR - we can do modern hand much more easily than we can even century-old copperplate, much less any of the older "legal" styles of writing. But that's a long way away)
We certainly wouldn't solve the "digitisation problem", and having the images out there with good metadata on them is arguably of more academic use than doing the transcriptions, but it would be very interesting to have one specific (largish) thing to work on, release it to the world as a trial project, see if it takes off.
On 16/01/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.
As I wrote on the meta page, they specifically won't fund "projects that focus primarily on digitizing existing collections". So we would need to strongly justify why the wiki method is more than mere digitisation. (From what you described I'm not totally convinced it would be...)
cheers, Brianna
It could only count for the grant if there is a follow up, in which people (volunteers or professionals, or both) do something with the new digitized material: that would bring in the collaboration part.
On 1/16/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
On 16/01/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.
As I wrote on the meta page, they specifically won't fund "projects that focus primarily on digitizing existing collections". So we would need to strongly justify why the wiki method is more than mere digitisation. (From what you described I'm not totally convinced it would be...)
cheers, Brianna
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