New subject: [Foundation-l] National library of Serbia and Wikimedian projects: call for ideas

9 Oct 2007

I have a good relations with Sreten Ugricic, director of National
Library of Serbia [1]. So, we are able to make a lot of things there.

However, I realized that possibilities for cooperation with the
library are much bigger then possibilities of Wikimedian community in
Belgrade. Between 5 and 10 Wikimedians and CC-ians who are willing to
work on that are enough just for very small cooperation projects.

So, there are two major questions:

- What are your ideas for cooperation?
- Do you have ideas how to help?

For now, it is too early to organize any kind of meeting. I would like
to hear your ideas (of course, AFAIK, brainstorming inside of the
Serbian community is ongoing).

Note that National Library of Serbia is a large one. Not so big as
Congress Library, but big enough. There are a lot of important books,
some of the important books exist only there etc.

They are in the process of digitalization, they are even developing
their own software (based on free software), and they are one of the
richest cultural institutions in Serbia.

Because of that ideas shouldn't be limited on "borrow us a book which
we need" and similar. It may go up to the cooperation between WMF and
NLS on some globally important project.

BTW, you may think about other cultural institutions from Serbia which
have data which are globally important. For example, AFAIK, Yugoslav
Film Archive [2] has the second largest film archive in the world.

However, for all such projects participation of the global Wikimedian
community is necessary because we are operating with the same 10-20
people for all projects.

[1] - http://www.nbs.bg.ac.yu/index.php?change_lang=en
[2] - http://www.kinoteka.org.yu/ (in Serbian)