Hello,

One of Wikimedia Sverige's biggest commitments every year is the Gothenburg book fair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair), where roughly 100 000 authors, librarians, publishers and the public come together for four days. This year the theme was African literature, with lots of African authors and publishers, organized by the Nordic Africa Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Africa_Institute), a part of Uppsala university.

Lars Aronsson, from Wikimedia Sverige, talked to NAI about their book fair catalogue "Afrika har ordet"/"Africa speaks", where they presented 65 African authors. He asked them if they would consider releasing the catalogue under a free license. The director Carin Norberg agreed to put the text as CC-BY-SA, which makes it compatible with Wikipedia. The images, unfortunally, could not be released, but Wikimedia Sverige took more than 300 images during the book fair (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:G%C3%B6teborg_Book_Fair_2010), so some of the authors have been covered by us. For instance the South African artist Zapiro, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Shapiro

A list of the 65 authors can be found here:

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall:Afrika_har_ordet_2010

Hopefully these biographies will serve as an inspiration for other language versions to write about these authors as well.

And on a even more positive note: The NAI have talked about taking photos of their own and releasing them under a free license. Let's hope that they do.

Best wishes,

Lennart

Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost: l_guldbrandsson@hotmail.com Användarsida: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg: http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/