Forward. I was on the wrong list.

Ant

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Hello,

A couple of weeks ago, I went to an event organized in Paris by the French Government about "economics of culture". During that event, I mentionned that the French chapter has several ongoing discussions with various museums to set up content partnerships.

Here are two examples of such potential partnerships: * a small museum with very old and precious documents. The museum has limited room for access and documents are fragile, so only a few visitors are allowed to look at them. The museum wants to digitize these docs, but has limited technical infrastructure. Opportunity: we host their documents on wikisource and provide them additional visibility through an article on Wikipedia, featuring their best manuscripts. * a large museum already has a digitization procedure for the documents, as well as a hosting service. However, the digitized version contains mistakes (errors generated in the process) and the museum simply does not have the human power to provide the corrections of the numerous documents digitized by their services. Our members can take care of this task.

Wikisources members know all that very well and much better than I. I just summarize that very quickly for reference.

In Europe, at least in some countries, we meet several problems * many scholars have a rather bad image of Wikipedia (because written by amateurs, anonymous members, plagued by vandals etc...) * the other wikimedia projects have rather poor popularity and would benefit from more "light" * journalists are bored and need new information (otherwise, they focus on all the bad stories) * some projects are more difficult to advertise than others, because they are full competitors with other commercial projects of very good quality (eg, wiktionary, wikinews...)

Besides, my feeling is that contributors and in particular members from chapters need a project on which they can team.

I would like to propose that next year be Wikisource year.

And since the planet is very large, if this is done in large part through chapters, that it be an opportunity for some european chapters to work together.

I am not necessarily thinking of anything very complicated. Examples of efforts we could make together:

* leaflets about wikisource updated and available in a large number of languages; * webbuttons to advertise the project on the web; * each time someone gives a conference about Wikipedia, take the opportunity to spend a couple of minutes of Wikisource as well; distribute leaflets; * summarize our best cases on Wikisource; * develop stories about these best cases. Illustrate. Feature these stories on chapter websites; * develop initiatives on projects for cross project challenges (eg, best article with content improved in at least 3 projects); * chapters may write and distribute a couple of press releases about wikisource; * chapters may propose conferences about wikisource (and speakers available to talk about it); * develop arguments for museums etc...

Measures of success are numerous, from improvements of Wikisource (number of docs), number of mentions in the press, partnerships established with museums etc...

What do you think ?

Ant