At 17:25 +0000 7/3/06, Andrew Walker wrote:
Hi all,
I'll throw in another idea that has been floating around for a while. (I think it may originally have come from Gordon, but I could be wrong
- it will be in the archives somewhere). This weekend I ran it past a
friend who also happens to be the local (i.e. UK) contact for the charitable fund run by a very large e-commerce company that gives grants in the UK. He thought it was the sort of thing that may be funded by such an organisation.
One of the things we could encourage is the creation of free images for wikipedia, wikinews and wikicommons. There are loads of local history groups, local nature groups and so on around the UK who may want to be involved in creating such content. What we could do is offer a project where we would provide a digital camera and training on basic concepts of intellectual property and producing images for websites to such groups. We could look for funding / sponsorship to fund the project (or provide the cameras) and expect to get significant new free content in return.
Thinking about it, we may even want to get schools involved.
Cheers,
Andrew
And by a strange coincidence, or maybe not, since we are living the dream of Web 2.0 now... one of the local history groups here in the East End of London has just started a two month project with students from Goldsmith's University along the lines of some of the stuff you mention here.
I will not say too much, since the project is in a nascent state, but the group (of women only, currently, since it has arisen from some women only IT training sessions held last year) meets under the auspices section of Poplar HARCA.
And there is already wiki, of course....
http://www.lansburyvoices.org.uk/ http://www.lansburyvoices.org.uk/wiki/
:-)
The Wikipedia entry has been snarfed into the Wikiverse for a while now:
http://lansbury-estate.wikiverse.org/
Cheers!