Encouraging GLAMs to use free Commons images - Wikimediauk-l

4 Jan 2019

Finally got around to visiting the Ashurbanipal exhibition at the
British Museum.[1] The exhibition is near first class.[2] If you are
in London, treat yourself. The use of light projection to help
illustrate the ancient friezes was smart, and done in a way that still
let you examine the original objects in their normal state.

I was taken aback when I realised that at the start of the exhibition,
the delightful twenty foot across print of a panorama of a modern
location in Iraq was sourced to Alamy.[3] Later in the exhibition, the
modern location photographs I noticed were sourced to Alamy with
credits to the photographer. Considering how much impact the Wiki
Loves Monuments projects have had over recent years,[4] it is a shame
that long established GLAM partners of our Wikimedia projects like the
BM, still appear to prefer the ease of commercial stock photography
libraries, rather than finding and trusting free images from Commons,
or thinking of asking our Community for assistance if high quality
photographs of historical locations are missing from our free
collections, and might help future exhibitions.

Does the UK chapter have any plans to do more to promote GLAM reuse of
our free archives, or to bang the drum a bit more in GLAM journals
where this happens successfully?

# Links and footnotes
1. https://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/ashurbanipal.aspx
2. The convention of style over technical precision seems the norm.
Failing to include accession numbers on descriptions, a lack of
seating and displaying the fantastic library of cuneiform tablets in a
case ten foot high and with no useful labels at all, tend to be
considered bold choices rather than anything the museum wants to
improve
3. The technical photographer within me noticed the slight focus
anomalies, possibly due to the way software joins were done, and
avoidable with either a far more expensive camera with panoramic
features, or by stacking a much larger number of multiple shots
4. https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org

Thanks
Fae
-- 
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae