Hi,
The Chapter has had recent grant requests of the following sorts: * A request to scan and release papers from a notable person's estate after their death, the papers have not previously been in the public domain. * A suggested volunteer project with Wikipedians to scan several thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain. * A suggested project to pay institution professionals to scan several thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain. * A proposal to jointly fund an institution to pay for digitization of hundreds of thousands of previously unreleased historic papers where there are no copyright implications.
In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old" books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a specialist partner (such as Google or established academic institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
I'm not sure the question at this point is whether it's the absolute best use of WMUK funds. It is _a_ use of those funds, which is what has been lacking up to now so far as I've noticed.
In any case the third/fourth bullet points sound like pretty ideal uses of funds to me. I don't think "Google will do it given time" is much of an argument.
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fae Sent: 17 August 2011 04:05 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Question: When and how often should WM-UK give grants for digitization projects?
Hi,
The Chapter has had recent grant requests of the following sorts: * A request to scan and release papers from a notable person's estate after their death, the papers have not previously been in the public domain. * A suggested volunteer project with Wikipedians to scan several thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain. * A suggested project to pay institution professionals to scan several thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain. * A proposal to jointly fund an institution to pay for digitization of hundreds of thousands of previously unreleased historic papers where there are no copyright implications.
In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old" books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a specialist partner (such as Google or established academic institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
We don't have the resources to "do a Google" and digitise all of a large institution's archive - even if my wildest fantasies about our future fundraising turn out to be true.
Neverthless I'd say there is a good case that we should support digitisation. Obviously creating more open cultural content is a good thing in itself. Further, more examples of how open content is used and re-used will help demonstrate why an open publication model is better for the GLAM sector than a commercial model.
I would tend to give preference to projects where; - we are sure the material digitised will be well-used on the Wikimedia projects (preferably by involving the community at an early stage) - digitization is in the context of a broader outreach initiative rather than a one-off. - the material in question is important but might otherwise be overlooked
I'm not sure whether the getting volunteers to do the actual legwork of digitisation is necessarily a good thing - it depends on the volunteer and the item concerned - we could end up with some poor-quality scans and the volunteer time might be better used on making sure the content is used.
Regards,
Chris
Hi,
In 2008/9 WMFr digitized 95 thesis (roughly 4 228 pages) from the 19th century.
We actually paid a digitization company to handle the process. The partnership page on wikisource (in french : http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Partenariats/%C3%89cole_nationale_v... ) and all the files on commons : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:%C3%89cole_nationale_v%C3%A9t%C3%A...
A little return on experience : 1/ paying a company to do it is the way to go. For many obvious pratical reasons but also for one legal less obvious reason : insurrance. The books / content digitized are often old and valuable, you don't want to be responsible if anything happen 2/ On the french Wikisource there's too few editors hence copyediting the content is a long process (not over yet) 3/ it's'a great way to spend money. Little worload and visible results
Hope this helps you in this discussion
All the best
Christophe Board member of the chapter on the right end of the channel Envoye depuis mon Blackberry
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com Sender: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:06:04 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Question: When and how often should WM-UK give grants for digitization projects?
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 17/08/2011 04:04, Fae wrote:
<snip>
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
Well, if WMUK got into this business (grant-provider for digitisation), I doubt there would be any shortage of things on which to spend money. My impression is that archives are full of documents that could usefully be put online. Further, experience at Wikisource suggests that proofreading is the bottleneck, rather than scanning. Of course that is also a comment on the cheap-and-cheerful scans that tend to be the freely-available ones.
So I would be in favour of a pilot, to see how it all goes. Criteria: on a medium scale; in a topic area that is rather clearly UK-centric, and of fairly general interest; and something that could be pointed to as an interesting use of money (not least for the OTRS mails that come in during the fundraiser). Visual content, not just text, helps for that, though myself I'm a text man.
Do we have anyone around who knows enough about the NRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Archives) to give some sort of steer? I ask partly because of the existence of a Wikimedian in Residence at the NARA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archives_and_Records_Administration) right now, who is posting to Wikisource about profile-raising things. It would be a help to know from someone informed how the "urgency" of getting archival material digitised is generally judged. What should be given priority?
In other words, yes, look to spend some money in this direction; at the same time try to document what the aim is, in a way that would make sense to historians, librarians and archivists as well as our donors, and show compatibility with the WMUK mission.
Charles
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
<snip>
Further, experience at Wikisource suggests that
proofreading is the bottleneck, rather than scanning.
</snip>
Other items in this interesting discussion notwithstanding, does anyone know the WikiSource position on paying for proofreading? en.wp is against paid editing, but almost entirely on bias grounds, and there's no room for bias here: either a proofreading is right or it's wrong.
One might reasonably worry about the impact on the community of having an amount of work paid for, but, on the flipside this is donkey work and I daresay the going rates would be very low (I base this on having flicked through prices on AMmazon's Mechanical Turk project).
-- Harry (User:Jarry1250)
Hi WMUK folks,
I can maybe add a little useful information here. WMDE has had a special budget for German Wikisource since 2007. It's been (to my knowledge) exclusively used for digitization of individual documents. The budget has not been used up in any year since it was creatd.
Michail Jungierek, one of our board members, is also highly active in that project and has been managing that particular budget since day one. If you want to know more about his experiences with it, please feel free to contact him directly. I've put him on CC.
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski President Wikimedia Deutschland
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Harry Burt harryaburt@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
<snip>
Further, experience at Wikisource suggests that
proofreading is the bottleneck, rather than scanning.
</snip>
Other items in this interesting discussion notwithstanding, does anyone know the WikiSource position on paying for proofreading? en.wp is against paid editing, but almost entirely on bias grounds, and there's no room for bias here: either a proofreading is right or it's wrong.
One might reasonably worry about the impact on the community of having an amount of work paid for, but, on the flipside this is donkey work and I daresay the going rates would be very low (I base this on having flicked through prices on AMmazon's Mechanical Turk project).
-- Harry (User:Jarry1250)
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 17/08/2011 12:11, Harry Burt wrote:
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com mailto:charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
<snip> Further, experience at Wikisource suggests that proofreading is the bottleneck, rather than scanning. </snip>Other items in this interesting discussion notwithstanding, does anyone know the WikiSource position on paying for proofreading? en.wp is against paid editing, but almost entirely on bias grounds, and there's no room for bias here: either a proofreading is right or it's wrong.
Well, if WS is paying for proofing ... I do about 35 hours a week currently, so I'd be interested. Seriously, WS doesn't have the sort of profile (point 1) that is likely to attract this sort of support. But also (point 2) WS is in a more crowded market than WP, given that there are other and indeed larger text repositories and ways to get proofreading done.
In other words WS needs a USP when it comes to a proofreading project. I can explain what that is (i.e. strong tech support and the ProofReadPage extension of MediaWiki, allowing the proofing itself to be checked by anyone online); but in that light it starts to make more sense to talk about why a given work needs to be on WS, to be proofread to a particularly high and _verifiable_ standard, and what tech support or other expertise is actually needed. Again there is some sort of preliminary discussion about priorities for having certain content freely available online; but typically once a work has been scanned to a reasonable standard as djvu and posted to archive.org, that already meets many people's needs.
For those interested, I recommend what [[User:Dominic]] who is the Wikipedian in Residence at NARA has been saying about WS and GLAM.
Charles
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Well, if WS is paying for proofing ... I do about 35 hours a week currently, so I'd be interested. Seriously, WS doesn't have the sort of profile (point 1) that is likely to attract this sort of support. But also (point 2) WS is in a more crowded market than WP, given that there are other and indeed larger text repositories and ways to get proofreading done.
Viz "attracting this sort of support", I meant from Wikimedia UK. That way WMUK would be able to deliver an end-to-end service within a defined time period.
I appreciate that it may be that WMUK would get maximum value for money using an alternative service, but then importing the results.
-- Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250).
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small scale, the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote:
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small scale, the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
That sounds like an excellent project for a microgrant [1] - individual volumes of the DNB aren't that expensive on eBay, and there's even a 21 volume set going for £85 right now.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants
Mike
What's DNB?
On 19 Aug 2011, at 08:43, "Michael Peel" michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote:
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small scale, the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
That sounds like an excellent project for a microgrant [1] - individual volumes of the DNB aren't that expensive on eBay, and there's even a 21 volume set going for £85 right now.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants
Mike
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
the Dictionary of National Biography; see: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WikiProject_DNB
Mike
On 19 Aug 2011, at 08:50, Patel, Vinesh wrote:
What's DNB?
On 19 Aug 2011, at 08:43, "Michael Peel" michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote:
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small scale, the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
That sounds like an excellent project for a microgrant [1] - individual volumes of the DNB aren't that expensive on eBay, and there's even a 21 volume set going for £85 right now.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants
Mike
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
There is actually a copy of the DNB on ODNB. I would have thought the ODNB may give us it as it is clearly out of copyright? (and it would legally be PD anyway) It might be worth asking if the wiki project hasnt already made a request
On 19 August 2011 08:55, Michael Peel michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
the Dictionary of National Biography; see: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WikiProject_DNB
Mike
On 19 Aug 2011, at 08:50, Patel, Vinesh wrote:
What's DNB?
On 19 Aug 2011, at 08:43, "Michael Peel" michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk
wrote:
On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote:
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small
scale,
the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
That sounds like an excellent project for a microgrant [1] - individual
volumes of the DNB aren't that expensive on eBay, and there's even a 21 volume set going for £85 right now.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants
Mike
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 19/08/2011 14:53, Roger Bamkin wrote:
There is actually a copy of the DNB on ODNB. I would have thought the ODNB may give us it as it is clearly out of copyright? (and it would legally be PD anyway) It might be worth asking if the wiki project hasnt already made a request
It might not. It is not all clearly out of UK copyright. I don't believe in attracting attention in this way.
Charles
On 19/08/2011 08:43, Michael Peel wrote:
On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote:
What about the "missing pages" from the DNB project? Fairly small scale, the list is at least ready to go for a significant number of volumes, and an individual copy of the DNB is not a priceless artifact.
That sounds like an excellent project for a microgrant [1] - individual volumes of the DNB aren't that expensive on eBay, and there's even a 21 volume set going for £85 right now.
Hang on - much as I love the DNB, there is huge amount to know before saying spending money on it would be a good use. There are literally hundreds of Google Books keys for DNB volumes, some of which don't work in the UK but do work in the USA, etc.
Charles
On 19 August 2011 17:59, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Hang on - much as I love the DNB, there is huge amount to know before saying spending money on it would be a good use. There are literally hundreds of Google Books keys for DNB volumes, some of which don't work in the UK but do work in the USA, etc.
To quickly follow up, there's also the complicating factor that not all DNB articles are public domain - at least, not outside the US, which isn't an issue for WM proper but is for us! Almost everything in the 1885 publication is *likely* to be PD - unless the contributors were very precocious junior academics - but the DNB included more recent content (supplementary volumes published every ten years or so) and those are a real minefield involving individual author dates. OED do have the metadata to figure this out on a life+70 basis, but it might not be trivial for them.
(It's also not clear if the versions published on the ODNB website are themselves the "clean" versions - they may have been tidied up, etc, which muddies the waters a little.)
Do we have a central list of DNB volumes for which WS does not have scans? I'm happy to spend an hour digging through Google Books / OL / etc...
On 19/08/2011 21:09, Andrew Gray wrote:
On 19 August 2011 17:59, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Hang on - much as I love the DNB, there is huge amount to know before saying spending money on it would be a good use. There are literally hundreds of Google Books keys for DNB volumes, some of which don't work in the UK but do work in the USA, etc.
To quickly follow up, there's also the complicating factor that not all DNB articles are public domain - at least, not outside the US, which isn't an issue for WM proper but is for us! Almost everything in the 1885 publication is *likely* to be PD - unless the contributors were very precocious junior academics - but the DNB included more recent content (supplementary volumes published every ten years or so) and those are a real minefield involving individual author dates. OED do have the metadata to figure this out on a life+70 basis, but it might not be trivial for them.
Indeed. The Wikisource author pages for DNB authors are not (quite) a complete set yet (some issues of identification in under 1% of cases); and not all death dates are therefore present. Some of the authors of the first edition did live on into the 1940s, meaning there are a few years before their articles fall into the public domain. But at least 99% of it is ex-copyright in the UK.
As for the supplements, the 1901 and 1912 supplements are PD in the USA and are therefore included in the Wikisource project. The 1912 authors are going to need more research, and are going to present more of a problem for UK copyright.
(It's also not clear if the versions published on the ODNB website are themselves the "clean" versions - they may have been tidied up, etc, which muddies the waters a little.)
They are apparently the versions from the 1912 edition, though I wouldn't stake my life on that. I believe what happened is that when OUP took over the DNB, during World War I, they must have decided to "freeze" the existing biographies to reprint. The subsequent OUP supplements are out of the picture as not PD.
Do we have a central list of DNB volumes for which WS does not have scans? I'm happy to spend an hour digging through Google Books / OL / etc...
So glad you asked ... it's not a question of not having scans as such. My basic list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/DNB_scans
My finding list to zap Google Books links on enWP to the DNB:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/DNB_referencing_data
The point being that such links are generally not readable here in the UK, so should be replaced by links to Wikisource versions as we proof-read them.
Working technical list on Wikisource:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WikiProject_DNB/Progress
Outsiders tend to find WS a bit cryptic. A bot posted scans of all 63 volumes of the first edition; but there were several issues (flaws in the posting led to omitted and duplicated pages; some pages were in a very bad, illegible state; of choice of scans in some case the best scan wasn't used). Much has been done, using (a) the list of scans I made, which relates solely to archive.org, and then (b) other scans.
The real issue, however, is that mashups of scans are not easy to use because of the inflexibility of the djvu files used. Replacing one whole scan by another is a technical royal pain - I haven't done it myself, but I have heard the groans from those who do. Fixing one page at a time when it is bad currently is not a way that works (apparently).
The correct response to Rich's suggestion seems to be this: try to find a way of improving djvu handling on Wikisource/Commons, and you will have hit on something of major benefit all round to those working in this area.
Charles
On 17 August 2011 12:01, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
So I would be in favour of a pilot, to see how it all goes. Criteria: on a medium scale; in a topic area that is rather clearly UK-centric, and of fairly general interest; and something that could be pointed to as an interesting use of money (not least for the OTRS mails that come in during the fundraiser). Visual content, not just text, helps for that, though myself I'm a text man.
Do we have anyone around who knows enough about the NRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Archives) to give some sort of steer? I ask partly because of the existence of a Wikimedian in Residence at the NARA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archives_and_Records_Administration) right now, who is posting to Wikisource about profile-raising things. It would be a help to know from someone informed how the "urgency" of getting archival material digitised is generally judged. What should be given priority?
Nationalised industries (with the possible exception of the railways).
==Advantages== 1)I'm not aware of any existing projects in the area so we would not be trying to get around an existing settlement 2)A fair bit of non text media (photos, diagrams, maps) 3)Fairly useful in terms of covering 50s and early 60s technology
==Disadvantages==
1)It's not clear where all the stuff is. While some of it appears to have ended up in Swindon other stuff got sent to local museums. Which may in turn have passed it on further for various reasons. 2)May be a fair bit of overlap with Bundesarchiv stuff 3)Cataloging may not be first class
On 17 August 2011 04:04, Fae faenwp@gmail.com wrote:
In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old" books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a specialist partner (such as Google or established academic institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
Yes, this is certainly true. However, I'd argue that in most cases, we'd want to go to the specialist partner for the digitisation work itself anyway. We don't have the specialist equipment, we don't have the specialist skills, we don't have the expertise in handling digitisation projects, etc etc. If we try to do it ourselves, with volunteers, it's likely that we'd get lower quality work, and a higher risk of the actual digitisation stalling half-way for some reason, alongisde the significant costs of leasing the hardware to do it with and trying to manage the data workflow. (Plus, as Christophe says below, outsourcing it saves a lot of conservation headaches...)
This isn't to say we shouldn't do it; one main reason for us to support the actual digitisation process would be to ensure that the content is suitable for WM projects - that there aren't problematic copyright assertions, and that we can get hold of it in a convenient fashion (suitable file types, metadata, etc).
Once it's been digitised by the specialists, then we can work with it in the manner we do best - process it, host it on WS or Commons, incorporate it into articles, etc.
Images (photographs or artwork) are probably better for showing the value-added effects of Wikimedia involvement rather than papers or collections of documents - documents we merely catalogue and host, and any secondary work done on them may take a long time to materialise, whereas images can quickly be incorporated into other projects, and so we get a more visible result.
Are the proposed digitisation projects asking us for additional funding, or to underwrite the entire process?
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
They're very different things, certainly. We shouldn't prioritise this *over* editor outreach, etc, but it's certainly a legitimate complement to it.
Andrew Gray said:
Are the proposed digitisation projects asking us for additional funding, or to underwrite the entire process?
Both:
One is an idea for getting 2,000 unique WWII artworks professionally scanned by their curator, we would fund all the basic costs (I'm encouraging the proposal to be written up) and the results would be freely released for a parallel collaboration project on Commons. This is a manageable size, time limited and easily justifiable in terms of impact and value.
A far more complex idea (concept stage) is a partnership for scanning several hundreds of thousands of scientific documents and artefacts with (another) national institution who we have yet to talk with. It would probably be sensible for us to co-partner, in the sense that I doubt we would fund the entire programme, or even be part of the management team, but we would commit to ensuring that the results are made available to the obvious Wikimedia projects in a way that encourages e-volunteers to reuse the results. One risk for such a proposal and whether we can commit to it, is the time it is likely to take to put forward and length of time to execute, this raises an administrative burden if we rely on annual grants or are officially required to spend all our money every 12 months.
All proposals will be put up on the open wiki when they are received in writing.
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
My view would be only to show people how. e.g. I felt it was novel that we were digitising someones stuff they had left in their will to be published. However once we have proved it can be done and it is easy then we should leave it to volunteers. Our budget does not compare to Google's.
On 17 August 2011 04:04, Fae faenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
The Chapter has had recent grant requests of the following sorts:
- A request to scan and release papers from a notable person's estate
after their death, the papers have not previously been in the public domain.
- A suggested volunteer project with Wikipedians to scan several
thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain.
- A suggested project to pay institution professionals to scan several
thousand major items of significant artwork and records that can be released for the first time into the public domain.
- A proposal to jointly fund an institution to pay for digitization of
hundreds of thousands of previously unreleased historic papers where there are no copyright implications.
In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old" books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a specialist partner (such as Google or established academic institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement.
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 18 August 2011 00:11, Roger Bamkin victuallers@gmail.com wrote:
My view would be only to show people how. e.g. I felt it was novel that we were digitising someones stuff they had left in their will to be published. However once we have proved it can be done and it is easy then we should leave it to volunteers. Our budget does not compare to Google's.
It doesn't but that would just being more picky about what to digitalise. Apart from insurance an access issues the problem you are going to face with volunteers is that large scale scanning is extremely boring.
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org