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(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fae Sent: 17 August 2011 04:05 To: wikimediauk-l(a)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(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

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_… ) and all the files on commons : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:%C3%89cole_nationale_v%C3%A9t%C3%… 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(a)gmail.com> Sender: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:06:04 To: <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Reply-To: wikimediauk-l(a)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(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: Further, experience at Wikisource suggests that 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)

On 17 August 2011 04:04, Fae &lt;faenwp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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? 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   andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 17/08/2011 12:11, Harry Burt 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. 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 17 August 2011 12:01, Charles Matthews &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: 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 -- geni

On 18 August 2011 00:11, Roger Bamkin &lt;victuallers(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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. -- geni

On 18 Aug 2011, at 23:39, Richard Farmbrough wrote: 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

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:

On 19/08/2011 08:43, Michael Peel 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. Charles

On 19/08/2011 21:09, Andrew Gray wrote: 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. 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. 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