(apologies for cross-posting, but it's a UK topic, a MILHIST topic, GLAM topic and an education topic all rolled into one)
You might be interested to know that Wikimedia UK has lent its support to a bid led by a researcher at University of Birmingham, supported by Oxford University and also the Imperial War Museum, for a project funded by JISC to categorise and prioritise the UK's cultural heritage related to World War I.(1)
This isn't a partnership per se though it may well lead to one. The only commitment we have made is to write a letter and go to a meeting, and the outcomes will be very long-term. However I think it's significant because 1) It is good recognition that the Wikimedia movement is a stakeholder in the development of heritage and educational resources. (The phone call when someone from Oxford was saying "we really think your support would add weight to what we're doing" was, erm, interesting) 2) It gives us as an organisation formal access to a strong network of world-leading institutions focusing on this particular task 3) It's also relatively unusual for a Wikimedia organisation to provide support to someone else to apply for third-party funding in a competitive tendering process, but in this case the Wikimedia UK board thought it was quite justified in pursuit of our objectives.
This should help us build up our network of institutional partners, particularly (but not exclusively) aimed at the World War I centenary, and help lay the groundwork for some exciting collaboration work in the future.
Any questions, or if you'd like to express your interest in being involved in future work on the World War I centenary, please give me a shout.
Chris
(1)JISC's Invitation to Tender: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2011/09/JISC%20ITT%... Wikimedia UK's letter of support (and a bit of a manifesto): http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Birmingham_JISC_support.pdf The people whose bid we are supporting (though nothing specific about it here): http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/warstudies/index.aspx
Chris Keating, 27/10/2011 19:51:
- It's also relatively unusual for a Wikimedia organisation to provide
support to someone else to apply for third-party funding in a competitive tendering process, but in this case the Wikimedia UK board thought it was quite justified in pursuit of our objectives.
Our characteristic of being a (de facto) network of associations in most European countries (and many others) must not be underestimated: it's very useful, for instance, to participate in EU funds. WM-DE is a good example with RENDER. Universities, on the contrary, spend a lot of energies to build international (more or less fake) networks with lots of paper (and signed documents travelling all over the world for months or years) for consortium agreements etc., which usually don't go anywhere.
Nemo
Hi Chris, Sounds like a good project! You might also be interested in knowing about a WWI Centenary project that Europeana is doing - http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en (That's not the final site BTW) I believe they're trying to collate similar records from cultural institutions across Europe to be able to tell the story of the same events from all sides' own records. Perhaps that's a potential tie-in with the UK project. Just keep it in mind :-)
Best, -Liam
wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
On 27 October 2011 17:51, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
(apologies for cross-posting, but it's a UK topic, a MILHIST topic, GLAM topic and an education topic all rolled into one)
You might be interested to know that Wikimedia UK has lent its support to a bid led by a researcher at University of Birmingham, supported by Oxford University and also the Imperial War Museum, for a project funded by JISC to categorise and prioritise the UK's cultural heritage related to World War I.(1)
This isn't a partnership per se though it may well lead to one. The only commitment we have made is to write a letter and go to a meeting, and the outcomes will be very long-term. However I think it's significant because
- It is good recognition that the Wikimedia movement is a stakeholder in
the development of heritage and educational resources. (The phone call when someone from Oxford was saying "we really think your support would add weight to what we're doing" was, erm, interesting) 2) It gives us as an organisation formal access to a strong network of world-leading institutions focusing on this particular task 3) It's also relatively unusual for a Wikimedia organisation to provide support to someone else to apply for third-party funding in a competitive tendering process, but in this case the Wikimedia UK board thought it was quite justified in pursuit of our objectives.
This should help us build up our network of institutional partners, particularly (but not exclusively) aimed at the World War I centenary, and help lay the groundwork for some exciting collaboration work in the future.
Any questions, or if you'd like to express your interest in being involved in future work on the World War I centenary, please give me a shout.
Chris
(1)JISC's Invitation to Tender: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2011/09/JISC%20ITT%... Wikimedia UK's letter of support (and a bit of a manifesto): http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Birmingham_JISC_support.pdf The people whose bid we are supporting (though nothing specific about it here): http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/warstudies/index.aspx
cultural-partners mailing list cultural-partners@wikimedia.ch http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners
You might also be interested in knowing about a WWI Centenary project that Europeana is doing - http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en (That's not the final site BTW) I believe they're trying to collate similar records from cultural institutions across Europe to be able to tell the story of the same events from all sides' own records. Perhaps that's a potential tie-in with the UK project. Just keep it in mind :-)
It all ties together - the people at Oxford University Computing Service who are involved with the Europeana centenary project are the same people who are working on this bid with the academics at Birmingham.
Chris
On 27 October 2011 18:51, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
1) It is good recognition that the Wikimedia movement is a stakeholder in
the development of heritage and educational resources.
<snip>
This should help us build up our network of institutional partners, particularly (but not exclusively) aimed at the World War I centenary, and help lay the groundwork for some exciting collaboration work in the future.
Any questions, or if you'd like to express your interest in being involved in future work on the World War I centenary, please give me a shout.
<snip>
This might be a moment to go public with an idea I have been mulling over for a couple of months, prompted by "Wiki Loves Monuments". I have this thought that WMUK should host a "UK sites" wiki, organised around physical "sites of cultural significance" in the UK.
I had in mind "meta for WLM", in other words a coordination wiki across all the projects for material that can be tied in to the monument concept, and allowing discussion of/participation by relevant institutions. E.g. if there is a need to contact local authorities, a place to house what results, and to point to.
The way discussion is going, expanding the scope to allow for GLAM activity that ties into any given site looks like a good idea. "Stakeholder in the development of heritage and educational resources" is pretty much what was at the back of my mind.
Charles
On 27 October 2011 18:51, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
(apologies for cross-posting, but it's a UK topic, a MILHIST topic, GLAM topic and an education topic all rolled into one) You might be interested to know that Wikimedia UK has lent its support to a bid led by a researcher at University of Birmingham, supported by Oxford University and also the Imperial War Museum, for a project funded by JISC to categorise and prioritise the UK's cultural heritage related to World War I.(1)
Cool. Does this mean that operation majestic titan is going to be able to get decent resolution WW1 battleship pics or are we going to have to go back to the C4 method?
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org