Hello,
A couple of weeks ago, I went to an event organized in Paris by the
French Government about "economics of culture".
During that event, I mentionned that the French chapter has several
ongoing discussions with various museums to set up content partnerships.
Here are two examples of such potential partnerships:
* a small museum with very old and precious documents. The museum has
limited room for access and documents are fragile, so only a few
visitors are allowed to look at them. The museum wants to digitize these
docs, but has limited technical infrastructure.
Opportunity: we host their documents on wikisource and provide them
additional visibility through an article on Wikipedia, featuring their
best manuscripts.
* a large museum already has a digitization procedure for the documents,
as well as a hosting service. However, the digitized version contains
mistakes (errors generated in the process) and the museum simply does
not have the human power to provide the corrections of the numerous
documents digitized by their services. Our members can take care of this
task.
Wikisources members know all that very well and much better than I. I
just summarize that very quickly for reference.
In Europe, at least in some countries, we meet several problems
* many scholars have a rather bad image of Wikipedia (because written by
amateurs, anonymous members, plagued by vandals etc...)
* the other wikimedia projects have rather poor popularity and would
benefit from more "light"
* journalists are bored and need new information (otherwise, they focus
on all the bad stories)
* some projects are more difficult to advertise than others, because
they are full competitors with other commercial projects of very good
quality (eg, wiktionary, wikinews...)
Besides, my feeling is that contributors and in particular members from
chapters need a project on which they can team.
I would like to propose that next year be Wikisource year.
And since the planet is very large, if this is done in large part
through chapters, that it be an opportunity for some european chapters
to work together.
I am not necessarily thinking of anything very complicated. Examples of
efforts we could make together:
* leaflets about wikisource updated and available in a large number of
languages;
* webbuttons to advertise the project on the web;
* each time someone gives a conference about Wikipedia, take the
opportunity to spend a couple of minutes of Wikisource as well;
distribute leaflets;
* summarize our best cases on Wikisource;
* develop stories about these best cases. Illustrate. Feature these
stories on chapter websites;
* develop initiatives on projects for cross project challenges (eg, best
article with content improved in at least 3 projects);
* chapters may write and distribute a couple of press releases about
wikisource;
* chapters may propose conferences about wikisource (and speakers
available to talk about it);
* develop arguments for museums etc...
Measures of success are numerous, from improvements of Wikisource
(number of docs), number of mentions in the press, partnerships
established with museums etc...
What do you think ?
Ant