Wow, this is quite an astonishing gift. Although I'm not familiar with
the museum, I'm sure this'll open some great stuff to us and improve
all Wikimedia projects quite substantially. I assume the data will be
available to use (transcribe, change format, upload, &c.) soon after
the contact is signed? Has it already been digitised?
On 13/07/06, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote:
Hello
As some of you may know, Brad and I were in DC for most of this week, where
we werre joined by Mindspillage and NullC for some fascinating meetings with
people from the Smithsonian, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library
of Congress, and the National Geographic Society. One of the primary
purposes of these meetings was to identify content that we can use for our
projects, including Wikisource. The meetings were very informative and
productive.
Given that there are certain legal issues involved, I will wait for Brad to
describe in greater depth the outcome of these meetings. I will, however,
describe two meetings that may have more immediate results for the
Wikisource and Commons communities.
Mindspillage and I had a great meeting with Lawrence (Larry) Swiader, the
Deputy CIO of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has given us permission
to use any and all of the material created and licensed by that Museum
according to the terms of our license. This includes images, video, video
transcripts, audio, and text, including the new Holocaust encyclopedia that
they are building on line (in seven languages), and which they plan to be
the most comprehensive encyclopedia of its kind in the world. All they are
asking for in return in attribution. Essentially, although this was not said
in so many words, they are releasing all of their in-hourse material
according to the terms of the GNU-FDL. Larry was especially excited by the
prospect of our people participating in the translation effort. I would like
to point out that this is an outstanding repository of material, not just
about World War II and the Holocaust, but about other modern instances of
genocide, including Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. They have no
problem whatsover with our translating their proprietary formats into free
software formats such as .ogg files.
At the end of our meeting, we discussed the need for a contract to formalize
this agreement. Brad will be drafting one to send to their counsel, and
things should be underway quickly. In the meantime, I encourage you to look
through their materials and see what is there.
The Library of Congress meeting was also quite spectacular. They also have
enormous archives which they are willing to share, but I am noting here that
some of their materials still fall under copyright so greater caution must
be exercised. Over the next few weeks, we will better identify what is there
for the taking.
During our talks, they made mention of the fact that many important
historical documents may have been scanned, but they have not yet been
transcribed. One of the repositories mentioned was the Thomas Jefferson
archives at Monticello. Speaking of this particular archive, they told us
that the work was so daunting that the Jefferson people (and other groups as
well) have taken to outsourcing the transcription work to India. I would
like to suggest to the current Wikisource team and additional volunteers
that we jump at this opportunity to help in the realtime preservation of
these documents, which are of enormous historical importance. My other
suggestion is that we contact these organizations in an organized manner,
rather than as individuals, so that we appear organized and do not duplicate
efforts.
Finally, we have now contacted some of the most important repositories of
content in the United States and we were welcomed by them. I encourage
Wikimedians in other countries, representing other languages, to make the
same coordinated effort with their local repositories in their respective
languages.
More to come,
Danny
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