On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
At the Wikimedia chapter meeting in Berlin last week,
Wikisource was mentioned as an interesting project in
several different settings.
I know a lot of interesting projects and attempts are
being tried in various languages of Wikisource, but
perhaps there isn't enough coordination and exchange
of ideas and experience between all volunteers.
Agree with you that more sharing of information would be beneficial to
the various projects.
How could we improve this? I personally think this
mailing list is the first place to start. We could
all write short notices of any new idea or project
that we are undertaking.
How can we help this happen consistently?
Then we should probably
get together at a session during the Wikimania
conference in Gdansk this summer.
Excellent idea especially if the discussions are then brought back to
this mailing list for a broader audience.
The Wikimedia "chapters" are national or regional
membership associations that provide means to go
beyond the ordinary project volunteer communities,
for example when expenses need to be covered for
travel or equipment, or when contracts need to be
signed. One example is that Wikimedia France recently
signed a deal with the Bibliothèque nationale de France
to provide access to scanned images of books,
that can be proofread in
fr.wikisource.org.
Excellent to hear.
Deals of this kind fit in with a larger pattern,
where chapters seek collaboration with galleries,
libraries, archives and museums (= GLAM), hoping
that they will contribute free images to Wikimedia
Commons and Wikipedia. Or where museums will allow
wikipedians to take photos of their collections.
Other chapters are buying scanners for volunteers
to use. But perhaps digital cameras are more
useful than scanners these days. How many know
how to use them correctly? Maybe we need workshops.
Informal discussions and workshops that share this information can
spur people to try something like this in their own region.
Also more outreach to groups of people already doing this type of work
could be very fruitful.
Many of the chapters are now growing fast and are
quite successful at fundraising. This creates an
interesting challenge to fund projects that really
make a difference. The chapters need good projects
to fund, that they can show off to donors at the
coming fundraiser in the fall 2010/winter 2011.
I think Wikisource has a lot of potential for
supplying chapters with good projects to fund.
Big picture Wikisource adds value to WMF by enhancing the information
available about a topic with links from other WMF projects to
wikisource, so content wise it is a win for people not directly
involved in the Wikisource.
Sydney Poore
(FloNight)
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Wikimedia Sverige - stöd fri kunskap -
http://wikimedia.se/
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