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@aol.com daniwo59@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 _______________________________________________ Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l@mail.wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

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.

This seems, in principal, to be a welcome development.

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.

I realize that Jefferson was prolific, but it comes as a surprise that this would never have been done before in the 180 years since his death given that historically philosophically he is one of the most important of US presidents. This kind of material needs to be available in two formats. The digitized scans would be essentially uneditable to preserve historical accuracy. Even scans modified to improve contrast, or to eliminate foxing or chicory-cup stains are derivatives of this stable corpus.

Transcriptions need to be subject to various hierarchies of editability. Disputable readings of handwriting, links, references and footnotes, translations, commentaries. It would be wise to establish protocols to account for all of these possibilities.

You also mentioned the National Geographic Society in your introduction. What is being offered there?

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.

Very much, though I think that much of this should be handled through the national organizations and domains. Nationality is a more important issue here than language. It is not unusual for countries to require that funds raised through deductible charitable donations be expended within that country. We also need to remember that the United States is unusual in its policy of putting all of its documents in the public domain. The kind of negotiation that may be needed to approach that reality elsewhere may be more easily accomplished from within the country.

Ec