On 1/6/12 9:30 PM, Bruce R. Gilson wrote:
2012/1/6 Dominic McDevitt-Parks <mcdevitd@gmail.com mailto:mcdevitd@gmail.com>
We've done a lot of good work already, and it doesn't take a lot of people or time to get good content. This time, I'd like to see if we can do more with the content we produce, so The_ed17 is organizing a little taskforce on-wiki for the editors who can't make it to help with adding images to articles, categorizing, and so on: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_ed17/NARA>. It'll be a few days before we really get a lot of images uploaded, though, especially since we are dealing with large files.When I was there last time, I found I could not be of much use. There was nobody to explain how to use the machines that NARA provided, and it seems that only people who had their own scanners (which I didn't) could do much. I helped one person hold the items he scanned, but that was not much of a contribution. So for me, I think these trips are not very useful.
To be fair, the scanning was a small part of what we did previously. I think anyone who's come to the first three days this time (nine so far, and I expect more tomorrow than on the weekdays!) will testify that it's gone pretty smoothly. I think the way we've changed the format shows we've learned from some past experiences. That's why this time we've selected a particular topic beforehand, we're all staying in the same place, and I and others who have done it before have a good idea of what we're doing with the machines. We've also got slightly better scanners this time, and special NARA loaner laptops, so the equipment really does work. If we had a learning curve before, I we're better now because of it. I think our earlier events were important in their own ways, by exposing Wikimedians to the archives behind the scenes, to the Archivist of the United States, and to the work Wikipedia is doing with NARA. We scanned some, but there was too much going on for it to be a focus. That's the idea behind the ExtravaSCANza, though.
Of course, I'm also a little wary of measuring the "usefulness" of meetups. Primarily, it's a chance to sit around a table and chat with other Wikimedians and get to see handle really cool historical photos that have rarely been seen before. I think that's the main draw; I've enjoyed it, and all of you that have come, immensely so far.
Plus, the 25 gigabytes of files on my drive says we've at least been a little useful, too. :-)
Dominic