[Wikimedia Announcements] Free African biographies

[Jan Ainali]

Hello,

One of Wikimedia Sverige's biggest commitments every year is the
Gothenburg book fair
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair), where roughly 100
000 authors, librarians, publishers and the public come together for
four days. This year the theme was African literature, with lots of
African authors and publishers, organized by the Nordic Africa Institute
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Africa_Institute), a part of
Uppsala university.

Lars Aronsson, from Wikimedia Sverige, talked to NAI about their book
fair catalogue "Afrika har ordet"/"Africa speaks", where they presented
65 African authors. He asked them if they would consider releasing the
catalogue under a free license. The director Carin Norberg agreed to put
the text as CC-BY-SA, which makes it compatible with Wikipedia. The
images, unfortunally, could not be released, but Wikimedia Sverige took
more than 300 images during the book fair
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:G%C3%B6teborg_Book_Fair_2010
), so some of the authors have been covered by us. For instance the
South African artist Zapiro,
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Shapiro

A list of the 65 authors can be found here:

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall:Afrika_har_ordet_2010

Hopefully these biographies will serve as an inspiration for other
language versions to write about these authors as well.

And on a even more positive note: The NAI have talked about taking
photos of their own and releasing them under a free license. Let's hope
that they do.

Best wishes,

Lennart


Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost:
l_guldbrandsson at hotmail.com Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/

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Forwarded by Jan Ainali
Wikimedia Sverige
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