[Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Israel Report, October - December 2011

Sat Jan 14 09:33:22 UTC 2012

Dear all,

Here is our activity report for the period of October-December 2011
(apparently monthly reports are difficult to keep up, so we’re
switching to less frequent quarterly reporting).

== General Assembly ==

On December 18th, Wikimedia Israel held a General Assembly in Tel
Aviv, to present our Board’s plans and budget allocation for 2012 and
to approve the final general and financial reports for 2010.

Most of the GA was devoted to hearing reports from our volunteers in
the field about the various projects now underway - we are
experiencing a true renaissance of outreach activity since hosting
Wikimania in August. In this report we’ll mention some of the
activities presented in the GA.

The GA was attended by 16 people, 14 of which are formal members of our chapter.

==GLAM==

===GLAM: IMJ project ===

As reported before, part of the GLAM:IMJ project included a
Wikipedian-in-Residence program. The first WIR, Yair Talmor, began his
work at the Museum on Sep. 18th, and his residency ended on Nov. 30th.

Throughout his two months at the IMJ, Talmor worked in order to
promote the goals set at the beginning of the project. This was no
easy task - although an effort was made to have realistic and
reachable milestones, the project was very ambitious and much energy
was invested in it, just as part of it being the first GLAM project in
Israel.

As part of his residency, Talmor led editing sessions with Museum
staff, promoted the relations between museum staff, volunteers of the
Information Center and the Hebrew Wikipedia community, worked with the
museum in order to release media files to Wiki Commons and cultivated
a personal relationship with artists [and their families], who
eventually donated info and media to the project.

* http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2011/Contents/Israel_report
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/IMJ (project page on en.wp)

==== The 8th Digital Heritage Conference at the Van Leer Institute,
Jerusalem ====

On November 16th, we had the privilege of attending the 8th annual
conference on the digitization of cultural heritage. The conference is
probably the most professional & important one in Israel on the
subject, so we were fortunate to have a two-hour session to present
our projects.
The session, which was called "Wikipedia and GLAM Projects - How
galleries, libraries, archives and museums work with Wikipedia &
Wikimedia to share knowledge", was chaired by Dr. Allison Kupietzky,
Collections Database Manager and Head of the Information Center for
Israeli Art at the IMJ, and had 5 parts:

* "How to change the world while still in your slippers - Wikipedia,
Wikimedia and the free content movement" - A presentation by Tomer
Ashur, Chairman of Wikimedia Israel.

* "Wikimedia's Outreach Projects - from Africa to GLAM" - A
presentation by Shani Evenstine, GLAM Projects Coordinator, Wikimedia
Israel.

* "Israeli Art on Wikipedia as part of the GLAM IMJ Project" - A
presentation by Dr. Allison Kupietzky, Head of the Information Center
for Israeli Art, IMJ & Yair Talmor, Wikipedian-in-Residence, IMJ
Project.

* "Working Together - The National Library and Wikipedia" - A
presentation by Ido Ivri, Manager of Digital Programs, the National
Library of Israel. The lecture described the National Library of
Israel's initiative for providing access to a historic collection of
3,000 photographs, by making it accessible on Wikipedia, the benefits
of the process to the general public, what the National Library gains
and possible implications on the digitization and licensing processes.

* A Q&A panel with the audience.

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2011/Contents/Israel_report

===GLAM: NLI Project ===

It is with great pleasure that we announce the beginning of the second
big GLAM project in Israel - a collaboration with the National Library
of Israel. This project also hosts a Wikipedian-in-Residence, Daniel
Tzvi Framowitz, who will work at the NLI once-twice a week, in the
coming six months. The project was initiated by Ido Ivri, Manager of
Digital Programs at the NLI, and a new wikipedian.
* http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2011/Contents/Israel_report

== Copyright Legislation ==

We are continuing our ongoing effort to introduce a change in Israeli
copyright law that will allow free use of all pictures and media
created by state employees. With a 18 months delay, the Economy
Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) started to discuss
this change in the law, and in its next meeting will vote on whether
to accept the change as drafted by Wikimedia Israel and the Israeli
Internet Association (ISOC). More information and our policy paper
published before the meeting: http://blog.wikimedia.org.il/?p=325 (in
Hebrew)

== Israeli Ministry of Education ==

Following meetings between the chapter’s representatives and the
Science and Technology Administration at the Ministry of Education, we
held a trial series of virtual meetings teaching fifth and sixth grade
pupils about crowdsourcing, wisdom of the masses, history of Wikipedia
and how to use Wikipedia in a smart and responsible way. The material
was written by Deror Avi and Amir Aharoni and taught by the charming
Tamar Hayardeni to 380 classes in three rounds, with 13,300 (!) pupils
watching it altogether.

== A lecture to Arab teachers in Baqa al-Gharbiyye ==

On December 4 Amir Aharoni gave a lecture about Wikipedia in the Arab
town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye to twenty five Arab teachers of history and
geography. The lecture presented Wikipedia and the principles behind,
showed the teachers how to read and search Wikipedia effectively, how
to use in their particular classes and how to improve articles for the
benefit of their students and all Wikipedia readers. This was the
first WMIL activity with the Israeli Arab community.

== Haifa University Faculty of the Humanities ==

As part of a big cooperation initiative with the Faculty of the
Humanities in the Haifa University, Hana Yariv is instructing factuly
staff and students on Wikipedia and its inner workings. In a few
courses provided by the faculty, students are required to write
Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework.

== Haifa University Faculty of Public Health ==

Deror Avi is leading a cooperation project with the Faculty of Public
Health at Haifa Univeristy, in which graduate students will write
Wikipedia articles as a mandatory assignment in their coursework. The
articles will be graded and verified by the course teachers. A meeting
with the faculty staff was held in December, and a training session
given to the students.

== Ben Gurion University  ==

Danny W. is leading a few parallel cooperation efforts with Ben Gurion
University in Beersheba: mainly with professors who are friendly to
our cause and willing to introduce article improvement assignments as
part of their coursework, and with the Dean of Students in order to
form a formal student club of Wikimedians which will have its own
humble budget from the university.

== Public outreach talk in Ra'anana Municipal Library ==

On November 22nd, Tomer Ashur gave a presentation in the the municipal
library of Raanana. The presentation included about 30 people which
engaged in the discussions and were very interested of the topic.
After the presentation we started receiving requests from other
libraries which heard about this presentation.

== Cooperation with Librarians in the Western Galilee ==

Liron Dorfman has been giving a group of librarians and students of
information studies in the College of the Western Galilee
(http://www.wgalil.ac.il/) a series of lectures on Wikipedia and its
inner workings.

== Wikipedia Training to Teachers of Civic Studies, Center for
Educational Technology ==

On January 2nd, Harel Cain delivered a training session about
Wikipedia and using it in the classroom, with an emphasis on civic
studies (solving disputes in Wikipedia, questions of privacy and
libel, of censorship etc) to a group of 20+ teachers of civic studies
in Israeli high schools, at the Israeli Center of Education Technology
(CET).
Followup acitivties and meetings at the CET are planned for the coming weeks.
* http://video.cet.ac.il/VideoPlayer.aspx?xmlConfigPath=Civic/2012/Ezrahut_Hishtalmut_02012011_mdi.xml
(video of talk, in Hebrew)

== Annual Meetup of Wikipedians in January 2012 ==

On January 13th, 2012, Wikimedia Israel held an annual meetup of
Wikipedians at Tel Aviv University, which was attended by dozens of
Wikipedians. The program contained both informal mingling and a series
of updates and talks on various projects and trends in the Wikimedian
universe, with a focus on Wikimedia Israel’s activities.
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedian_meetups_in_Israel:_January_2012
* http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%92%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%92%D7%A9_%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A3_2012
(program, in Hebrew)

== Wiki Photo Hunts - Elef Millim Project ==

We continue our long tradition of monthly self-guided tours for and by
Wikimedians, which also serve as photo hunts generating hundreds of
photos for Commons. In October we made to Jaffa, in November to Kafr
Qara and in December to Neve Tsedek (one of the old neighborhoods of
Tel Aviv).
* http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%99_%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%A3_%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95_%D7%A9%D7%9C_%D7%90%D7%91%D7%95_%D7%A0%D7%91%D7%95%D7%98
* http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%99_%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%A3_%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9B%D7%A4%D7%A8_%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%A2
* http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%99_%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%A3_%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%95%D7%94_%D7%A6%D7%93%D7%A7

Sincerely,

Harel Cain

Secretary, Wikimedia Israel