[Wikimediaindia-l] The GLAM challenge Part 1

[Ashwin Baindur]

Please ref to the previous post titled "The GLAM Challenge).

Part 1 consisting of  Posts (two) by Ashwin Baindur given below

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:52 PM
Subject: The challenge : Was Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's visit to India
To: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>, "Jogalekar, Sudhanwa"
<sudhanwa.com at gmail.com>
Cc: "Agarwal, Shirish" <shirishag75 at gmail.com>


Inline...

> On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>>This is a very big challenge in so many dimensions, I kid you not.
>>
> Let's discuss this in more detail.
>

The way I understand it, the objective of GLAM Wiki is to bring a host
of material in conventional repositories onto the free domain (I dont
want to call it public domain). WikiMedia Foundation has made some
progress in this issue as one occasionally sees :
* Bits of news from the blogs or Signpost mentioning them.
* The Commons page announces these deals prominently. They also
included details & links to Commons Projects wherein these images are
to be sorted/categorised/processed in some way by the editors.

The TropenMuseum is a museum in Amsterdam about the Tropics. The
museum has a large collection of objects and photographs about the
Tropics. The museum will donate images about two former Dutch
colonies, Suriname and Indonesia, to Commons. The first uploads are
about Suriname and particularly the Maroon culture from Suriname and
it is followed by material that has Indonesia as its subject.
Indonesian Wikipedians have agreed to translate all the Dutch captions
and metadata into Bahasa Indonesia so that the people of Indonesia
could interact with the material.

The State Library Of Queensland has donated 50,000 public domain
images, with metadata, to Wikimedia Commons. The ages fall under
50,000 subject headings, which need to be mapped to Commons
categories. Editors need to do this. A bot is uploading the images.

Now, what is not known are the exact specifics of what such an
engagement with a GLAM consists of and what are the responsibilities
and expectations. It would help if WikiMedia Foundation made some
guidelines and documentation on these materials. But using common
sense, I'm sure it will go along these lines...

* Liaison with the GLAM institution. Sell the idea to them.
* Work out the crux point - the freedom issues, especially in light of
copyright, local and international rights.
* Examine all stakeholder issues and resolve them.
* Work out the details of the activities, roles, responsibilities and
partnership to concurrence of all.
* Ideally create a CPM/PERT chart for monitoring.
* Arranging funding for some of the activities.
* Outreach with the community to get them to buy into helping out with
the crowdsourced activities.
* Legal vetting of the agreement. This has to be between WikiMedia
Foundation and GLAM Institution not us editors.

Only then...
* Write up an agreement.
* Begin operations, monitor, report, sort out issues, blah, blah.....
* Publicity and get good PR.

In this case, we need to understand, who are the stakeholders -
* GLAM Institution(s),
* Wikimedia Foundation,
* State Govt of India,
* Central Govt of India,
* Pointsman for GLAM activities on behalf of WMF (Witty Lama),
* WMF's India office (Bishakha till its established),
* Local Editors chapter of Pune ( us )
* Wikimedia India (Arun Ram)
* press
* society in general
* Editors around the world (including India)
* Funding agencies
* contractors

In such a complex environment, what is our standing to engage  the
GLAM institution such as Kelkar Museum?

Let WikiMedia Foundation (Witty Lama, Bishakha et al) work out the
modalities for a GLAM project in India.

Should the pointsmen (who should "own" the project) be an editor or a WMF rep?

Ideally, WMF needs to hire a full time guy  to be on this and work out
the specifics of a hundred issues who can mentor the Indian projects
thorough the project in case some editor takes up the pointsmans role
for a project.
>> Bishakha, we need integration for an India English Wikipedia community
>> because thats whom the Foundation will have to fall back on to support
>> it.  We cant be talking on lists parochially as is happening in in
>> terms of Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore or in terms of Kn, Ml, Mr WPs for
>> GLAM projects as GLAM projects provide knowledge and resources to the complete world & wiki community, definitely India's (my additions in tis email)
>> independent of language of Wikipedia platform.

As regards, the integration etc which needs to be discussed in more
detail, I started off plannning to do that but wrote a wholly
different email instead :-).

These are my thoughts, for your consideration

Bishakha, you may like to cc this to Witty Lama if you feel it is appropriate
Ashwin


Ashwin Baindur previously wrote :....
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's visit to India
To: Sudhanwa Jogalekar <sudhanwa.com at gmail.com>
Cc: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>


Inline..

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
<sudhanwa.com at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If there is some interest in doing something with Raja Kelkar Museum,
> Pune ( http://www.rajakelkarmuseum.com ), I can connect to the main
> person there.
>
> He is also "Sudhanwa" and I know him for ages :-)
>
> -Sudhanwa

Dear Sudhanwa,

Thanks for the offer about the Kelkar Museum. I have pondered over it
and, uncharacteristically for me, I feel we should wait for the
GLAM-Wiki scene to come about in Pune. The short time of Liam's stay
in India, little chance of his visiting Pune and our own commitments
at GNUNIFY are indicators against doing anything right now more than
meeting and exchanging ideas.

Another reason, we have not quite built up our Wikipedian community in
Pune as yet. The problem is not so much of Kelkar Museum agreeing to
provides its treasures for outreach but that we may not be able to
live upto the expectations. Tremendous amount of work will be
involved. Typically a museum may donate images in thousands or even
hundreds of thousands. The Troppenmuseum and Queensland Museum
examples come to mind. Typically, there are expectations on the editor
community for participating in batch process activities, such as going
over the material, sorting it out, uploading, categorising etc.

Bishakha, we need integration for an India English Wikipedia community
because thats whom the Foundation will have to fall back on to support
it.  We cant be talking on lists parochially as is happening in in
terms of Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore or in terms of Kn, Ml, Mr WPs for
GLAM projects as GLAM projects provide knowledge and resources
independent of language of Wikipedia platform. This is a very big
challenge in so many dimensions, I kid you not.

So what should we do in the meantime? As per me for the Pune chapter-
we could finish our GNUNIFY event, and meet Witty Lama. After that, we
may reach out to Kelkar Museum and explore possibilities before we
commit. Our Community of Wikipedians both Puneri & National need
development before we commit to support any GLAM venture.

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
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