[Wikipedia-l] Wikisource

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
There is a growing movement where people restore images and recordings and
make them part of both featured articles, sounds and pictures. They restore
pictures and fyi this involves a lot of work. This project that is centred
around the "Not the Wikipedia News"  people, is looking for material that
helps in making the effort not as USA centred. The best way forward is in
making the group of people involved bigger; this is done by reaching out to
other projects and sharing the expertise gained.

When museums make their material public, the public can become involved in
the restauration of the material. Key here is the license of the material
involved; the work is not done for free when this means that it cannot be
used / shared. Also the quality of the digitised material has to be really
good.

While I do expect that people will get involved, I do not see that an
integral job of such resources are to be expected. I think it great when the
cherries get picked.
Thanks,
      GerardM

So YES, a great idea.

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A couple of weeks ago, I went to an event organized in Paris by the
> Fren ch Government about "economics of culture".
> During that event, I mentionned that the French chapter has several
> ongoing discussions with various museums to set up content partnerships.
>
> Here are two examples of such potential partnerships:
> * a small museum with very old and precious documents. The museum has
> limited room for access and documents are fragile, so only a few
> visitors are allowed to look at them. The museum wants to digitize these
> docs, but has limited technical infrastructure.
> Opportunity: we host their documents on wikisource and provide them
> additional visibility through an article on Wikipedia, featuring their
> best manuscripts.
> * a large museum already has a digitization procedure for the documents,
> as well as a hosting service. However, the digitized version contains
> mistakes (errors generated in the process) and the museum simply does
> not have the human power to provide the corrections of the numerous
> documents digitized by their services. Our members can take care of this
> task.
>
> Wikisources members know all that very well and much better than I. I
> just summarize that very quickly for reference.
>
> In Europe, at least in some countries, we meet several problems
> * many scholars have a rather bad image of Wikipedia (because written by
> amateurs, anonymous members, plagued by vandals etc...)
> * the other wikimedia projects have rather poor popularity and would
> benefit from more "light"
> * journalists are bored and need new information (otherwise, they focus
> on all the bad stories)
> * some projects are more difficult to advertise than others, because
> they are full competitors with other commercial projects of very good
> quality (eg, wiktionary, wikinews...)
>
>
> Besides, my feeling is that contributors and in particular members from
> chapters need a project on which they can team.
>
> I would like to propose that next year be Wikisource year.
>
> And since the planet is very large, if this is done in large part
> through chapters, that it be an opportunity for some european chapters
> to work together.
>
> I am not necessarily thinking of anything very complicated. Examples of
> efforts we could make together:
>
> * leaflets about wikisource updated and available in a large number of
> languages;
> * webbuttons to advertise the project on the web;
> * each time someone gives a conference about Wikipedia, take the
> opportunity to spend a couple of minutes of Wikisource as well;
> distribute leaflets;
> * summarize our best cases on Wikisource;
> * develop stories about these best cases. Illustrate. Feature these
> stories on chapter websites;
> * develop initiatives on projects for cross project challenges (eg, best
> article with content improved in at least 3 projects);
> * chapters may write and distribute a couple of press releases about
> wikisource;
> * chapters may propose conferences about wikisource (and speakers
> available to talk about it);
> * develop arguments for museums etc...
>
> Measures of success are numerous, from improvements of Wikisource
> (number of docs), number of mentions in the press, partnerships
> established with museums etc...
>
> What do you think ?
>
> Ant
>
>
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