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'''Emmanuel Engelhart, Inventor of Kiwix: the Offline Wikipedia Browser'''
'''Spotlight on the residency – Natural History Museum and Science Museum WIR 2013-14'''


[[File:Emmanuel Engelhart-49.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Emmanuel Engelhart’s “offline Wikipedia”, Kiwix, is entirely open source.]]
[[File:John_Cummings_in_front_of_giant_sequoia_at_NHM.jpg|thumb|right|200px|John Cummings at the Natural History Museum]]
''This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Programme Manager''


''This user profile by Joe Sutherland is part of a series about Offline Wikipedia on the <span class="plainlinks">[http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/12/emmanuel-engelhart-inventor-of-kiwix/ Wikimedia blog]</span> where it was first published. As well as having created Kiwix, Emmanuel is a developer for Wikimedia UK.''
The recently released annual review of Wikimedia UK made me look back at 2013. One of the important projects we supported that year was the Natural History Museum and Science Museum Wikimedian in Residence, a project delivered by John Cummings. The work continued long after the official end of the residency in January 2014, and luckily shortly before full preparations for Wikimania 2014 kicked in, John was able to finalise [[Wikimedian_in_Residence_2014_review|the case study report]] from his project.


Wikipedia’s goal is to be the sum of human knowledge, available to anyone at any time, but when billions of people have no internet access at all, how can that goal be realized? The answer according to software developer Emmanuel Engelhart ([[User:Kelson]]) is quite simple – take Wikipedia offline.
Why did the residency take place? What happened during the project? What are we thinking of doing now?
Together with Renaud Gaudin, he invented <span class="plainlinks">[http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page Kiwix]</span>, an open source software which allows users to download a copy of Wikipedia in its entirety for offline reading.


Kiwix uses all of Wikipedia’s content through the <span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/04/parsoid-how-wikipedia-catches-up-with-the-web/ Parsoid wiki parser]</span> to package articles into an open source .zim file that can be read by the special Kiwix browser. Since Kiwix was released in 2007, <span class="plainlinks">[http://kiwix.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_all_languages dozens of languages of Wikipedia have been made available as .zim files]</span>, as has other free content, such as Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikivoyage.
'''Open doors'''


After becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2004, Engelhart became interested in discussions of offline versions of Wikipedia. At the time, Engelhart was in his mid-20s and living in his small village near the town of [[:en:Vendôme|Vendôme]], a few hundred kilometers south of Paris. Learning that a 2003 proposal by Jimmy Wales to create a CD version of Wikipedia, [[:en:Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team|Version 1.0]], never made its initial timescale, inspired Engelhart to take action.
Over the course of the project many doors were knocked at, and from that wide range of ideas we got some very encouraging wins. Below are some highlights extracted from the [[Wikimedian_in_Residence_2014_review|case study report]].
*Partnerships with other organisations. John focused on working with external organisations on open knowledge initiatives, many of which lead to further cooperation with Wikimedia UK. Content improvement. Some examples:
*A [https://www.flickr.com/photos/94013650@N07/sets/72157633348739594/ trial release of Natural History Museum archive content] which was then added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource.
*The Science Museum has started to open its collection with [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_collection_of_the_Science_Museum_(London) 50 images] of significant objects which around 20,000 people are viewing on Wikipedia each day.
*400 photos from the National Media Museum (part of the Science Museum Group) were released to Wikimedia Commons ([https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_National_Media_Museum_collection see here]).
*Three videos from Science Museum’s Pain Exhibition were released under an open license (e.g. [[File:No_pain._Science_Museum_Painless_Exhibition_Series.webm|No Pain]]).
*Advocacy work on changing the attitudes and licensing of content towards openness cannot be understated. Much of the project’s time was spent on producing documentation, pilot evidence, and delivering talks advocating open knowledge.


<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/09/emmanuel-engelhart-inventor-of-kiwix-the-offline-wikipedia-browser/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Continues...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>
<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/09/spotlight-on-the-residency-natural-history-museum-and-science-museum-wir-2013-14/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Read the full post here...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>


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|events=<!--Aim to have between 8 and 10 events listed to avoid this section taking up too much or to little space-->

Revision as of 17:34, 22 September 2014

Cymraeg | English

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