Press releases/Wikimedia Commons 10 million files

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Wikipedia sister site tops 10,000,000 image files

Wikimedia Commons, the leading source of freely available images, is an opportunity for British museum curators to reach an audience of 400m – says Wikimedia UK

United Kingdom, xx March 2011: Wikipedia’s sister site, Wikimedia Commons, has today exceeded 10 million freely-available files in its online collection of images, video, animation, sounds and graphics. Wikimedia Commons (also known as "Commons") has grown at a rate of one million media files per year since 2006. This is due to donations from a wide range of sources, ranging from personal photography by Wikimedia Commons users to images shared with Wikimedia Commons from public archives.

For example, since March 2005, the 'Geograph Britain and Ireland' project has contributed over 1.7 million images from across the whole of the British Isles. Photographs in the Geograph collection illustrate significant features of each 1x1 km grid square in the Ordnance Survey National Grid and the Irish national grid reference system. These images include everything from a waterfall in Tessdale in the Pennines, to an image of people walking near Blackpool Tower.

Freely available Commons images are of a high quality and are often inspiring. Every year the community celebrates these finest images by running an annual 'Picture of the Year' competition. The best freely-licensed images are picked from those that have been awarded ‘featured picture’ status by the community over the previous twelve months. There are currently 3,385 of such images, which is roughly 0.03% of the repository.

The winner of the 2009 competition was an image of a Sikh pilgrim at the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, India. It was taken by, Wikimedian (a Wikimedia Commons contributor) Paulrudd. The 2010 competition is still in progress.

Michael Peel, secretary of Wikimedia UK comments: “the content available on Wikimedia Commons is a great resource for individuals, bloggers, news outlets and any other organisation wanting to illustrate their story with quality media. We want to encourage galleries, libraries, museums and all those working in the arts or in public archives to consider sharing your images with Wikimedia Commons. With around 411m per month in up to 250 languages worldwide, it is a great way for curators or the UK’s cultural heritage to reach out to a wider audience. Those institutions that have shared images with us have witnessed a sharp increase in online and offline interest in their collections. In this time of austerity and careful management of finances working in partnership with Wikimedia Commons is an opportunity for curators of the UK’s cultural heritage to make a bold statement about their institutions cultural ambition.”

EDITORS' NOTES About Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 7 September 2004, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

About Wikimedia UK: Wikimedia UK is the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

About the Wikimedia Foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

Further information: • Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/ • Featured pictures on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures.

For further information, please contact: Michael Peel, Secretary, Wikimedia UK Tel: +44 (0)7988 013 646 Email: michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk