User talk:Fæ/sandbox
GLAM momentum
(version: sketch 12:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC) )
In June the British Museum was the first organization to run a "Wikipedian-in-residence" program by taking Liam Wyatt in-house. A free backstage pass tour for Wikipedians was followed up by the "Hoxne challenge" where a team of volunteer Wikipedia editors were hosted for a day by the museum to collaborate with curators and experts. The Hoxne Hoard article gained Featured Article status a few days later. Other events included Feature Article prizes, a school translations project (to translate lead sections of BM articles into French) and one-to-one on-site collaborations with the Asia and Prints departments.
The ongoing enthusiasm of long term contributors to GLAM/BM has seen:
- a growth in British Museum-related articles from 148 to 255, all of the new articles being a higher quality
- a rise in overall quality with articles being re-written, photographs add to Commons and direct links to the new BM online object database added
- four articles getting to be Today's Featured Article on the main page of Wikipedia each resulting in 47,000 to 100,000 views in one day
- over 50 main page Did you knows on BM-related articles
With the British Museum as model, similar programs have been run at the Smithsonian Institution and the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
The first GLAM-WIKI conference was hosted in November by the British Museum with presentations and representation from a number of institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum and National Maritime Museum. Several organizations are open to collaboration and some have asked for specific help with how to take the next step in collaborating with Wikipedians.
To help with coordinating new requests and supporting volunteers who wish to get directly involved with their favourite GLAM organizations, a mailing list to discuss relationships between Wikimedia and cultural institutions (the GLAM sector) has been created to be used as a focal point. See http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/chapters-cultural-partners. Current membership extends to chapters across Europe and discussion has included "GLAM Ambassadors" and how to manage a main contact point for GLAM organizations.