GLAM Booklet 2013/Inside Front Cover

What have the British Library, the Smithsonian in Washington DC, the Palace of Versailles and the German Archaeological Institute in common? They have all worked with volunteers from Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Commons image File:Ours_nageant_(Musée_du_quai_Branly)_(3034045389).jpg A Dorset culture carving of a Polar Bear. Image uploaded by Wikimedian Russavia. With thanks to Jean-Pierre Dalbéra for taking the photograph and the Musée du quai Branly for allowing photography.

The Dorset People were a pre inuit people of what is now Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. The Wikipedia article on them is illustrated by this photograph of an exquisitely carved Polar Bear, part of their cultural legacy to the rest of humanity. So a photographer from Nice took a photograph in a French Museum of an object from Canada, and with the assistance of a Wikimedian from Australia that image sits on a computer in America, and after being added to the relevant Wikipedia article by a Londoner, is available to all humanity by the power of the internet.

There are various ways to measure Wikipedia and how close we are to completing our task; Some time ago Wikipedia reached a quantity threshold where people started to expect to find a Wikipedia article when they searched for something on the web. As early as 2012 a tenth of all the world’s adults and adolescents were visiting the site every month. So we are “in the ballpark” when it comes to quantity and reach, and for many wikimedians the time has come to put more focus on improving quality. Which is one of the reasons why we want to work with the heritage sector. The heritage sector has the imagery, expertise and reference sources that can help us transform the quality of Wikipedia; In return we think there are huge potential benefits for the heritage sector.

In the last few years there have been dozens of joint events around the world between Wikimedians and cultural institutions to further our common goal of making the sum of human knowledge available to all humanity. This booklet showcases some of those events and we hope will reassure and to an extent inspire anyone in the cultural sector who is thinking of partnering with Wikimedians.

Jonathan Cardy

GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) organiser Wikimedia UK