March 2009 Canberra meetings

Friday 20th March 2009

- Liam & Brianna in Canberra

* '''9am''' Confusing Manifestations (Chris Mann), possibly others. 
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Canberra/3, Milk & Honey cafe

* '''11:30am''' Australian War Memorial (Liz Holcomb (Web Manager) (6243 4219), Adam Bell (Chief Web Developer) and Anne Benny (Head of Retail and Online Sales)).
** location: Management wing, western side. Near carpark.

* '''1pm''' Basil Dewhurst of "Picture Australia" and "People Australia" (6262 1046)
** the National Library cafe "Bookplate".

* '''2pm''' Linda Groom and Sylvia Carr (6262 1554) of the National Library pictures department. Laura Simes will also join. (6262 1273)
** Location - call from front desk.

* '''3:30pm''' Tasha Lamb, from archives at AIATSIS. (6246 1130)
**Lawson Crescent, Acton Peninsula, Canberra 2600

*'''4pm''' Tikka Wilson (web publishing) (6208 5355) & Denis French (copyright) (6208 5150) at the National Museum of Australia. [impromptu, as AIATSIS ran short - no meeting, just exchange info].

Liam will be at: Forrest Hotel & Apartments, 30 National Circuit, Forrest, ACT 2603

Brianna: YHA, 7 Akuna St, City.

==Report by Liam to inquorate meeting on 22 March, 2009==

===National Gallery===
I spend several hours with their rights manager.nice guy, interested in what we do. spent some time fixing the metadata of this image as an example for him: [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roberts-The_Australian_native.jpg]

His concern is that if we are taking PD images, that we do so including all that stuff in the "source" field on the link. not just the artists but also the purchase info etc. He was interested to hear about our use of fair-use images taken with handheld cameras in the gallery. (Brianna: Oh, how they purchased it, now how readers can purchase prints) They see this as an integral part of the attribution and therefore even in PD images we should still keep it. Otherwise, he's a bit miffed by the lack of clear organisation of our "from the NGA collection" category e.g.: [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:National_Gallery_of_Australia]

But, he's happy to work with us and interested in coming along to a November meeting and has previously responded to wikimedian requests before eg. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunbaker_maxdupain_nga76.54.jpg]

===Miniconference===

Next day was first up with confusing manifestations. It looks like we're on for a November wikiconf in Canberra. AGM + 2 day internal capacity building + 1 day
outreach programme. We set several specific time/project goals where
ConMan had to deliver by, or else we all walk away. So, the first one is mid April, he needs the project team in place. We'll need to talk about this in greater detail
on the mailing list/comm wiki.

===Australian War memorial===

They brought in 3 people - 2 from web, 1 from sales. Would you believe it, they run Media-Wiki internally and have some level of general skill across the staff using
wikimarkup. They also often use WP to look up things in their own catalogue faster through our "external links" than their own database. They asked to become corporate members of WM-Au. They also asked us to come down to Canberra to give a dedicated training day - wanted to know how much we charge. They are interested in that idea, anyway. They didn't quite ask us, i suggested it (Brianna: but yeah they are really keen). They suggested payment - not us. they also suggested joining WM-AU. (Brian: Training on mediawiki or something else?) On media wiki, commons, integrating their
collection into WP. (Brianna: COI on interacting with wikimedia I think.) Creative Commons licensing. (Brianna: They have talked a bit internally, about their staff editing WP). The whole sha-boodle (Brianna: like, as part of their job) since most of the staff are interested amateurs who have become professionals. (e.g. private collectors of medals etc.) They also have a database that someone donated to them of all the war memorials/plaques in Australia. They've already put it into a media-wiki install. They want to donate it to WP and work with the military history project to integrate it into our existing content.

===Picture Australia===

They were interested in sucking in our content from Commons to picture australia. We need better tech for this. specifically machine readable metadata. e.g. [[w:dublin core|Dublin Core]] but - interesting possibilities, brianna can probably expand on this more than me.

===National Library Pictures dept===

For example, an NLA pic: [http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23480953] They put that "research and study only" tag at the bottom of everything. irrespective of copyright status. They do this because they want to keep a record of all usages of the image, not to restrict access per se. (Brianna: well... maybe). They don't trust web stats, so their request numbers are their guide of image popularity/usage. They would be more happy to work with us if they could demonstrate to their management - as B. suggested - a monthly report (a la dopplr.com) of what's being used, where, how much is it seen etc. An institutional report, put together by the chapter of the institution's presence on WMF projects would greatly increase their likelihood of being given greenlights from management to spend their time with us. not just NLA - but any museum/gallery/library/public institution around the world.

===Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Studues (AIATSIS)===

This meeting was quite short as we soon discovered, amicably, that our respective positions on knowledge usage/publication are polar opposites - both with good intentions. so, whilst we're all about publishing everything, they're all about restricting access based on specific criteria - gender, community affiliation, age etc.We suggested several projects that could potentially work but the only one that was acceptable was an improvement in the article [[w:AIATSIS|AIATSIS]]. nothing else worked. For the foreseeable future, WM-Au will not be doing any "aboriginal projects" in the foundation's websites. (Andrew: is there any other aboriginal groups with more open access/approach that we can work with?) They are the peak institution in the country and, their approach is not different to others. They weren't aggressive about this or anything,very genial.

===National museum===

Well, anyway, the last was just a speculative meeting with the national museum (next door to AIATSIS) because that one finished early. We gave our brochures to the lady who was still in the office on a Friday arvo and she'll pass them on. she sounded interested in the November gig too, but then again she's not the one who decides anyway.