GLAM-WIKI/Introductory information

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What's the plan?

Invite representatives from the Australasian cultural institutions together with representatives from the Wikimedia community for a two-way dialogue to determine how to use the two communities' strengths to a mutual advantage. Achieving this would involve:
  • why and how cultural institutions could work with Wikimedia projects; and
  • what Wikimedia needs to do to make collaboration easier and more effective.

Who is this event for?

Key stakeholders from the four industry groups - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) - across Australia and New Zealand.

Specifically, institutions are encouraged to send representatives on behalf of their copyright, web, sales and education departments. This diversity is required in order to build a broad consensus which can be taken back to the institutions with confidence.

Representatives from the Wikimedia community including staff from the Foundation and volunteers from the various wiki-projects (including international attendees). There is no attendance fee.

Speakers

Schedule

Keynote presentations by: Senator Kate Lundy, Senator for the ACT and Jennifer Riggs, Chief Program Officer - Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco.
Also presenting: Seb Chan, Paula Bray, Graham Greenleaf, Jessica Coates, Delia Browne, Angelina Russo, Rose Holley...

with special video presentations from international GLAM sector directors

Themes

  • Education - Enhancing outreach activities of both communities.
  • Technology - Managing collaborations in practice - looking at the ICT specifics.
  • Business - Exploring different business models for productive collaboration.
  • Law - Focusing on copyright including Creative Commons and public domain, access conditions and non-commercial usage.

All of the information sent to attendees can be found here including accomodation discounts, recommended 'prior reading', introductory videos etc.

Why should you attend?

  1. Wikimedia projects are the largest, most consulted, most accessible and most easily improved information source available. However, the success of the projects depends on the availability of good primary and secondary sources (including multimedia and expert knowledge) that can be shared freely. Attendees from both the GLAM sector and Wikimedia community will gain a detailed understanding of the best-practices of the other.
  2. Cultural institutions have a mission to preserve cultural content and the expertise but often lack time, money or staff to do this. Preservation requirements or budgetary limitations also often conflict with the mission of improving public knowledge and access. Both Wikimedia and the institutions have a clear common goal: to make our cultural heritage available. Using our strengths to support the weaknesses of the other side, both Wikimedia projects and cultural institutions could benefit from collaboration. Attendees will learn specific ways that collaboration can take place, understand the existing and potential barriers and how to overcome them.
  3. This event will call together representatives from Australian and New Zealand cultural institutions to produce a world first - a consensus for how to interact with Wikimedia projects which can form the basis for similar discussions around the world. Furthermore, it would produce a set of mutually-agreed guidelines for what each community needs in order to make any collaboration more positive and productive. Attendees will be able to bring the particular concerns and circumstances of their institution to the attention of the conference.

What will you get out of this?

The tangible outcome of this workshop would be a pair of guidelines - one for the Wikimedia community and one for the cultural institution - each containing specific, practical measures to enable the achievement of better online public access to cultural heritage. Whilst underlining the unique nature of each institution's role these guidelines would demonstrate a shared response to the issues raised at the workshop.

Cultural institutions

The guidelines page would subsequently be presented to the respective boards of management at each institution, indicating their collaborative creation and commonality. Each institution would then be free to act upon these recommendations as it sees fit (the Wikimedia Australia community would assist if requested).

Other outcomes would be to
  1. Appreciate the advantages of allowing content to be used in Wikimedia projects and be able to actively engage/assist.
  2. Compare the state of Australian cultural heritage on Wikimedia projects relative to other countries and see examples of those cou ntries' efforts to improve it.
  3. Learn practical ways to [help] improve content in Wikimedia that is consistent with an institution's mission.

Wikimedia community

The guidelines page would be presented to the Wikimedia community at its annual conference - to be held in Buenos Aires in late August. Attending the meeting in Canberra would be staff representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation (HQ) as well as volunteers from European chapter(s) who would report back and integrate the outcomes into their planning.

Other outcomes would be to
  1. Appreciate cultural institutions' concerns regarding Wikimedia projects.
  2. Compare the various means by which the cultural sector is engaging online, and the place of Wikimedia in this sphere.
  3. Learn best practice for digital restoration, metadata, citation etc.
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