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Italian Historic Museum of War

The museum was founded in 1921 with the aim of documenting the World War I, and it is located in the Castle of Rovereto, in the region of Trentino Alto Adige. Due to its proximity with the empire, the city of Rovereto was completely involved in the war. The main collection gathers arms and uniforms, memorabilia, pictures and posters, but also objects of the everyday life in the trench, letters and diaries.

A room of the museum (By Llorenzi - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)
A room of the museum (By Llorenzi - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)

What we have done

On the 25th of March, 2017 the museum hosted an editathon on the World War I and other collateral activities. Wikipedians have worked on the following articles (in Italian):

Wikipedia

Commons

During the editathon the following categories have been created:

Fondazione Luigi Micheletti

The Fondazione Luigi Micheletti is a research centre on contemporary history, specialized on collecting and spreading material and immaterial heritage of the 20th and 21st century. The ideological, social and material contemporary history, led by international researches and conferences, proves to be linked to a very rich collection of traces of recent periods: writings, postcards, photos, posters, videos, audio documents, but also objects, furniture and cars.

What we have done

After a two-day course on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons for the staff of the organization, a category for the images uploaded was created, and also a template for the organization.

Touring Club Italiano

Touring Club Italiano is a no-profit organization founded in 1894 in Milan. During the years it has become a landmark in the Italian cultural landscape, especially in the field of tourism and the related studies. In 2011 the organization launched Digitouring, a digital archive of the historical resources.

What we have done

On July 2015 Touring Club Italiano, Associazione WWI and Wikimedia Italia signed a partnership to upload more than 3000 digital resources on Wikimedia Commons. At the moment, just 127 images have been released on Commons under the category Archivio Touring La Grande Guerra. Wikimedia Italia is now working to resume the activity with Touring Club, in order to complete the release of 3000 pictures.

These first images were donated during Cortina tra le righe, a festival of journalism which takes place in Cortina d'Ampezzo. These picture are about the role of feminine figure during World War I, and are related to the project Donne si fa storia.

National Central Library of Florence

The National Central Library of Florence (Italian acronym: BNCF) is the library that curate the documentary research and the conservation of the Italian book heritage. It plays this role together with the National Central Library of Rome. The BNCF has played a key role in the development of the Library National System.

What we have done

In 2013 Wikimedia Italia signed a letter of intents with BNCF, in order to work jointly on many things. Part of the collaboration included activities on Wikisource: the volume Manuale di 150 ricette di cucina di guerra (150 war-recipes handbook) was released by BNCF and completely formatted by volunteers.

Some pages of the book Manuale di 150 ricette di cucina di guerra

Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto

Mart (Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Rovereto) was founded in 1987. It gathers more than 30.000 works and hosts several temporary exhibitions. The museums also hosts the Archive of '900, which contains numerous documents on art and architecture of the '900.

What we have done

In 2014, from May to September, the museum hosted a Wikipedian in Residence. This position was covered by Mushroom, who worked particularly on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource.

Wikipedia

As far as Wikipedia, most of work focused on the creation or the updating of biographies of artists whose work are in the museum, or have been hosted by the institution during the temporary exhibitions. In this context it is worth to mention the exhibition La guerra che verrà non è la prima, organized for the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the World War I. Besides the work on biographies, the following articles on cultural institutions have been updated:

Commons

Among the hundreds of pictures stored by the museum, the Wikipedian in Residence discovered 700 pictures that were already in Public Domain. He released them under a new category on Commons, and also prepared a list of other pictures that will have become in Public Domain in the near future.

Wikidata

The museum manages a database of information about the works that have been stored by MART or hosted during the exhibitions. The first step of the uploading of these information on Wikidata involved artists, exhibitions and archives. The second step was about the creation of a bot for the uploading of the information about the works.

Wikisource

Wikisource has probably been one of the most interesting parts of the project. During the exhibition La guerra che verrà non è la prima, MART made some books available. These books have been digitized and uploaded on Wikisource: