The COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted society around the world in 2020 obviously had an impact on Wikimedia Nederland as well. In mid-March, the office was closed and no more 'real' meetings, writing events, workshops and seminars could be organised. Except for a few weeks during summer, the office remained closed. The celebration of International Women's Day in early March brought 50 people to our offices. It was the last real event of the year.
At the beginning of lockdown, the expectation among board and staff was that large parts of the annual plan could not be executed. This, however, turned out not to be the case. With some experimentation and practice, it was possible to continue many activities online, or develop new ways of working.
For example, Wiksaturdays and montly editing events were moved to Zoom without too many problems. At the end of the year, we even organised a'mini-WikiCon-NL'. We also saw new faces at trainings and workshops: people for whom a trip to Utrecht normally is too much of a burden joined us online.
The 'virtual' cooperation with partner organisations also proved to be successful 'virtually': content donations continued, as did the Wiki coordinators meeting. A new Wikimedian in Residence started work and two of our partners began preparations for a WiR programme in 2021.
Students from colleges and universities continued to write and translate Wikipedia articles as part of their courses or internships.
Efforts to increase diversity and equity are the backbone of our workprogramme. For Wiki Goes Caribbean, the move of the meetings to Zoom was a boost, as Wikimedians from the Antillean islands could join in. This has led, for example, to a transatlantic cooperation between Wikipedians for the technical advancement of the Papiamentu language Wikipedia. We further developed our cooperation with Wikimedia Indonesia. We continue to organise regular events for and with women, and for the lgbti-community.
Looking towards the future, we raised funds to work on the sustainable development goals, to organise Wiki-masterclasses on colonial heritage, and for the development of a GLAM-wiki knowledge platform in 2021. With support from WMF, we began developing a campaign to increase donor contributions to be implemented in 2021.
In the 2020 annual plan, we set ourselves quantitative goals. Looking back, the results are better than we dared to expect at the beginning of the corona pandemic, especially when it comes to added or improved content in the Wikimedia projects. However, recruiting and retaining new editors seems to work best in face-to-face situations.
Metric
Achieved outcome
Explanation
1. number of total participants
1,089
2. number of newly registered users
161
3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects
112,549
includes impact on WikiData which in the past we had difficulty monitoring
4. content added in other languages than Dutch on WP and WS
International Women's Day WikiSaturday - March 7th. The last 'in real life' event.
Already a few years ago, WMNL decided to make diversity a focus in its activities. This is diversity both in terms of content (knowledge equity) and within the community. The Wikimedia Movement Strategy 2030 reinforced that decision.
We are working to add free content to the Wikimedia projects that is relevant to readers of Wikimedia projects worldwide, not just in the Netherlands. The emphasis here at the moment is on the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which is underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects and in the Wikimedia community, and the Dutch legacy of colonialism and global trade. We are building a close partnership with our sister-chapter Wikimedia Indonesia.
Our gendergap project is still going strong, adding content that is relevant to women and empowering more women to become active in the Wikimedia projects. We have also developed a partnership with IHLIA, the international archive for LGBTI heritage to bring in the LGBTI perspective.
The Netherlands and the World programme contributes to the diversity of Wikimedia projects by making available knowledge and collections in the Netherlands that are particularly relevant to other parts of the world. In addition, we encourage groups in the Netherlands with a recent or historical migration background to become active within the Wikimedia projects.
Collaboration with Wikimedia Indonesia
Sumatra wedding - image donated by KITLV at the request of Wikimedia Indonesia
We have further expanded our cooperation with Wikimedia Indonesia, for example by facilitating targeted content donations. Our Indonesian colleagues indicate which topics from our shared history are lacking in visual material. We try to fill these gaps with the help of museums and archives in the Netherlands. KITLV and the Museum of World Cultures, among others, were able to answer requests for historical images from their Indonesia collections. In this way more than 500 images were donated to Wikimedia Commons, all highly relevant to the Indonesian Wikimedia community. (Images donated by KITLV and images donated by Museum of World Cultures).
History month
October was dedicated to the History Month (Maand van de Geschiedenis), a national month long campaign to promote interest in historical topics in the Netherlands. This year the theme was 'East/West'. Through writing weeks and an online workshop Wikimedia Nederland invited volunteers and GLAM partners to contribute to Wikipedia about the history of Indonesia, Suriname, the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In total, 19 Wikipedians worked on more than 100 Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia Indonesia too organised writing activities for their community during History Month (more information about the Wikimedia Indonesia activities in this blog).
Image donation Delft Archives
Stadsarchief Delft (the municipal archives of the city of Delft) preserve, among other things, the archives of the Indische Instelling (1864-1901). This was an educational institution for future government officials in the Dutch East Indies. Stadsarchief Delft donated images that have a relationship with the Indische Instelling. It concerns twenty pictures of the building, teachers, professors and students.
We will further elaborate our partnership with Wikimedia Indonesia. We are planning an editing event for Indonesian and Dutch Wikipedians in June. Also we will establish direct links between our colleagues of Wikimedia Indonesia and the wiki coordinators of our GLAM partners with collections relevant to Indonesia.
Wiki Goes Caribbean focuses on the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands: the independent nations Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten, and the three Dutch municipal territories Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius. Knowledge concerning this part of the Netherlands is underrepresented in the Wikimedia projects. As a consequence of our cooperation with Dutch-Caribbean partner institutes and Wikimedians, WMNL work now extends to the Papiamentu Wikipedia.
2020 kick off meeting.
....and online
On February 18, 28 people attended the Wiki Goes Caribbean New Year meeting at the Nationaal Archief (National Archives). Among the participants were Wikimedians as well as representatives of the Dutch Caribbean Bookclub, the National Archives (Nationaal Archief) and various organizations including Stichting Splika, Stichting Stil Verleden, the MUSEON, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and Stichting Tribal Wisdom. The progress made within the Wiki Goes Caribbean project and the plans for 2020 were discussed in more detail. In addition, we shared valuable ideas about how to approach and activate people with a connection to the Caribbean, especially the younger generations.
Wiki Goes Caribbean meetings
In cooperation with the Nationaal Archief and the Dutch Caribbean Bookclub, Wikimedia Nederland organises a Wiki Goes Caribbean writing afternoon once every eight weeks. This continued during lockdown, when the meetings moved to Zoom. The meetings are structured around a theme, which is usually presented by a guest speaker. In addition, there is always an introduction to Wikipedia-editing for newbies, and an opportunity to work together.
We have found that these meetings are very important to maintain enthousiasm and commitment, especially for new editors. Providing them with a social context increases retention.
Wiki Goes Caribbean meetings
Saturday, February 22nd - on site in the Nationaal Archief. The theme was 'Second World War': the impact of the war on the Dutch Caribbean is often overlooked.
Saturday, April 25th, - the first online Wiki Goes Caribbean which allowed people from from Aruba and Curacao to take part. Peter Scholing, information scientist/Researcher of the Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, talked about pictures from the BNA collections that are now also available on Wikimedia Commons and that can be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.
Saturday June 20 - online. The theme was 'Flora and fauna'.
Saturday 29 August 2020: online. Theme 'Slavery' with a presentation by Dr Coen van Galen on the slave and emancipation registers of Curacao whihc were recently published online. .
Saturday 24 October 2020: online. Theme: Antillean literature, with a presentation by Prof. Wim Rutgers
Saturday 12 December 2020: Online. Theme 'Feast', with a presentation by Dr Rose Mary Allen
Papiamentu Wikipedia
A new point of attention within the project Wiki goes Caribbean is supporting and empowering the further technical development of the Papiamentu language Wikipedia. Papiamentu and Papiamento are offical languages on several of the islands. Here, too, there is transatlantic cooperation between volunteers. Editors with lots of experience editing the Dutch language Wikipedia and Wikidata are sharing their skills to update the infrastructure of Papiamentu Wikipedia. Jointly, they are also developing a category-structure and giving on the job assistance to newly appointed admins.
KITLV Internship Programme
In the summer of 2020, WMNL set up a pilot in cooperation with KITLV, the Royal Institute for Language, Land and Ethnology, part of the Royal Academy of Sciences. The aim is to supplement existing articles, write new articles and add image material related to the pre-colonial history of the former Netherlands Antilles on the English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
Wikipedia training courses University of Curaçao
The General Faculty of the University of Curaçao started online training and writing afternoons on 19 May to improve the content on Wikipedia (Dutch and Papiamentu). The language of instruction is Papiamentu and Dutch. Unfortunately the classes had to be stopped when the pandemic forced Curacao into lockdown. They will be resumed in 2021.
Content donations
The Biblioteca Nacional di Aruba donated 104 historical photographs of Curaçao to Wikimedia Commons and a few months later added another 77 images, this time illustrations from a 1662 book on natural history of the Caribbean. Under the guidance of curator Peter Scholing, who attended Wikimania 2019 with a WMNL-scholarship, Aruba's national library has become has become one of our most active partners.
The Museum for World Cultures donated more than 500 digitized photographs, taken between the late 19th and 20th Century. They depict people, culture and buildings in regions with which the Netherlands has historical connections. This specific set of photos includes historical images of Bengal, Southern Africa, Siberia and Ghana. The museum also donated more than 600 old photographs (mainly anonymous) of the Dutch Caribbean region and Suriname.
We obtained funding for a series of masterclasses + hackathon for small heritage institutions in the Dutch Caribbean and in the Netherlands with collections on colonial history. This will start in Aprl 2021.
We will continue supporting the Papiamentu Wikipedia
We hope to start working on bringing in a younger generation of people from the Dutch Caribbean - if the pandemic allows
We want to include Surinam in the project
We want to organise at least one activity with the Caribean User Group
Image donated by the Bibliotheca Nacional di Aruba
As part of International Women's Day, Wikimedia Nederland organised a special Gender Gap WikiSaturday on March 7. During this WikiSaturday, 50 Wikimedians met at the office of Wikimedia Nederland in Utrecht, followed introductory workshops and gave presentations on reducing the gender gap. For most participants, this was their first introduction to Wikimedia projects. There was no lack of media attention. A reporter from national newspaper Volkskrant was present who wrote about it in her column, and the following Monday Wikipedian Ciell was interviewed on national radio.
National Museum of World Cultures donated more than 800 images as part of International Women's Day 2020
Embroidered women's shift - image from the Josephine Powell collection
On the occasion of International Women's Day, the National Museum of World Cultures donated a collection of 851 images by photographer and collector Josephine Powell. Thanks to Josephine Powell's thorough and systematic way of collecting, the National Museum of World Cultures has more than 3,000 objects from the communities in which she stayed.
Attention for Wikipedia during Hengelo Book Ballad
Wikikring Twente, which usually meets at the Hengelo public library, was asked to tell something about Wikipedia and in particular about biographies of women from Twente during the Book Ballad event on 8 March in Metropolis Hengelo. Wikikring Twente participant Antje51 put three women in the spotlight: Miriam Guensberg, Femy Efftink and Harmke de Boer-Baltjes.
(Online) WikiFridays gender gap and LGBT issues
We joined forces with our partners Atria, the knowledge institute for emancipation and women's history, and IHLIA, the international archive for LGBT heritage, to organise online WikiFridays (WikiVrijdagen) during the corona pandemic. Prior to the corona crisis, Atria and IHLIA each organised their own offline WikiFriday. In order to be able to organize the WikiFridays online, these meetings have merged. Participants can determine in advance which topics they would like to see addressed during a session. For example, there was an introduction about editing Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, an explanation about the use of sources and a chance to question more experienced Wikipedia contributors.
we hope to organise another Tech Storm: an event aimed at sharing technical skills and encouraging editors (particularly women) to become involved in coding and tech
Just for fun: Wikimedia Pubquizbingo To keep the spirits of the community up, we organised a Wikimedia Pubquizbingo on 9 October. 14 people participated, led by Wikimedian Hay Kranen. The dress code Over the top Pubquizbingo bling made for a very colourful display.
The heart of the Wikimedia movement are the tens of thousands of volunteers who actively contribute to various Wikimedia projects worldwide. This also applies to the Netherlands: every day about 150 articles are added to the Dutch language Wikipedia, written by about 1,250 active volunteers. The Netherlands' volunteer community is also particularly active on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, with smaller but dedicated groups working on WikiSource, WikiNews and the other projects. Wikimedia Nederland sees it as one of its main tasks to provide practical, logistical and financial support to volunteers who work behind the scenes of the Wikimedia projects. Also WMNL aims to involve the community in all its activities to the maximum extent possible. The WMNL office mantra is that the office only does things the community can't or won't do. Activities in the programme community focus on small grants, scholarships, capacity building and communit events.
In 2020, the volunteer community in the Netherlands celebrated three miliestones:
Advertising WikiPortretWikipedia 2 million articles
The Dutch-language Wikipedia reached two million articles at 9:12 p.m. on Sunday, March 8, thanks to the contribution of user Daka with his article Estádio Eládio de Barros Carvalho. Daka has been active on Wikipedia since 2004 and has created thousands of articles, mostly about football. Wikimedia Netherlands organized a writing contest 2Wiljoen (pronounced: twillion) on Wikipedia to celebrate this milestone. A total of 15 Wikipedians took part in the contest. Together they wrote 42 articles on a fun, cheerful or festive topic. The winner in the category "newcomers" was Stuvio's article "Rooster Cap" and in the category "others" was Mathijsloo's article "Tekh-festival".
Wikiportrait was founded in 2008 on the initiative of Wikimedia Netherlands. It is a website and upload tool that makes it easy to upload portrait pictures for use on Wikipedia. The pictures are uploaded with an appropriate license that allows them to be reused on Wikiprojects. Biographies on Wikipedia that do not have a portrait are subject to a call to upload a self-made picture. These calls appear to be working. New pictures are coming in daily via www.wikiportret.nl, mostly portrait pictures of famous people with an article on Wikipedia. They are made by amateur photographers, but also by professionals.
Wikipedia volunteer received royal award
Wikimedian Edo de Roo received a royal award in recognition of his volunteer work for Wikimedia. In return he presented the Mayor of Woerden with WMNL's manual 'How to edit Wikipedia'.
On Friday, April 24, veteran Wikimedian Edo de Roo was informed by the mayor of his home town Woerden that, by Royal Decree, he had been appointed a Member in the Order of Oranje-Nassau in recognition of his volunteer work, including his work for the Wikimedia projects. This was the first time that a Wikimedian had been honoured in this way. Edo de Roo did his first edit on the Dutch-language Wikipedia on 28 March 2005, and since then he has continued to share free knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Nederland supported his nomination for the award, and managed to generate some media interest. Two national newspapers were triggered by the event to write features about Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Nederland organises meetings for volunteers and other interested parties. The goal of these gatherings is to share knowledge, to work in groups on a project or activity, or just to have a good time. Due to the Corona pandemic, we cancelled all physical meetings as of 15 March 2020. Partner organisations were also asked to cancel their Wiki meetings, if they had not already done so. All this was done to prevent the virus from spreading further within, or via, the Wikimedia community. In the end, only three meetings were organised 'in real life' during 2020.
New Year's meeting
On 11 January the New Year's meeting took place at the Textielmuseum in Tilburg. Around 50 Wikimedians attended. As usual, the Wiki Owls were presented and the results of the Wikipedia Writing contest were announced.
WikiSaturdays
The only "in real life" WikiSaturday took place on 8 February .Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, WikiSaturdays at the office of Wikimedia Nederland in Utrecht were cancelled as of March 15. In order for the community to be able to continue to meet, we decided to experiment with organising WikiSaturdays online. Where possible, we provided a focus for the online gathering, such as a training session or a community discussion. Also, we made sure it was possible to just 'hang out' , chat or edit.
2020 Wikisaturdays
Wikisaturday February 8: Community discussion on recommendations Movement Strategy : In February, draft recommendations were published in the Movement Strategy 2030 process. The Wikimedia Foundation called on all Wikimedians to give their opinion on the recommendations and to participate in the discussion about the future direction. Wikimedia Nederland offered all its members (and other interested parties) the opportunity to discuss the recommendations via a consultation page on the WMNL-wiki and during the WikiSaturday of 8 February at the office in Utrecht. We submitted the response on Meta.
Online WikiSaturday April 11 & training ISA tool: We organized the first WikiSaturday online on April 11th. Through a video connection, a total of 19 people participated. The afternoon started with a presentation about the ISA tool. With this tool you can easily tag images with structured data, to make images easier to find. An example of a set of tagged images from the Wiki-Goes-Caribbean project in the ISA tool can be found here. After the presentation the meeting split up into a question/answer group and a group that worked together informally. During the evaluation at the end of the meeting it appeared that this form of coming together is appreciated as a replacement of the offline WikiSaturdays.
Online WikiSaturday June 13 & training OpenRefine: Wikimedian Daniëlle Jansen gave an online workshop about the program OpenRefine, an open source desktop application for cleaning data and converting data to other formats. 12 participants participated in the workshop. During the presentation the participants each worked with their own database and followed the steps Daniëlle discussed. The presentation of this workshop is available on Wikimedia Commons.
Online WikiSaturday October 10: workshop OpenStreetMap: About 15 people participated to learn more about drawing in OpenStreetMap.
Online Wikisaturdaychristmaspartycon December 12: The annual conference WikiconNL and the traditional Christmasparty-Wikisaturday could not take place. Therefore, we held an online combination of WikiCon, WikiSaturday and Christmas party on 12 December. More information under Programme: Outreach
In 2020 Wikimedia Netherlands gave two volunteers small grants for the purchase of books they needed to improve Wikipedia articles. In addition, we helped a volunteer to obtain a press card at the International Film Festival Rotterdam to take portrait photos of attending directors and actors.
In March the Wikimedia Foundation banned offline Wikimedia events and international travel funded by Wikimedia resources worldwide. Wikimedia Nederland had already awarded travel grants for the International Hackathon in Albania and for the Queering Wikipedia conference in Austria. However, both events were cancelled so in the end we issued no scholarships in 2020.
Facilitating a community discussion on personal data
Wikimedia Nederland New Year's reception - January 2021.
One of the services WMNL provides is bringing in (and if necessary paying for) experts when the community needs specialised advice. In April, there was a discussion among Wikimedians in the NLWP Village Pump about the ethical and legal boundaries of collecting and publishing data about living persons on various Wikimedia projects. Is it OK that Wikidata can, for example, provide lists of gay/transgender jewish/muslim individuals living in Amsterdam/Rotterdam, or that such lists are published on Wikipedia?
At the request of the community, WMNL invited experts in the field of Internet and privacy legislation to provide their opinions about this topic, and drafted a briefing document. The results were presented to the community in July and discussed during the Mini-WikiCon-Nl in December. It did not yet lead to any concrete changes in policy on the Wikimedia-projects, but there is an increasing awareness of the need to take ethical and legal boundaries into consideration.
Reviewing our friendly space policy
An incident during a Wikimedia Nederland event again made us aware of the fact that conflicts and disagreements ‘on-wiki’ can spill over into Wikimedia Nederland-events and platforms, and easily escalate there. If this happens, WMNL has an obligation to take action under our Friendly Space Policy. This poses a dilemma: dealing with the incident without taking into account the on-wiki context can be unfair or even unjust. WMNL, however, has no authority on-wiki and should not be brought into the position that it starts indirectly sanctioning on-wiki behaviour, especially when the online community itself has not (yet) considered it problematic enough to take action. We started start a discussion with our members and the wider community on how to deal with this issue. This lead to the conclusion that we should revise and expand our Friendly Space Policy, taking the Universal Code of Conduct as a starting point. This revision will also include setting up a safe and efficient system for reporting of incidents. Work had to be postponed to 2021, as the UCOC was only approved in January.
WMNL, volunteers and wiki-freelancers
Increasingly, members of the community are active as professional freelance Wikimedia-experts and consultants. In that role, they are contracted by WMNL's GLAM-partners and, occasionally, by WMNL itself. WMNL has developed a set of guidelines to increase transparency and avoid conflicts of interest. We shared this with the ED-group.
we want to reach out to volunteers active in the smaller Wikimedia-projects, including the Wikipedias in Frisian, Limburgian and Low-German, and discuss ways in which WMNL can support them.
Harvest festival of the Bhaca, Southern Africa, ca. 1895. Image donated by the Museum of World Cultures
In order to make more knowledge and collections freely available, Wikimedia Nederland wants to build a bridge between Dutch knowledge, heritage and educational institutions, and the Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia community.
We want Dutch institutions to be able to contribute collections and data to Wikimedia independently, i.e. with only minimal guidance and assistance by WMNL. We also want to encourage the use of donated knowledge and collections on Wikipedias and other Wikimedia platforms.
In the Programme Free Content we encourage and facilitate content donations to WIkimedia Commons and (increasingly) Wikidata. We develop tools and manuals and give GLAM-partners advice on WIkimedian in Residence programmes and support their application for grants to develop such programme. We work with Universities and Colleges to integrate Wikimedia in the curriculum
Wikimedia Nederland plays a coordinating role in the cooperation between Dutch heritage institutions (GLAMs) and the Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia community.
GLAM Wiki-coordinator meetings
In 2020 we organised two meetings for the Wiki-coordinators. This provides an opportunity for staff from partner institutions who are responsible for the Wiki-cooperation to exchange knowledge and coordinate activities.
Wikmedia projects and the Dutch Digital Heritage Reference Architecture
Since 2019, Wikimedia Nederland and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have been discussing the opportunities that cooperation with the Wikimedia projects offers for Dutch digital heritage. In 2020, we explored this further in relation to the DERA (Digitaal Erfgoed Referentie Architectuur / Digital Heritage Reference Architecture) . The goal of DERA is to make digital heritage information in the Digital Heritage Network more visible to end users using the principles of Linked Open Data.. In 2020, a working group including two representatives of WMNL analysed a number of concrete content donations by Dutch institutions to the Wikimedia projects
Linked Data about (past) Dutch university professors on Wikidata: the Wiki-Wetenschappers project by the Dutch Foundation for Academic Heritage
The conclusion was that such collaborations fit well within the Dutch policy on digital heritage. In 2021, with the support of Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed, we will set up a knowledge platform on which heritage institutions will find tools and manuals for cooperating with the Wikimedia projects.
The Amsterdam Time Machine (ATM) is a public research tool about the history of Amsterdam. By systematically linking datasets from different sources, users can retrieve historical information, support public interfaces and ask new questions about, for example, cultural events, everyday life, social relationships or the use of public space in the city of Amsterdam. Wikimedia Nederland supports this initiative and has decided to join the Amsterdam Time Machine consortium. Plans for a joint activity with the Time Machine, focused on Wikidata, had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
Manual: organising a Wikipedia writing event
We published a manual on how to organise a Wikipedia writing event. We are frequently approached by organisations and institutions that ask for our help in planning a Wikipedia writing meeting or edit-a-thon to share knowledge about their own field of expertise with the world. Because we don’t have the capacity to work with all these organisations (we are only 4 fte), we developed a manual on 'how to organise your own Wikipedia Writing event'. A few months later, we expanded it to include guidelines on how to organise an online event.
In 2020, Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) in Rotterdam hired a Wikimedian in Residence. HNI is a museum for architecture, design and digital culture. On 1 June, Michelle Boon started as Wikimedian in Residence. One of her tasks is to stimulate the reuse of HNI's rich collection, including reuse in the Wikimedia projects.
We have advised a number of other institutions on developing their own Wikimedian in Residence programmes and supported their grant applications for these programmes. At least one new Wikimedian in Residence will start in 2021 at LIMA (see below) , and we have hopes for a second residency.
Content donations related to gender gap and Wiki-Goes-Caribbean are mentioned in those sections of the report.
One of the many images being donated by the Utrecht Archives: nurses with one of their young patients watching allied forces entering Utrecht at the end of World War IIUtrecht Archives
Thanks to the help of dozens of Wikimedians, the Utrecht Archives was able to start uploading all open-licensed images within their imagerepository to Wikimedia Commons. There are more than 150,000 photos, illustrations and maps. "In order to make sure that these can be found easily in the future, we and a lot of volunteers have linked the keywords from our archive to the categories on Wikimedia Commons" says Rick Companje, initiator and employee of the Utrecht Archives. "We have now started the large upload. We are starting with the subcollection Railways because we know that this collection is very popular. By sharing our images on Wikimedia Commons we hope that even more people will enjoy it and be able to use it in research and documenting heritage online". The upload itself will take several months and the progress is available through the Wikimedia Commons Category:Images from the Utrecht Archive.
Highlights of the Koninklijke Bibiotheek on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata
Inspired by the activities of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by a presentation that project leader Andrew Lih gave on Wikidatacon 2019, the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek or KB) also started a project around their masterpieces. In this project, the KB focuses on improving the access to and (re)usability of the data, images and texts of their masterpieces by placing them on Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons (including structured data) and the English and Dutch Wikipedias. The 72 masterpieces of the KB show a great diversity of works: from medieval manuscripts, picture books, atlases, weapons books to alba amicorum and periodicals. More information on this project page.
In recent years, a number of public libraries have started Wikicafés or Wikiclubs. Public libraries closed their doors in mid-March in connection with the coronapandemic, only to reopen in June and close again a few months later. Attempts to have the Wikiclubs take place online were unsuccessful: the participants value the personal meetings. We hope to resume in 2021.
OCLC: seminars to engage librarians in Wikimedia
Wikimedia Netherlands worked closely in 2020 with OCLC, a global library cooperative that offers shared technology services, original research and community programs. During the OCLC Contact Day, Denise Jansen of Wikimedia Nederland and Jos Damen of the Africa Study Centre (also an experienced Wikimedian) gave library staff an insight into the world of Wikimedia. We decided to organise a number of joint webinars in 2021. These will take a closer look at the cooperation of libraries with Wikimedia projects when OCLC and WMNL will organise a series of four online seminars.
LOOWI
The LOOWI (working group of the KNVI- Association of information professionals and the Association of University Libraries) organised an online meeting on 6 November with more than 80 participants around various questions concerning the Wikimedia projects. For example: What are the rules on Wikipedia? Who writes the articles and how is quality guaranteed? And what role can Wikipedia play in education? Denise Jansen gave a presentation about Wikipedia, and several speakers from higher and scientific education shared their experiences.
Cooperation between the Wikimedia projects and higher education (universities and colleges)offers many advantages. Wikipedia is supplemented and improved, and the educational institutions can offer their students interesting new teaching methods. Wikimedia Nederland's education programme is growing steadily, further development mainly hampered by the fact that WMNL does not have enough staff to support more activities. An interesting development is a result of the fact that classes in Dutch higher education are increasinly being given in English. We are now frequenty approached by lecturers that want their students to focus on adding content to the English Wikipedia. In such cases, we regularly call on the expertise (and the volunteers) of our Wikimedia UK colleagues.
University of Amsterdam & LIMA: Students write articles about Media artists
In January we completed a collaboration between Wikimedia Nederland, LIMA and 20 students of the study Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam. The students were commissioned to write a Wikipedia article. Most students wrote an article for English Wikipedia and submitted their article as a draft. Many have now been published, others are still awaiting review or need improvement. LIMA was so inspired by the event that they submitted a (successful) grant application for a Wikimedian in Residence. They will start work in 2021.
Leiden University
Wikimedia Netherlands provided practical advice and support to Leiden University on integrating English language Wikipedia writing assignments into a lecture series on 'Power and resistance in the Middle East'. The lecturer and the students like the formula and will develop it further in 2021.
Wikipedia in Maastricht: working with historical books
Our collaboration with Maastricht University continued in 2020. By writing a Wikipedia article about material in the university's historical book collections and archives, students practice writing from a neutral point of view, referencing and citing (primary) sources. More information can be found in the blog post by Odin L.M.J. Essers, curator of Special Collections at Maastricht University (in Dutch)..
ITV - college for interpreters and translators
Since 2014 Wikimedia Nederland has been organising an internship programme for students together with the ITV Hogeschool voor Tolken en Vertalen, which provides a 4-year college-level interpreter/translator course. Wikipedians can submit articles from the English, French, German, Italian, Russian or Spanish Wikipedia for translation into Dutch. During the pandemic, internship opportunities for ITV students were limited. A Wikipedia internship offered a solution for many. In total, thirteen interns were active in 2020, translating 72 articles from English, French, German and Italian. Among them were many featured articles (articles that meet the highest quality standards according to the Wikipedia community) on topics not yet covered on Dutch language Wikipedia.
University of Curaçao
One of the National Library Highlights
The University of Curaçao is one of the most active supporters of collaboration with the Wikimedia projects. The University wants to integrate Wikipedia into its teaching programme, and is encouraging the further development of the Papiamentu language Wikipedia. Because of the pandemic, student Wikipedia assignments were postponed until next year. WMNL's executive director Sandra Rientjes gave a presentation about working with the wikiprojects during the University's 2020 online conference Education with Technology.
KITLV - Royal Institute for Language and Ethnology
In the framework of Wiki Goes Caribbean, we worked together with KITLV, the Ethnology and Linguistics Institute of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Interns wrote articles on pre-Columbian history in the Antilles, and historical images were shared at the request of Wikimedia Indonesia. (For more information, see The Netherlands and the World)
Since 2013 several national Wikimedia organisations have been working together in the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU). The aim of the cooperation is to jointly advocate for free knowledge and to make the voice of the Wikimedia movement heard within the European Commission and the European Parliament. Wikimedia Nederland supports the cooperation financially and contributes where possible to activities organised by FKAGEU. A working group of Board members and volunteers is actively engaged with the implementation of EU regulation in the Netherlands.
On 23 September 2020, member countries of the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) postponed a decision on the admission of the Wikimedia Foundation as an observer due to objections from the People's Republic of China. Wikimedia Nederland, together with other Wikimedia chapters, has called on the European Union to show support for the Wikimedia Foundation and to take steps to facilitate its admission.
we will further develop our capacity building programme for GLAMs by developing the GLAMWiki knowledge platform. This activity is funded by the Network Digital Heritage
we will expand our network of partners to include organisations working on the Sustainable Development Goals. This activity is funded by a private family fund.
Public Domain Day Editathon. How much time have you got? 15 minutes to upload an image to Commons, 30 minutes to add an image to a Wikipedia-article, 60 minutes to write a Wikipedia article....
This program aims to increase the reputation of Wikimedia and to promote the vision of the movement and to convince the general public, heritage institutions and policy makers that this vision is worth making a contribution.
Of all the programmes in our annual plan, Outreach was most affected by the COVID19 lockdown measures. We cancelled all major events, such as the annual national conference WIKICON-NL.Conferences and seminars organised by partner organisations, where we would have presented the Wikimedia-projects, were mostly also cancelled.
Public Domain Day 2020 was an event focussing on works that had come into the public domain on January 1, 2020, because their makers had died in 1949. It took place on January 10 at the Netherlands Institute Sound and Vision in Hilversum. The programme focused on the creators, the works entering the public domain, underlying legislation and new technical developments. Wikimedia Nederland organised a special edit-a-thon on creators who died in 1949 and did not yet have a lemma on Wikipedia. The event was an initiative of the working group Public Domain of Vereniging Open Nederland, in which Wikimedia Nederland also participates.
As WikiconNL, the annual Wikimedia Nederland conference, could not take place, we decided to organise a small-scale online event as an alternative on the last WikiSaturday of 2020. A varied programme was put together with room for interesting (flash) presentations, workshops, a Wiki Goes Caribbean seminar on the topic of 'feasts', an online tour and: a pub quiz bingo. More than 60 people participated in this event, which was organised almost entirely by volunteers.
There was no shortage of media attention for the work of Wikimedia Nederland in 2020.
Reporter Margriet Oostveen from the national broadsheet Volkskrant attended WikiSaturday of 7 March, in honour of International Women's Day, and wrote about it in her column. The following Monday, Wikipedian Ciell was interviewed by Toine van Peperstraten on the national radio programme Stax&Toine.
The two millionth article on Dutch language Wikipedia also generated media attention. Wikimedia Nederland issued a press release and paired Wikipedians with journalists for interviews. The milestone was covered by 12 different media in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The fact that Wikipedia volunteer Edo de Roo received a royal honour on 24 April for his many years of service did not go unnoticed. National broadsheets Trouw and de Volkskrant interviewed Edo de Roo and wrote extensive articles about Wikipedia.
Sandra Rientjes, excutive director of Wikimedia Nederland was interviewed by regional station NH Radio on 9 June 2020 about Wikipedia.
The activities organised by Wikimedia Nederland in October as part of History Month also made the newspapers. Again, there was an article in Trouw about this special writing month.
Because of COVID19 the General Assembly planned for 18 April was cancelled and postponed until 26 September, when we held an online event. For the first time, we used online voting which worked well. Board members Frans Grijzenhout and Marike van Roon decided to resign from the Board as of 18 April. Jan Bart de Vreede took over Frans' role as chairman.
At the Assembly in September, boardmember Michel Wesseling was re-elected and Lotte Belice Baltussen joined the Board. This left the Board which one seat vacant, which we hope to fill in April 2021.
The 2019 Annual Report was published and the 2019 financial accounts were approved by the auditor. They were submitted to the General Assembly in September for final approval .
GLAM coordinator Michelle van Lanschot was on maternity leave from February to July. Sandra Fauconnier temporarily took over her most of her projects. Staff capacity was reduced by 40% in the period October - December because of illness of two staff.
The main source of income for Wikimedia Nederland is the Annual Plan Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. Besides the regular grant, we received an additional grant for developing and implementing a donor campaign. We have a number of loyal donors who donate ,>€100 per year, and would like to increase that number. We have selected a consultancy specialised in fundraising for non-profits to help raise our revenue through private donations. A pilot campaign will start in March 2021.
We received a donation of €50,000 from a private family fund that has also generously supported us in the past. With this sum, we will develop activities around the Sustainable Development Goals over the next three years, starting in 2021.
In addition, we managed to acquire a number of project grants, which will fund activities in 2021:
Share your Data on colonial heritage: Shared history 'on wiki'. - Contribution by GO Fonds. This is a series of master classes for staff of archives and heritage institutions the Dutch Caribbean, Surinam and the Netherlands, on sharing knowledge and collections. (Funds received in 2020, implementation in 2021)
Knowledge platform for heritage institutions - contribution by the Digital Heritage Network (Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed) for the development of a platform with tools and manuals for GLAM institutions that want to share their collections with the Wikimedia projects. (Implementation in 2021)
Media art on Wikipedia. Wikimedia Nederland is a partner in this project developed by LIMA and funded by the Mondriaan Fund and the PICA Foundation. (to be implemented in 2021)
Board members Frans Grijzenhout and Jan-Bart de Vreede, and Executive Director Sandra Rientjes participated in the international conversations concerning the implementation of the Movement Strategy 2030. Sandra Rientjes was a member of the drafting committee of the Universal Code of Conduct and was active in the preparation and organising of SWAN calls.
Table 2Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source
Currency
Anticipated
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Cumulative
Anticipated ($US)*
Cumulative ($US)*
Explanation of variances from plan
Annual Plan Grant
Euro
340,000
188,000
192,500
380,500
371,154
377,151
extra grant of €40,500 for developing donor campaign. €23.598 of invoices to be received in 2021 - added to designated reserve to be spent in 2021.
Donations
Euro
30,000
65,613
18,913
84,526
32,749
32,749
Includes €50,000 grant from private fund to work on SDGs over the next three years. The total amount has been added to a desginated reserve for 2021-2023
membership fees
Euro
5,000
3,693
681
4,374
5,458
5,458
Grants and sponsorships
Euro
40,000
5,750
5,750
43,665
6,277
Euro
415,000
257,306
217,844
475,150
453,026
518,683
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
NB: financial information is provisional. The auditor has not yet finalised his report.
Table 3Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense
Currency
Budgeted
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Cumulative
Budgeted ($US)*
Cumulative ($US)*
Percentage spent to date
Explanation of variances from plan
Programme Community
Euro
29,000
2,431
5,920
8,351
31,657
9,116
29
Underspend because no scholarships were awarded and no community events were organised
Programme Free Content
Euro
23,000
2,393
29,583
31,976
25,107
34,905
139
Programme Outreach
Euro
17,000
0
1,783
1,783
18,558
1,946
10
Cancellation of outreacht events, such as WikiConNL
Operations
Euro
94,500
30,557
59,354
89,911
103,159
103,159
95
Staff
Euro
250,000
155,153
83,764
238,917
272,907
272,907
96
TOTAL
Euro
413,500
190,534
180,404
370,938**
451,388
404,916
90
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
NB: financial information is provisional. The auditor has not yet finished his report.
Explanation: The total of expenditure (€370,398) indicates an underspend in relation to the total amount of funding received from WMF in 2020 ( €380,500 = €340,000 annual plan grant + €40,500 additional grant to work on donor recruitment and fundraising). Especially in relation to the additional grant, we want to stress that in 2020 we entered into financial commitments for the fundraising campaign for a total of € 48,936. Of that total, € 27,954,64 was invoiced in 2020; to be invoiced in 2021: €20.981. We have put that into a designated reserve.
As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES
Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES
.jpg)