Wikimedia Foundation Culture and Heritage team

About us

The Culture and Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation works with the Wikimedia Movement to strengthen collaborations with libraries, museums, archives, publishers, and many other heritage organizations using and enriching Wikimedia Projects. We’re particularly interested in addressing visual knowledge gaps and diversifying information sources.

Services

• Request a new category for Commons Impact Metrics
• Suggest a new collection for The Wikipedia Library

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  Silvia sharing data at Atelier 1Lib1Ref in Côte d'Ivoire
• 
  Satdeep delivering Wikimedia training at the Bophana Center in Cambodia
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  Fiona chatting with conference attendees at ESEAP Sydney in Australia
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  Giovanna posing questions after the table ¿De quién es el conocimiento y cómo se construye? during WECUDI 2023

Progress against annual plan 2023-24

For the 2023-24 annual plan, we focused on Commons and Wikisource and built our strategic alliances with museums and archives to fill visual knowledge gaps and diversify information sources in local and indigenous languages. In particular, we:

Fostered adoption of OpenRefine’s Commons extension by supporting a train-the-trainer program, documentation, and a WikiLearn course. By the end of the year, there was a cohort of certified trainers sustainably based within affiliates and cultural institutions and a WikiLearn course in 4 languages. 189 people uploaded 242,330 files and 58 people had completed at least one module of the WikiLearn course. See the related Diff post, Learn how to edit and upload to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine.

Collaborated with the Flickr Foundation to create Flickypedia and the Backfillr Bot to reduce deletion requests and improve the description of Flickr images on Wikimedia Commons. By the end of the year, around 5 million Flickr images on Commons had structured data and the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s Wikimedia working group are planning to use Flickypedia to contribute images with quality structured data to Wikimedia Commons to better structure biodiversity knowledge. See the related Diff post, Introducing Flickypedia, a better way to get Flickr images on Wikimedia Commons

Worked with the Foundation’s Data Platform team to develop Commons Impact Metrics, a new data product offering monthly data dumps and a new Wikimedia Analytics API for Wikimedia Commons categories of images relating to cultural heritage. See the related Diff post, Commons Impact Metrics now available via data dumps and API

Convened a peer learning network with movement representatives from 7 regions and 15 languages to share the capacities developed through the Wikisource Loves Manuscripts initiative, including comprehensive digitization guidelines in 5 languages. Participants took part in 5 trainings, supported by 3 partners (PPIM, Transkribus, and the British Library) and were introduced to a range of funding opportunities. At the conclusion of the 6-month program, participants representing 11 language communities shared plans for follow-on initiatives. See the related Diff post, Celebrating The Conclusion of Wikisource Loves Manuscript Pilot in Indonesia

Supported the GLAM Wiki Conference in Montevideo (Diff post) and a Wikimedia engagement with museums at ICOM Valencia (Diff post).

We also supported planning for the Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025 and released two datasets about movement engagement with libraries: Libraries in Diff posts (2009–August 2023) and This Month in GLAM Newsletter: full text (2011-2023), views, and regions.

Meet the team

Leave a message on our talk page, email cultureandheritage@wikimedia.org, or contact the most relevant member of our team using the Book a meeting link in the table below:

Fiona Romeo

Director
Community Programs

United Kingdom
UTC+0/+1
English, Italian (B1)
FRomeo (WMF)
Book a meeting
Talk to me about:

images and media, metrics, Commons, partnerships with cultural institutions

Satdeep Gill

Senior Program Officer
Culture and Heritage

Punjab, India
UTC+5:30 (IST)
English, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Farsi-2, Español- 2
SGill (WMF)
Book a meeting
Talk to me about:

language diversity, Wikisource, manuscripts, oral culture

Giovanna Fontenelle

Program Officer
Culture and Heritage

Brazil
UTC-3 (BRT)
English, Portuguese, Spanish, French (reading only)
GFontenelle (WMF)
Book a meeting
Talk to me about:

visual knowledge and image descriptions, museums, structured data, accessibility, gender, decolonization

Silvia Eunice Gutiérrez De la Torre

Senior Program Officer
Libraries

Mexico
UTC-6
Spanish, English, German (C1), French (B1), Italian (A2)
SEgt-WMF
On parental leave
Talk to me about:

1Lib1Ref, library-led Wiki campaigns or projects, disinformation, artificial intelligence

Sailesh Patnaik

Senior Program Officer, Education & Language Inclusion

India
UTC+5:30 (IST)
Odia -N, English -P, Hindi -P, Bangla -L
SPatnaik (WMF)
Book a meeting
Talk to me about:

community engagement, language inclusion, decolonization, the intersection of culture, heritage and education

Vipin SJ

Senior Partnerships Manager

India
UTC+5:30 (IST)
English, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil (spoken only)
VSj (WMF)
Book a meeting
Talk to me about:

The Wikipedia Library, academic publishing, content partnerships

Alice Kibombo

Senior Program Officer, Libraries

Uganda
UTC+3 (EAT)
English
AKibombo-WMF

Talk to me about:

Wikimedia and librarians

Regular updates

We publish occasional articles to Diff and regular updates to the This Month in GLAM Newsletter.