Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Nederland/201111

This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for November 2011.

Cultural heritage

Europeana Director Jill Cousins at WCN2011 in Utrecht

Cultural Heritage was one of the tracks at the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland. Presentations were given which will be available later.

Jill Cousins reported during her keynote speech that one of the biggest challenges facing Europeana is convincing partners to offer digital content under a CC-by-SA license. Among common objections such as "fear of loss of potential income" or "fear of unforeseen undesirable outcomes" is the largest objection: "fear of loss of atttribution". To illustrate this, she discussed the case of the "Yellow kitchen maid", a term used to describe en:The Milkmaid (Vermeer), in which a maid is wearing a bodice that is not very yellow. The painting hangs in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, and due to the immense popularity of various internet images, casual visitors feel cheated that the real painting does not show "the true color", and complain about this to the museum.

Interestingly, the most hits from "backlinks" to an actual collection were from direct references in Wikipedia articles in multiple languages, rather than from attribution links in media files on Wikimedia Commons, according to a related presentation on the statistics of Wikimedia contributions from Open Images, by Martin Zeinstra.

The Tropical Museum presented a plan to work together with Wikipedia to create a new website with modern "media mashups" that will help visitors and others understand more about museum material on expeditions. This is very much in an early stage, but the idea is that Wikipedia may use Tropical Museum content in articles in the usual way, and then based on stories locked into 19th and early 20th century expedition diaries, the website will offer mashups of the Wikipedia media and articles to illustrate the stories. Hopefully some volunteers will be interested enough to join their brainstorm sessions and keep us informed on the proceedings.

Conferences etc.

WCN2011, presentation of WLM winners

On November 5th the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland took place with 120-140 visitors. There were three tracks available and the morning keynote speech by Jill Cousins of Europeana was given to a full auditorium, which was just as full at the end of day for the Wiki Loves Monuments prize ceremony. Some of the presenters have agreed to publish their presentations in the public domain.

On November 11th, Sue Gardner and some other staff members of WMF visited Utrecht and had a dinner with board members and some active members. It was an opportunity to talk face to face about issues on and off the usual Wikimedia mailing lists.

Press and outreach

At Heemschut 100th anniversary, Open Air Museum Arnhem

On November 10th, the award-ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments Belgium/Lŭemburg took place in Brussels. WMNL was represented by Lodewijk Gelauff, one of our most active volunteers and lead for this Europe-wide contest.

On November 11th, the cultural heritage association Heemschut had a symposion on the occasion of its 100th anniversay. WMNL was represented by Ziko van Dijk in a panel discussion. Wiki Loves Monuments was mentioned several times at the day.

On November 25th, Ziko van Dijk gave a lecture at the Open Day of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) in Rotterdam. The day after that, WMNL and UEA had a joint seminar on free knowledge led by Marek Blahus and Ziko van Dijk.

Newsletter #14 sent out.

Upcoming

• December: GLAMcamp in the Netherlands