Wikipedia:GLAM/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa/The whole GLAM package
 | How to use this manual · Set up your project · Select your topic · Select images · Make Wikidata edits · Upload images · Create and edit articles · Review and promote · Project checklist |
A manual for GLAMs releasing packages of collection images, data, and research to Wiki platforms.
This manual was created by Avocadobabygirl and is based on projects done at Te Papa in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2022 and 2023. Please feel free to try it out and make improvements!
_-_The_Noun_Project.svg){kind=small} | Wikimania session Avocadobabygirl and Stitchbird2 presented this manual at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore! |
How to use this manual
[edit]GLAMs don’t just have objects they hold or display. We have the results of years – even decades or more – of hard work collecting and describing objects, doing in-depth research, structuring and enriching data, creating beautiful and comprehensive digital representations, and finding connections between objects and people.
By packaging together the results of all this work you can really take advantage of what makes our organisations so special – detail, context, and connection – and share that with world outside your walls.
Use this manual if you’re in a gallery, library, archive, or museum (GLAM) – or you’re a volunteer looking to support a GLAM – and want to:
- contribute to Wikipedia using your organisation’s collections and knowledge
- do it in a way that’s focused, achievable, and sustainable
- come away with useful experience and more benefits for your organisation.
By the end of this manual you’ll know how to:
- start a project and pick a good topic
- scope a reasonable amount of work across each platform
- identify and select the right collection items, images, and knowledge to share
- use OpenRefine to filter and massage your data to make it suitable for upload
- create and use an OpenRefine schema to bulk upload images with solid metadata
- develop and fill in a template for new articles
- measure and report on your project.
| Example Examples from Te Papa's projects show up in these boxes. |
Why use all these platforms?
[edit]Wikipedia articles are enhanced if they also have useful images, and both are improved if they’re backed by structured data.
Your project can contribute in all three areas:
- Add credible, well-referenced information to Wikipedia articles to make them more reliable and more likely to reach the people who need them.
- Add images to Wikimedia Commons so they can be included in Wikipedia articles, along with descriptive metadata that makes them easier to find and share.
- Add data to Wikidata as structured statements to enhance articles with infoboxes, cite references more easily, link up information about people, places and things, and support further research and reuse of your articles and images.
What does a package of contributions look like?
[edit]While making edits to any Wiki platform is a worthwhile contribution, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata can be used together to make each article, image, and item better.
By understanding the connections between platforms and planning your contributions around this, you can:
- be more effective with your time
- flesh out Wikidata items and Wikipedia articles with images
- make images of your collection objects more findable
- provide users with richer information about the topic
- get information from the project and Wiki platforms back into your own systems.
| Example In one project Te Papa loaded over 350 images of Te Papa’s forget-me-not plant specimens to Wikimedia Commons, created or edited hundreds of related items on Wikidata, and created or edited 65 related articles on Wikipedia. We created a Commons template and published posts on our own blog and This Month in GLAM. |
Tools
[edit]This kind of project relies on OpenRefine, an open-source piece of software that helps you review and work with data. It also has great functions that let you hook directly into Wiki platforms, including bulk uploading tons of images at once.
Check it out at the links below, which have information about how to set it up and use it.
You’ll also find it useful to have tools that let you:
- View and edit whole folders of images, like IrfanView or XNView
- Manage your project, like Trello or Planner in Microsoft Teams
- Export data from your collection management system or API
Use of terms
[edit]This manual uses a few specific terms it’s good to keep in mind.
Instead of Wiki projects it talks about Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata as platforms, to avoid confusing them with the project you’re working on.
At Te Papa, a record is a set of structured data associated with a single collection object, but we also have records for each image, person, taxon, and other connected entities, some of which ends up attached to the collection record. This is also where we can save relevant information like Wikidata identifiers (QIDs).
Mātauranga Māori is the body of knowledge originating from the ancestors and worldview, values and perspectives of Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Descriptive metadata refers to information that describes an object (or image of an object), which is usually shown alongside that object. In particular, the table of information that sits under an image on Wikimedia Commons.
Structured metadata refers to that same information, structured as statements using Properties and Items in Wikidata.
What you’ll need (and how to get around it)
[edit]This manual assumes you’ve already got a number of things in place. If you don’t, here are some workarounds.
| You need | You could |
|---|---|
| Open licenses on your data and images | Use out of copyright images, or seek an open license for just the data and images you want to use |
| Unique IDs for each of your records and images | Come up with a way to uniquely and reliably identify them, and save that information safely |
| Records for associated entities like people, locations, and scientific names (taxa) | Keep this data in a spreadsheet, but make sure you’re in touch with relevant staff so they can review, contribute to, and use it themselves |
| Ability to save Wikidata QIDs to your records | Keep this data in a spreadsheet, but make sure you’re in touch with relevant staff so they can review, contribute to, and use it themselves |
These workarounds aren’t particularly sustainable in the long run – if you’re using them, treat your project as evidence that your organisation needs to prioritise some bigger changes.
Next up: Set up your project