CEE/Newsletter/January 2018/Contents/Serbia report

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Contents

Serbia report: Micro-grant results, Wikipedian in Residence, Educational Program Jubilee[edit]

WMRS Birthday and Edu Jubilee[edit]

By Miroslav Loci

On December 3, Wikimedia Serbia celebrated 12 years of its existence. The birthday celebration was marked by another jubilee - 10 years since the first student essay was written on Serbian Wikipedia, which officially launched the Educational Program of Wikimedia Serbia, and the first article created as a student essay was ENIAC.

Today on Serbian Wikipedia, there are over 4000 essays, and more than 4000 students, teachers and professors from over 35 educational institutions took part in the project. The teachers are increasingly realizing that the internet has become an indispensable part of education. Therefore, our efforts are seen as the right way for students to focus on the use of new technologies and to take advantage of the Wikipedia's potential. In addition, it is obvious that teaching staff is increasingly willing to use the currently applicable methods in order to make teaching more creative and interactive so that the students would receive functional knowledge, and that is what encourages us.

Two Wikipedians in Residence successfully ended their work[edit]

By Miroslav Loci

During December, the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade and the National museum of Leskovac accepted WMRS proposal of cooperation, each allowing one experienced Wikipedian to digitize the available material and use the sources for writing and improving articles on Serbian Wikipedia for a whole month. The results were as follows:

Museum of Yugoslavia released 150 images of notable persons from SFRY era, around 50 writen and improved articles;

Museum of Leskovac released around 300 images from its collections, two books were digitized, 40 new and improved articles were writen, and a Wikipedia editing workshop was organised for staff members.

Small projects, great results[edit]

By Ivana Madžarević

Wikimedia Serbia proudly presents the great success of microgrant projects that have been approved in 2017. From the six accepted proposals, volunteers from all around Serbia have collected a total of 4966 photographs, and writen 262 articles on Serbian Wikipedia. More details (in Serbian) in our Blog.

"Are they edible, get to know them all" is a project that, through free content, aimed to familiarize the general public with the fungi that grow on the Serbian territory, the way to use them, their conservation status and whether they are edible, all illustrated with high-quality images.

"Wiki loves the Pannonian saline marshes" was created with the idea of increasing the visibility of Pannonian saline marshes and collecting photographs of protected and interesting species that inhabit them.

Within the "Wild Wiki Parks" project, the volunteers visited the four largest parks in Niš with the aim of showing the flora and fauna that inhabit these parts of nature and enriching the knowledge of park birds. The material of over 1,000 collected images is available on Wikimedia Commons and is used to illustrate the articles on Wikipedia. At the same time, their fellow citizens learned about Wikipedia through edit-a-thons and photo exhibitions.

The true idea of the project "Southeast through the lens" was to inspire a large number of individuals and institutions in the city of Niš through activities within the project: edit-a-thons, photo-tours, exhibitions and promotion of free knowledge. Through these activities volunteers worked on collecting photographs of natural and cultural sites, which contributed to the increase of content on Wiki projects.

"The pictures and words of Smederevska Palanka" is a project aimed at increasing the free content of the cultural and historical assets of Smederevska Palanka municipality. Volunteers from this region had the desire to increase the visibility of the cultural heritage of their home town and the environment on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, and they have uploaded almost 2,500 images.

"The promotion of protected heritage in southern and eastern Serbia" is a project whose name implies that it includes the collection of photo materials of canyons, cliffs, monuments and other cultural and natural assets in this region. From now on, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are enriched with articles and images that bring the general and specific features of those sites closer to the public.