Museum Documentation Program

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Museum Documentation Program is an GLAM initiative taken by West Bengal Wikimedians User Group to document the rich cultural heritage collected in different museums in India.

Why this program

Museums in different parts of India have extensive collections of artifacts, but most of them lack proper digital documentation. Some of the museums do not have their catalog of collections, whereas catalog of some are inaccessible to common people. A typical character of government museums in India is the long chain of bureaucratic red-tapism, which hinders people to take photographs of their collections, of course there are exceptions. Adding to that, museum authorities and staffs are sometimes unfriendly, secretive, rude to photographers. May be, these are the reasons, Indian museums are so less documented in Wikimedia Commons. These experiences led us to believe, that a typical style of GLAM program, involving museum authorities officially may be too difficult to handle in Indian scenario, for the time being. We have experienced and quality photographers documenting the rich Indian cultural heritage in for many years. In this program, West Bengal Wikimedians User Group will engage them to target museums systematically to photo-document their exhibits and bring them to Wikimedia Commons. Next step will be to generate metadata in Wikidata and later create articles in Wikipedia. This targeted approach will enrich the online content of the museum collections.

Interested participants

1. Bodhisattwa (talk) 02:54, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
2. Atudu (talk) 08:23, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
3. Rajeeb (talk) 16:47, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Targeted museums

Please add any museum of India, you want to document

1. Indian Museum, Kolkata
2. State Archaeology Museum, Kolkata
3. Malda Museum
4. Haripada Sahitya Mandir, Purulia
5. Yogesh Chandra Vidyanidhi Purakirti Bhawan, Bishnupur
6. Pakbirra Museum, Pakbirra, Purulia district
7. National Museum, New Delhi
8. Sarnath Museum

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