Outstanding Professional advancing Open Access to Cultural Heritage Award/Awardees

Outstanding Professional Advancing Open Access to Cultural Heritage Award, in memory of Effie Kapsalis

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Awardees

Selection committee

FAQ

Shailili and Tibisay Zamora

Tibisay Kunadamy in 2025, at the Wikimedia+Libraries Convention.

The work of Tibisay and Shailili was nominated by Angie Cervellera from Wikimedia Argentina. Tibisay and Shailili work together at the Indigenous Documentation Center No’lhametwet, as cultural manager and as part of the indigenous Wichí peoples. There, Shailili and Tibisay promote “the dissemination of indigenous cultures and access to knowledge, making sure that the voices and knowledges of our people are visible and accessible for everyone”. To accomplish this work, they are collaborating with Wikimedia Argentina and the Institute of Culture of the Chaco Province in Argentina, in a project called “Cartografías Abiertas Qom, Wichí y Moqoit”. There, they “work in creating open content and documenting our own traditions.”

Shailili and Tibisay were awarded “to recognize the important work they are doing with indigenous communities, creating open access in their own terms, in communities that are highly underrepresented and facing significant and often existential threats. We expect that this award and recognition will open up new opportunities for the incredible work she and her community are doing.”

Solange Ferraz Lima

Solange Ferraz de Lima at WikiCon Brasil in 2022.

Solange works in a public university museum, Museu Paulista (Museu do Ipiranga), and was nominated by João Peschanski from Wikimedia Brasil. According to Solange, “our museum always had a vision for making collections as publicly available as possible, even with all the challenges that this work faces in Brasil.” When the museum had to close for a restoration project in 2017, the importance of having their collections publicly online became even clearer. “That’s when we met the team at Wikimedia Brasil, and there we found a place where people shared our concerns and our vision of opening up collections and promoting free knowledge.”

The committee decided to award Solange “to recognize the significant work that Solange has done to bring decolonial concepts to the digital dissemination of heritage from a very important position in the cultural heritage system, and for being a strong champion for open in Brasil.”