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UNESCO Memory of the World project

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Seungjeongwon Ilgi, the Diaries of the Royal Secretariat Wikidata Q483160

During 2024 and 2025, the Khalili Foundation and UNESCO are collaborating to improve the visibility of the Memory of the World International Register. This is part of the ongoing partnership between the Khalili Foundation and Wikimedia UK and is fully funded by the Khalili Foundation. The on-wiki activity is led by Dr. Martin Poulter, Wikimedian In Residence at the Foundation.

The Memory of the World International Register currently describes 570 pieces of important cultural heritage from around the world. The pieces of documentary heritage — called inscriptions — may be as small as a single document, or as large as an entire library. Many of them are relevant to human rights, such as the Human Rights Archive of Chile (Wikidata Q56317310) or Book for the Baptism of Slaves (1636-1670) (Wikidata Q28028133).

At the outset of the project, the representation of the register on Wikimedia projects was incomplete and filled with errors. About 40% of the inscriptions on the register are still unknown to Wikimedia. Memory of the World inscriptions located in Europe are much better represented than those in Africa and other areas of the Global South.

Activities

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Hannah Drummen at UNESCO has written a guide for Wikimedians on navigating the online MoW International Register and using it to improve Wikipedia.

Ordination document of the Japanese monk Enchin
Update the Wikidata representation of the International Register

It ought to be possible to use Wikidata to generate a complete list of inscriptions, as a basis for Wikipedia articles in multiple languages. This is not yet possible because of omissions, duplicates, and confusions between the international register and national registers. As part of this project, we will create guidelines that help with future cataloguing.

Turn facts from the unstructured documents into structured data

The nomination documents on the UNESCO web site contain many interesting facts about the inscriptions. These include collection sizes, languages of a text, and dates of creation. These would be more useful in a structured form. Using the documents as the basis for Wikidata statements is a way to get more structured data for both Wikipedia and the UNESCO sites.

The Book of Healing from internal and external diseases affecting the body, a 17th-century magico-medical manuscript in Timbuktu, Mali. Wikidata Q133264812
Update links

There are hundreds of links from Wikimedia projects to the old versions of the UNESCO Memory of the World online database. These broken links need to be replaced by the new database, https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/ (English) https://www.unesco.org/fr/memory-world (French), https://www.unesco.org/es/memory-world (Spanish), or https://www.unesco.org/zh/memory-world/ (Chinese).

Old links that should be replaced include those starting with http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/, http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/, https://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/, and https://www.unesco.org/new/fr/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-world/. These can be searched for with the Special:LinkSearch feature of each wiki.

Categorise files on Wikimedia Commons

There are scans and photographs of some Memory of the World inscriptions on Commons. It is not yet possible to record how many image views these files are getting, because categorisation has many errors. We would like cultural institutions to share additional images under free licences so they can be used in illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Create new Wikipedia articles

At the start of the project, there were a total of 1660 articles about individual inscriptions in 164 languages, including 76 in English, 66 in German and 60 in French. There are clearly many opportunities to create new articles so that more of this cultural heritage is represented in open knowledge.

Updates

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Updates will be posted in the This Month in GLAM newsletter in a dedicated Memory of the World report. Feel free to report any work you do for the above goals.

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