WM ZA/GLAM collection digitization motivation

Wikimedia South Africa is looking for a partner organisation in Southern Africa that has a collection for digitization into the public domain. Wikimedia South Africa will commit to digitizing the collection where up it will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons from which it can be used to illustrate articles on Wikipedia, the free online encylopedia. The content will be uploaded under an open Creative Commons copyright license, ideally CC0, thereby allowing it to be freely shared in the public domain with the public over the internet.

The ideal collection for digitization was first published in South Africa prior to 1946, thereby ensuring that has copyright clearance and that it is in the public domain, and is in a fixed medium so it can be digitized.

The goals of ditization for Wikimedia South Africa are:

To enable ubiquitous access to your collection: this means that people or institutions can view your collection whenever and wherever they see it fit. Access is increased through sharing your collection with other institutions or through larger platforms such as Wikimedia Commons.
To enable reperforming processes over your collection: this means allowing people or institutions to remix, to perform automated tasks over your content, to print your collections in larger formats, to exhibit them through other means, among others.

Wikimedia South Africa will secure funding to action the digitization and upload to Commons and will commit to give a copy of the digitized collection to the keeper of the collection. Wikimedia South Africa is open and interested in discussing the details of such a digitization program with any interested possible partner organization in possession of such a collection.

Interested organisations can contact Wikimedia South Africa for more information about becoming a partner for this digitization project at the following details:

shupai.mchuchuwikimedia.org.za