Wikimedia CH/Micro Grant/Dia Scan Albania

Please provide the following information for your micro-grant request:

Your Username: Albinfo

Your Country of residence: Switzerland

Amount requested: ca. CHF 900

Planned activity: Scan of 1000–1200 dias of a private collection taken in Albanian in the years 1981–1989

People involved:

photographer providing the pictures under a free CC license
Albinfo handling the process with scanning, uploading, describing, categorizing, adding to other Wikimedia projects.
finally benefiting all Wikimedia Commons users

Please explain what influence your activity will have on Wikimedia Projects:
A private Swiss photographer is donating 1200 dias to Wikimedia Commons. The images were taken in communist Albania during several trips between 1981 and 1989. They show daily life, sights, city views, landscapes, factories, transport infrastructure, touristic infrastructure etc. Views behind the – iron – curtain.

Albania was hardly visited during that time. Almost nobody living in Albania had cameras. Thus, images of the country at that time are very rare. Since the fall of the communist regime, the country changed dramatically. The things depicted on these photographs are mostly long time gone.

We have a nonrecurring chance to add a great collection to Commons and the Wikiverse. The dias will go to trash unseen if we don't digitalize them.

Currently, we only have 20+ images on Commons of Albania in the 1980s, many of them showing propaganda (see c:Category:Albania in the 1980s – all other files in these categories have a non-photographic character like maps, documents, stamps etc). The target is to increase the number of photographs in this category by at least 4000 %.

I already supported User:Terfili and his father (c:User:HelmutKienzle) with describing, categorizing and intgrating some 2000+ images from Albanian from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Like this, I already gained experience in such projects. This collection was already a great contribution – but there are much more images from that time available as Albania has opened up in the early 1990s.

We have to check how many of the 1200 images are suitable for uploading. Most probably we have to exclude some private / personal views only selecting images of educational value. Therefor, the final number and exact amount can't be provided yet.

Scanning 1000 dias costs roughly CHF 850 including tax at fotoscan24.ch. There are vendors with lower prices, but usually they have additional service charges that add to the amount resulting in final amounts at the same price or even higher. Recommendations for good vendors are highly welcomed. --Albinfo (talk) 19:25, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Today, I went to get the dias. We found out that there were less then 700 photographs, not 1200 as announced before. After removing the personal stuff, duplicates, images that do not comply with Commons licenses and other images without educational value and due to many empty slots in the trays, there are about 540 dias to be scanned.

This gives the following calculation for the amount requested (price list of fotoscan24.ch): ca. CHF 475 for the scanning + CHF 40 for taxes + ca. CHF 50 for shipment (mailing) + ca. 50 for data storage ⇒ estimated CHF 615. Albinfo (talk) 21:48, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide links to your contributions after your project or activity ended:
Please provide the links to the categories on Wikimedia Commons, to the articles on Wikipedia or any other contributions on Wikimedia projects:

Important: AFTER having submitted your request, please write an eMail to info@wikimedia.ch with your contact details (at least: Name, Surname, Email address)

Discussion

Vote

This section needs to be filled out by the Microgrant-Committee

Pro

Support this is exactly what a microgrant is for. I also had some photos scanned, the price is in the ranged (see for example). --Omnilaika02 (talk) 14:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Ilario (talk) 17:12, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Support Highly recommended! Thanks for this initiative. Lantus (talk) 18:23, 18 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Support --User:cassinam (talk) 20:26, 18 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Against

Abstention

Result
Four out of five members of the Micro-Grant Committee have voted in favour of accepting this micro-grant request. The applicant who submitted the request will be notified via e-mail in order to coordinate the payment as well as reporting. Dorine Barth (WMCH) (talk) 17:05, 27 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]