Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Nederland/201510

--Report on Wikimedia Nederland’s activities in September-October 2015

THIS REPORT IS STILL BEING EDITED!

Community and Participation

Community health

A group of editors has developed who are keen to improve working atmosphere on the Nl-Wikipedia. This is a follow-up of the survey carried out in May which showed that a majority of editors is not satisfied with the atmosphere. Supported by WMNL, plans are being made for a training course/masterclass to further develop moderation and communication skills. This course will take place January/February 2016.

Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland

We have sent out a press release in which the names of confirmed speakers were announced. We have sent out this press release to our presslist and to target groups in The Netherlands. On the Dutch and Flemish Wikipedia the sitenotice about the conference was published.

GLAM-Wiki coordinators meeting

On October 6, a meeting with the GLAM-Wiki coordinators and WiRs from several Dutch institutions took place. This kind of meeting has been held in the past and an interest was expressed to organize it 3-4 times per year to discuss common issues and results. One of the main points resulting from this discussion was the need for a workshop to train more people on how to do large uploads to Commons. It was suggested to organize this in Q1 or 2 of 2016.

Content

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 took place in September. In the Netherlands, over 4.000 images of monuments were added to Wikimedia Commons. Local events this year took place in Gouda, Hilversum and Eemsmond. The awards ceremony will be on Saturday 28 november at the Wikimedia Conference Netherlands.

Gendergap project

On September 12th and October 10th we held our monthly gendergap meeting on WikiSaturday. In September, the taskforce group had a discussion with 10 interested women about their approach of the gendergap project. Everybody had an opportunity to explain their point of interest and we came to the conclusion that every attendee needed his/her own personal approach. One month later, we had two attendees who returned and shared their findings after the September meeting. We have looked at possible activities and the preparation that needs to be done to make this activities succesful for all parties.

Bird watching at the Rijksmuseum

On 4 October Rijksmuseum, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Wikimedia Netherlands & SealincMedia organized a bird watching event at the Rijksmuseum. Wikipedia volunteers and bird watchers worked together to identify birds on drawings and prints from the Rijksmuseum collection. The images of the identified birds will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and added to relevant Wikipedia articles.

Writing about nature on Wikipedia

Wikimedia Netherlands, together with IVN (a volunteer nature organization), organised a Wikipedia-writing course about nature. In 2 sessions participants learned the basics of editing Wikipedia. Also in October, we organised a writing event about nature conservation pioneer Jac. P. Thijsse.

Music

There were meetings between WMNL and the directors of three Dutch music academies to explore the possibility of cooperation which should lead to improvement of content about music on Wikipedia, and of course also more recorded music on Wikimedia Commons. There is enough enthusiasm on all sides to continue. First activities expected in 2016.

Education programma

From september 8 - october 20, a Wikipedia course was held at Utrecht University as part of a course on Public History. In collaboration with the University Museum, the students studied aspects of a former 19th century hospital on ophthalmology. During the course, three meetings were dedicated to Wikipedia. An introduction on Wikipedia and the studying of wikipedia lemmas; the proposal of topics with commentary of a Wikipedian, and finally an edit-a-thon where the articles were written.

Emerging partnerships

Talks have been held with several potential new partners.

The very constructive talks with the cooperative Erfgoed Gelderland continued, focusing on a potential Wikipedian-in-Residency. The WiR would be based at the cooperative and support smallers GLAMs in Gelderland province. The main aim of the project would not only be to help them upload parts of their digital collections, but also to build a handbook for smaller GLAMs on how to participate in the open data movement. The grant proposal is expected to be submitted to an external fund in Q1 of 2016.
Talks with the Royal Library and several public libraries also continued. This project focuses on new ways in which public libraries can participate in the Wikimedia movement. Several public libraries, some of which have participated in Wikimedia-related activities in the past, have expressed interest. The first activities in the scope of this project are expected to take place in Q1 of 2016.
In September there was a first meeting with Statistics Netherlands, who were also interested in using Commons and potentially Wikidata as platforms for their historical collections.

Communication and publicity

We sent out our newsletter of september and october

Governance and organization

General Assembly

The WMNL General Assembly took place on August 26. The members approved the Annual Plan for 2016.

Lila in Amsterdam

WMF Executive Director Lila Tretikov was in Amsterdam and found time to meet with the WMNL Board and Director.