Wikimedia & Museums
Why we need them and what we can do about it
Liam Wyatt

GLAM institutions:
• Treasure houses • (primary) research
institutes
• Public funding for
public good • IRL volunteer
community
• Custodians of our
cultural heritage • Visitors and groups
• 90% not on display • Experts

Dedicated to
best-practice in:
• Curation
• Interpretation
• Preservation/Restoration
• Valuation
• Museology
• Librarianship
• Metadata
• Archiving
• Provenance
• Art history
• ...

“Explore the past,
Document the present,
Engage the public.”

Build a Relationship
(i.e. don’t try and steal their stuff)

“content liberation”

Initial contact
• Ring them up - ask for the
“outreach” or “education” person
(or “web-strategy”).
• Someone in the organisation is
already “doing” social/web2/O.A.
• Visit, have a chat.
• No camera, no proposals.
• Meet for introductions -
no obligation.
• Prepare. What do they care
about? What is their presence on
Wikimedia projects.

Most of the work
is not visible

Build a
su!ainable
relationship
(i.e. this should be beneficial in both directions, not just getting ‘photos of things’)

• Run an event:
• Backstage Pass
• Wiki Loves Art
• Featured Article
• Host a Local Meetup
• Write in their Newsletter
• Learn their perspective:
• ‘Access rights’ not just
copyrights
• Business & funding model
• Innovations they’ve tried

You might be pleasantly surprised
(n.b. “statement of significance” = notability)
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?
irn=7177&img=131713

http://glam.wikimedia.org.au
How can we work together to build sustainable
relationships that are mutually beneficial?

Recommendations
• Technology • Education
• Law • Business
to GLAM sector
to Wikimedia community
to government

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations

Did you know?
There’s a 2 year queue to join:

Theme 1: Metadata
They want:
• to know what we’re using of theirs, where,
and statistics of its usage
• to know when we’ve changed/added
improved their content and to export
those changes back
• us to enable machine readable metadata
• us to use their metadata consistently and
comprehensively

Theme 2: The real thing
They want us to:
• not try and make GLAMs redundant
• encourage people to get a personal
experience rather than just online
• find ways for recognition of expert input
• highlight our quality assessments and
encourage external peer review

Theme 3: Information
They want:
• documentation about free licensing
• someone to contact
• to know how to do more things with no
extra money or time
• to learn how to edit and for it to be easier
• to see how NPOV is compatible with
interpretive debate

Theme 4: Moral rights
They want:
• us to take greater care in dealing with
moral rights of authors - not just copyright
• Indigenous cultural rights: not all culture
was meant to be free

Credits
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:School_children_in_Louvre.jpg Hu Toya, cc-by-sa
• http://punditkitchen.com/2008/04/04/political-pictures-navy-liberate-shit/
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CandlestickTelephoneGal.jpg, PD
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bucephala-albeola-010.jpg MdF, cc-by-sa
• http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2009/04/02/working-with-
wikipedia-backstage-pass-at-the-powerhouse-museum/ Paula Bray, cc-by-sa
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glam_wiki_1.jpg David Howe, cc-by-sa
• http://picasaweb.google.com/mathias.schindler/Australien#5368793653845814850
Mathias Schindler, cc-by-nc-nd

thank you
• lwyatt@wikimedia.org.au
• wittylama.com