The 'Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia' project, funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, aimed to improve educational resources in the Sofia Zoo by creating bilingual informational plates for biological species and enhancing related Wikipedia articles. The project resulted in over 260 information plates, as well as substantial contributions to Bulgarian Wikipedia, including 150 new and 110 improved articles. Future plans include establishing free Wi-Fi across the zoo and analyzing the impact of the project on visitor engagement and online information quality.

1. Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia
Katerina Zareva , Rositsa Gyurova
Educational Department in Sofia Zoo
Vassia Atanassova
Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group

2. Joint Project with Bulgarian Wikipedia
“Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia”
• Funded by Wikimedia Foundation
Project start: 1 May 2012
Project end: 30 April 2013
• Main goals
Creation of new information plates for the exhibited biological
species in Bulgarian and English, containing multilingual QR
codes to the full Wikipedia articles with detailed information.
Contributions to the Bulgarian version of Wikipedia with the
creation and improvement of articles about the exhibited
biological species.

3. Project funding
• The whole budget of the project:
BGN 8467.00  EUR 4330.00
• Budget sources
Wikimedia Foundation grant
Voluntary co-funding
• Budget allocation
Metal constructions for holding the plates
Printing the PVC plates
Brochures and promotion
64%
36%
5
57%38%

4. Voluntary labor
• Plates design: Donated by Edouard Loigerot
• Plates content: Staff of Educational Dept. of Sofia Zoo
• Wikipedia articles: Wikipedian community
• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, Zoo Staff and Volunteer
Photographers, Fotolia.com

5. The new information plates in Sofia Zoo

6. The new information plates in Sofia Zoo
Aquarium and terrarium plates

8. The QR codes
• Multilingual QRpedia codes to Wikipedia articles
The code is generated with the web application http://qrpedia.org/
starting from the Bulgarian article BUT using the species’ Latin name:
http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varecia_rubra which redirects to the Cyrillic one.
Red ruffled lemur
bg: Червен гривест лемур
lat: Varecia rubra

9. The generated QR code is linked
simultaneously to all versions of this article
in different language versions of Wikipedia.
It is opened to the user in the language
their mobile device is set on.
The QR codes in action

10. Project Results
• Designed, printed and installed information plates: 260+.
• Improved Wikipedia articles: 110+
• New Wikipedia articles: 150+
• Ongoing collaboration

11. Project Impact
• Stabilizing the infrastructure in the Sofia Zoo
• Increasing the educational value of the Zoo
• Increasing the involvement of the Wikipedian community with the Zoo
• Improving the quality of Wikipedia (and generally, online) information in
Bulgarian related to animal species
• Encouraging innovation by using modern information and communication
technologies in the Zoo–visitors interaction

12. Future plans
What’s next?
• Arrangement of a free WiFi zone across the Sofia Zoo
• Evaluation of the the impact of the plates
• Analysis of visitors’ experience
• Analysis of QR code performance
• Analysis of Wikipedia readers’ interest in articles for the
exhibited species

13. Challenges
• No QRpedia statistics, only statistics for articles visits: seasonality, trends, etc.
• Raw data: http://github.com/bmanolov/wikimedia/blob/master/wikipedia/stats-
for-zoo-species/view_stats.csv
2010-01 2011-01 2012-01 2013-01 2014-01 2015-01
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Ягуар / Jaguar / Panthera onca

14. Sharing our experience
If you want to have similar project or QR codes in your zoo:
• Produce multilingual QR codes to Wikipedia using
http://qrpedia.org (only this application maintains the
multilingual interwiki links).
• For non-Latin-based languages, use the redirecting Latin names
for better QR code raster and easier use.
• For Wikimedia Foundation funding, first contact for support
your local Wikipedia community
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG

15. Further information:
• Project: http://bit.ly/wikizoo
• Report: http://bit.ly/wikizoo-report
• BG Coordination page: http://bit.ly/bgwpzoo
www.zoosofia.eu