RecentChangesCamp 2012 Canberra and GLAM :D

[Laura Hale]

Hi.  Sorry for the crossposting, though the audience crossover is hopefully small. :)  We've had two full days of RecentChangesCamp in Australia, and Sunday will be really short: We'll start at 9:30am, have a short opening circle, have two or three sessions, and then start our closing circle around 12:30pm with an idea of ending around 1:30pm. :) Thus, not sure how much GLAM stuff we'll be doing tomorrow.   I've been updating the GLAM Newsletter for Australia for January 2012 with details about RecentChangesCamp while I have the time. :D  Thus, this report isn't comprehensive for the conference.  (There was an Australian related mini-edit-athon, multiple conversations about education, discussions about Commons, about Wikimedia Chapters, about fan fiction, etc.)  It is just focused on GLAM centric stuff.  

Subject to change, copy pasted from the version when this was written, current report:

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2012/Contents/Australia_and_New_Zealand_report

RecentChangesCamp 2012 Canberra

Chris Woodrich, involved with the LONTAR project, learning more wiki stuff from an Australian Wikimedian

Several people from the Australian and international GLAM movement attended RecentChangesCamp 2012 held in Canberra from 20 to 22 January. They included LauraHale,John Vandenberg, Danny_B, Gillian, Liam, Chris Woodrich and other. While the conference was Australia's general wiki conference and not specifically focused on GLAM, there were several sessions that specifically discussed Australian GLAM efforts including the Australian Paralympic Committee's GLAM project, the National Library of Australia, efforts underway at the National Museum of Australia and Wikimedia Indonesia's LONTAR project. Most of the international participants at RecentChangesCamp 2012 were involved with GLAM projects and visiting Australia for the first time. They were pleased the conference was being held in Canberra because members of our local GLAM community were in attendance, and because they had a chance to see wild kangaroos out the window of the event venue. Two took the opportunity to go outside, enjoy the beautiful summer weather and take pictures of the roos with the intention of uploading these pictures to Commons.

GLAM to NEXT

John Vandenberg, Gillian, Chris Woodrich and Danny B were several participants in a session that tried to develop a model for GLAM based projects that took place in the present, needed documenting as a current event, instead of a historical event. The model developed was called NEXT, with the possible acronym suggestions, appearing in the image on the left, as News, Events, eXtravaganzas, T (Theatre, Talks, Trips, Travel, Tales, Topics, Triumphs and tragedies). This idea came out of concerns about making sure there is knowledge transferred between projects, and the issues with how to deal with cultural projects that are in the now, not historical, and have different sets of issues and different Wikimedia projects that can be used to help them with the process of doing GLAM type work on them both from traditional GLAMs and others in the cultural sector that fit differently into the GLAM community. This would more clearly cover sport, theatre, television and government in a non-historical context. As a model, it would also help develop content on projects like Wikinews, Commons, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, Incubator, Wikibooks and Outreach. Connections with Wikinews were seen as particularly important as the Wikimedia Australia is providing grant money to fund professional journalist accreditation cards for accredited reporters in Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and other regions not being supported by established chapters. Wikinews support also supports existing projects like the Australian Paralympic Committee project. 

John Vandenberg posing for photographer, Bidgee, at RecentChangesCamp while campers created the schedule

Another session was about Wikipedia efforts by the National Museum of Australia, with a museum staff member facilitating the session. Much of the session revolved around discussing copyright issues surrounding museum collections, and the desire for museums to make more of their collection available to the public by being able to photograph it both institutionally and to the public at large. The museum could not do this, not because of commercial concerns, but because of copyright and trademark issues. For example, Australian made Holden cars often have the Holden logo, a trademark, on them. They cannot easily take pictures of these cars to remove trademarked components with out losing the idea of what the photograph is of. In other cases, some of the items in the collection do not belong to the museum and the copyright belongs to the original owners or the materials were donated with copyright related stipulations attached that prohibit the museum from taking pictures or allowing others from taking pictures of them. Because copyright and trademark issues can change from piece to piece in the collection, they generally prohibit visitors from taking pictures of the whole collection. The copyright issues are so complex that the two or three lawyers employed by the National Museum of Australia spend a great deal of their time working on them.

Amongst GLAM participants, a recurring theme was metrics, how to measure the effectiveness of GLAM projects on Wikimedia Foundation projects, and how these metrics can be used to justify institutional participation in a project. There are a variety of methods that have been designed by German Wikipedians and ones designed by members of Wikimedia Australia like John Vandenberg. The problem is that at the end of the day, most GLAM organisations including the National Library of Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee have a mission that includes sharing cultural knowledge of their efforts with, in this context, Australian society. This is not something that can easily be measured because it is more a goal than an objective.

There was a session on the LONTAR Project facilitated by Chris Woodrich. Several people attended the session. This is a project that has enjoyed support from Wikimedia Australia because of membership involvement. There was a discussion about the National Library of Australia, and a slow down in digitisation efforts on TROVE, an important Australian resource that provides easy citations for Wikipedians. There were a few discussions about the potential usage of Spoken Word Wikipedia in a GLAM context and how this way of contributing to Wikipedia is another way of engaging stakeholders who might not otherwise contribute to English Wikipedia. There was a session on OGG video that was attended by a Sydney based GLAM person and two photographers who would like to work with GLAMs to take video and pictures related to these organisations for uploading to Commons. Wikimedia Commons has several issues related to video that make contributing video content in OGG format difficult, including size limitations, caching issues, thumb nail creation, and OGG's lower bit rate and inability to stream well.

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