GLAM/Newsletter/October 2016/Contents/Poland report

Digitisation, modern museums and ancient Nubia

On 19th October the National Museum in Warsaw (MNW) hosted the Digital Museum conference, co-organised by Wikimedia Polska. The meeting was attended by almost 130 representatives of large to small Polish GLAM sector institutions.

The conference marked the first anniversary of our Wikipedian-in-Residence program at the National Museum and also the second anniversary of the opening of the refurbished Faras Gallery, the topic of our latest collaboration with the National Museum in Warsaw (see below). Our Wikipedian-in-Residence program and a lengthy collaboration between the museum and Polish Wikimedia community served as an inspiration towards discussion on more general topics: best practices in digitisation of cultural heritage, cooperation between GLAM institutions and the wider public, or the role museum visitors (both real-life and digital) can play in creating and disseminating knowledge.

Among the speakers were representatives of various GLAM institutions cooperating with Wikimedia. Among them were Piotr Rypson, Deputy Director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Karolina Tabak, head of the Digitisation Department of the MNW, Klara Sielicka-Baryłka from the National Museum of Ethnography who summarised the Carpathian Ethnography and ETHNOWIKI projects and Karin Nilsson from the Swedish Royal Armoury, Skokloster Castle and the Hallwyl Museum (LSH). Speakers also included Wikimedians with experience in GLAM cooperation. Among them prof. Tomasz Ganicz, head of Wikimedia Polska; Liam Wyatt, Andy Mabbett and Marta Malina Moraczewska who coordinates GLAM-Wiki projects in Poland.

The guests included almost 130 representatives of various GLAM institutions from Poland and neighbouring countries (among others, the National Museum of Kraków, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Royal Castle of Warsaw, National Library, Polish Army Museum, Asia and Pacific Museum, Taras Shevchenko Museum of Kiev and others).

The conference was accompanied by a newly published booklet discussing the Faras project itself, as well as aspects of good practices and strategies in running open digital projects. The texts are in both Polish and English language and the entire publication is available for download from Wikimedia Commons. ^[1].

References

1. ↑ Rypson P. et al., Otwarte projekty cyfrowe: Zbiory MNW w Wikipedii = Open Digital Projects: NMW Collections and Wikipedia, M. M. Moraczewska, K. Tabak (eds.), CC BY-SA 3.0 PL, Warsaw 2016, ISBN 978-83-931454-9 (in Polish and English).

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  Poster advertising the conference
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  Liam Wyatt
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  Andy Mabbett
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  Karolina Tabak and Piotr Rypson
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  Maria Drozdek

The Faras on Wikipedia project (Faras w Wikipedii in Polish), run by Wikimedia Polska and the National Museum in Warsaw (MNW), aims to create and improve Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons content concerning the Faras archaeological discoveries, the Faras Cathedral, and the Faras Gallery – a permanent exhibition at the NMW. We aim to cover topics such as the archaeological excavations in Faras, the cultural history of the region, Nubian Christian culture, and the history of the artefacts.

A group of volunteers, most of whom were new editors, wrote several dozen articles on key subjects related to the Faras gallery. Those include articles on the gallery itself, on Christian Nubian art, the restoration of ancient wall paintings or biographies of people involved in the discovery and preservation of artifacts from Faras. As part of the ongoing project the Museum has shared through Wikimedia Commons over a hundred pictures documenting both the 1960s excavation effort, and the pieces of Nubian art. Among the latter are high resolution digital reproductions of priceless frescoes discovered by Polish archaeologists in Nubia and restored in Warsaw. The only comparable collection of early Christian Nubian art is in the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum. Some of the Wikipedia articles were then translated to several other languages. The translation effort is not finished yet, we are still looking for volunteers.

The Faras Project is supported by prof. Stefan Jakobielski, one of the members of the original team of archaeologists who discovered the Faras Cathedral. The project's team also included prof. Aleksandra Sulikowska, curator of the Nubian Collection of the National Museum, who went through every new article to verify its content. The project is supervised by Gytha, the Wikipedian-in-Residence at the National Museum, Warsaw.

The Faras project is not the first joint enterprise between Polish Wikimedia community and the National Museum. Back in November 2015 we started a side-project accompanying the Masters of Pastel Painting exhibition. The Museum shared over 100 professional reproductions of rare pastel paintings from Polish collections, while Wikipedia volunteers (both veteran and new editors) wrote or expanded several dozen articles related to pastel painting and the artists, whose works were being exhibited in Warsaw. The project also marked the start of our Wikipedian in Residence program in the museum. A long-time Wikipedia editor Maria Drozdek (User:Gytha) became the first resident in any Polish GLAM institution.

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  Saint Anne, one of the best-known Nubian christian paintings
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  Professor Kazimierz Michałowski posing with Saint Anne]], a 1960s agency picture uploaded to Commons thanks to MNW
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  The Museum also contributed several dozen rare pictures depicting archaeological excavations in the 1960s.
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  Saint Apostles Peter and John (link in Polish)
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  Epitaph of Stephanos, one of the bishops of Faras

Next year the Polish Librarians Association (Stowarzyszenie Bibliotekarzy Polskich; SBP in Polish) is celebrating its' 100th anniversary. Together with PLA's Warsaw Chapter we have identified 100 biographies either missing or poorly covered in Polish Wikipedia. A group of volunteer librarians who attended one of our workshops back in September are starting to write articles on their predecessors. As part of the collaboration we plan to hold additional workshops and organise a library editathon in January 2017. It is the first such formal collaboration between librarians and Wikipedia in Poland and one of the first forays into the library sector for the Polish Wikipedia community.

More info about the project is available (in Polish) at the Wikiprojekt:Biblioteka page on Polish Wikipedia.

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In this issue

October 2016

• Argentina report
• Basque Country report
• Belgium report
• Brazil report
• Bulgaria report
• Côte d'Ivoire report
• Germany report
• Macedonia report
• Mexico report
• Netherlands report
• Norway report
• Poland report
• Serbia report
• Spain report
• Sweden report
• Ukraine report
• UK report
• USA report
• Open Access report
• WMF GLAM report
• Calendar

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• Amazing work on the conference and the Libraries project is awesome! Really looking forward to learning more, and hope you will find Library collaborations fruitful: most other communities are as well. If you are looking for an event to participate in, we are running #1lib1ref in January: see the call for participation from Wikimedia Communities. Its designed for local Wikimedia Communities to collaborate with their library communities, and should provide a platform for further conversation and participation. Looking forward to seeing your collaboration!Astinson (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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