GLAM/Newsletter/July 2020/Contents/UK report
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The effect of a Commons Picture of the Day
Khalili Collections
Seven new images from the Khalili Collections partnership were uploaded this month, bringing the total to 85. These are of Swedish textile art and administrative documents of ancient Bactria. Work continued on improving articles relating to Japanese art, including Kawade Shibatarō, Namikawa Yasuyuki, Namikawa Sōsuke and the Khalili Imperial Garniture. The Garniture was the subject of a Did You Know on the front page of English Wikipedia on the 12 July and the two Namikawas had a joint DYK on 25 July. So far, nine articles from this project have passed DYK review, with another just submitted. A large chunk of text was added to Swedish carpets and rugs and I also worked on draft articles about other Khalili Collections, which I will submit to Articles For Creation.
The partnership has its second Featured Picture on Commons: this is a Meiji era artwork combining textiles with a painted background. At 149 megapixels, this is a hugely detailed digitisation of a complex artwork which contains multiple scenes of people, in traditional Japanese dress, at work cultivating tea, rice and silk. It has already been chosen as a Featured Image on Farsi Wikipedia. I've cropped out, and categorised, some figures and scenes so they can be used separately.
The first Featured Picture from the Khalili Collections was the Commons Picture of the Day on 11 July and I thought it would be interesting to spell out the exposure it got, as some of it surprised me. I estimate that the image reached potentially 900,000 people during that day.
- Commons has front pages in multiple languages. The English version gets around 110,000 views per day and the other versions get much less traffic.
- A number of Wikipedias use the Commons Picture of the Day as their own PotD. Some, like Hungarian Wikipedia, display a large image near the top of the page; others like Danish Wikipedia show it smaller and much lower down. On 11 July the image appeared on 26 different language versions of Wikipedia, plus Spanish Wikinews. The highest-traffic Wikipedia home pages showing the image were Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, Danish, and Hungarian, but there were also languages I had not heard of before, including Chuvash, Komim and Tatar.
- The app IFTTT can be set to automatically tweet the Picture of the Day and nearly 30 users have set this option, so the PotD created a lot of tweets.
It was great to see people translating the image description into their own languages. Fourteen different languages were added as a result.
National Library of Scotland
Wikisource project
We have continued to see a lot of activity as part of the NLS's Scottish chapbooks Wikisource project, with all 2997 books in the collection now uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with indexes created on Wikisource. During the month of July, approximately 300 books (3,000-4,000 pages) were transcluded, meaning by the end of the month a total of 1314 books had been started, 1282 of which had been proofread, 999 validated and 972 (32% of the collection) fully transcluded. Despite staff beginning to return to work from late July, there will still be several staff working on the project from home and during quiet periods in the Library.
Wikipedia intern
The Library is also hosting Brodie McKenzie on a six week Wikipedia remote internship. Brodie started on 27 July and has spent her time getting to grips with the Wiki platforms, writing articles for Wiki Women in Red, and doing research into how the Library's presence can be improved on Wikipedia and related sites. She is setting up interviews with Wikimedians around the globe to discuss their work and find out what the Library can learn from others - do get in touch with her if you'd like to share your experiences!
Wikimedia Community of Interest
We also had the first meeting of our internal Wikimedia group, and are now setting up a formal Community of Interest within the Library in order to coordinate our activity.
Wikisource project is an amazing example of partnership for mutual benefit. Great! --Anntinomy (talk) 10:59, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
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