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Wikimedia Commons reaches 6 million files with the upload of 250,000 Geograph images

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Sailing on Ullswater—the six millionth file on Wikimedia Commons. Credit: James Hearton.

Around 250,000 images from the Geograph British Isles Project have recently been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. One of these is a picture of a beautiful landscape setting, featuring sailing on Ullswater in the Lake District—which has become the six millionth file on Wikimedia Commons. This comes less than five months since Wikimedia Commons reached 5 million images.

Wikimedia Commons is now one of the fastest growing and most popular Wikimedia projects. Mass uploads such as the images from the Geograph project have been happening in increasing numbers recently, including material from museums and archives, photographs released by US government departments and images from competitions like Britain Loves Wikipedia. In anticipation of further growth of the project, the Wikimedia Foundation have recently trebled the disk space available.

All Geograph images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, which means that they can be uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons and reused freely by everyone. These 250,000 files are only the start—Geograph has over 1.6 million freely licensed images from across the UK available. See the Geograph category on Wikimedia Commons for all of the images uploaded so far.

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Mary Rose Trust releases photographs onto Wikipedia

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

The final stages of the salvage of the sixteenth-century carrack Mary Rose on 11 October 1982. Image released onto Wikipedia by the Mary Rose Trust, and restored by a Wikimedia volunteer.

3 January 2010, UK: The Portsmouth-based Mary Rose Trust have released a number of photographs relating to the salvaged sixteenth-century warship Mary Rose onto Wikipedia. This is the first such image donation by a UK-based organisation.

“Making content available on Wikimedia is a fantastic way to increase the visibility of our cultural heritage,” Mike Peel, Chair of Wikimedia UK, says. “These images can now be seen by the millions of people around the world that regularly read and edit Wikipedia and its sister projects.”

The donation consists of 57 high resolution, previously unpublished photographs, some of which were taken specially for Wikipedia. It complements a substantial rewrite and expansion of the Wikipedia article on the Mary Rose, driven by the work of a Wikimedia volunteer from Sweden, Peter Isotalo. Two photographs are of the final stages of the salvage operation on 11 October 1982; the first time the Mary Rose had been above water since it sank on 19 July 1545. The remainder show sixteenth-century artefacts, including weapons, tools and personal items, recovered from the Mary Rose during its salvage.

After its recent expansion, the article on the Mary Rose will be prominently linked from the Did you know… section of the front page of Wikipedia on 4 January; this page routinely receives over four million visits each day. In addition, it is on course to become a “Featured Article”, one of the best on Wikipedia, and thus eligible to be the main featured article on Wikipedia’s front page.

Wikimedia UK is currently organising Britain Loves Wikipedia, a free photography contest to be held in participating museums across the UK throughout February, with the resulting images being used to illustrate Wikipedia articles. Previous content partnerships with Wikimedia in other countries have included the Bundesarchiv and Deutsche Fotothek in Germany, the Tropenmuseum in The Netherlands, Regionarkivet in Sweden and Queensland Museum, Australia. Wikimedia UK encourages more cultural organisations to make their images, audio recordings or videos freely available to the public on Wikimedia Commons.

EDITORS’ NOTES

About the Mary Rose:

The Mary Rose, once the pride of King Henry VIII’s navy, was raised by the the Mary Rose Trust from the bottom of the Solent just off Portsmouth in 1982, 437 years after it accidentally foundered while engaging a French fleet. The project of salvaging the ship was a major undertaking and proved to be a milestone within the field of maritime archaeology. When the Mary Rose sunk, the ship and its contents were sealed off by layers of clay and sediment thereby becoming a time capsule of sixteenth-century Tudor England. The thousands of artefacts found when the ship was excavated and raised have provided important clues to the life of the men of all classes that served on her during the 1540s, about shipbuilding, naval warfare and countless other fields.

About Wikimedia Commons:

Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 7 September 2004, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It currently contains over 5.5 million freely licensed images and media files.

About Wikimedia UK:

Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

About the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world’s ten most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

Further information:

Contact details:

Michael Peel, Chair, Wikimedia UK

  • Email: michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk
  • Phone: +44 (0)7988 013 646

Charles Barker, Managing Director of the Archaeological Services, Mary Rose Trust

  • Email: c.barker@maryrose.org
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Open Knowledge Conference & WMUK AGM

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

okconpng

Wikimedia UK and the Open Knowledge Foundation are partnering to run the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference, planned to be held next April. The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a not-for-profit organization aiming to promote open content and open data, founded in 2004. In conjunction with this event, Wikimedia UK will also be holding our AGM.

As part of this partnership, we are looking for volunteers who would be interested in the organisation of the conference. The two committees that have been formed to organise the conference so far are as follows:
  • Organising commitee – This committee will be responsible for organising the venue, materials, call for participation, seeking sponsors etc. No prior experience is need in conference organising, just the ability to have some good ideas and to work in a team.
  • Research track committee – This committee will be responsible for selecting research papers about “open knowledge” for the conference research track. Reasearch experience is recommended, although not required and it does not have to be in open knowledge.
You can be a member of more than one committee so if you are interested in helping out, please email conferences@wikimedia.org.uk. If your not a member of Wikimedia UK but would like to help out, please read http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership with regards to joining the chapter.

Joseph Seddon
Conference Director
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Regionarkivet makes images by Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton available on Wikimedia Commons

Monday, August 31st, 2009
Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford. Public domain.

Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford. Public domain.

On 19 August 2009, Regionarkivet (a municipal archive institution based in Gothenburg, Sweden) and Wikimedia Sverige announced the release of 28 high-quality and high-resolution images onto Wikimedia Commons.

These photographs, all of which are in the public domain due to their age, were taken by some of the most influential photographers of the 19th century.

Amongst the pictures are some taken within the UK by the British architect and photographer Francis Bedford:

Another photograph is of the River Braan in Dunkeld, Scotland, by the pioneering British photographer Roger Fenton.

The Wikimedia Commons page describing the partnership gives the history of the images. “The images were brought to Sweden by architect Victor von Gegerfelt, probably during his visit to France during the 1850s. Among the photographers were Gustave Le Gray, Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton. The originals then hung on the walls of the Gegerfelt villa, where they were largely forgotten, until they were donated to Regionarkivet with other documents and pictures. The photographs were later rediscovered by an employee at the archive, put on display at the Hasselblad centre in Gothenburg.”

Having these images freely available on the internet means that they can be easily viewed by anyone in the UK for the first time. They were previously stored in special, climate-controlled storage vaults in Sweden.

This is a great example of the kind of partnerships that Wikimedia  chapters can have with cultural institutions benefitting both sides. Wikimedia UK are keen to engage with institutions in Britain in projects like this – please get in touch if you would like  to discuss this further.

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