In February 2010 we ran Britain Loves Wikipedia – encouraging people to visit 20 museums across the UK to take photographs for Wikipedia, and win prizes in the process. Our thanks go to all of you that submitted over 500 high quality photographs into the competition!

You can now find all of these photographs on Wikimedia Commons – take a look at Category:Britain Loves Wikipedia! We now need your help to categorize all of these images, and make use of them on Wikipedia. Can you spare a few minutes to look through them and help out?

We have three judges that are currently in the process of identifying the prize-winning photos, which we hope to announce soon.

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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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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:

• Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
• Mary Rose Trust: http://www.maryrose.org/
• Mary Rose on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose
• All images in the donation on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mary_Rose_Trust_donation
• Cultural partnerships with Wikimedia: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cultural_partnerships
• Britain Loves Wikipedia: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Britain_Loves_Wikipedia

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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What do Howard Carter, discoverer of the famed tomb of King Tutankhamen, novelist Ford Madox Ford, and sexologist Havelock Ellis all share in common? They all died in 1939. On New Year’s Day 2010 all their works enter the public domain in the UK and become free for any use.

Each year the opening of Public Records in Britain is a well-publicised event; the press pore over interesting items replacing decades-old speculation with facts. There is a lesser-known addition to Britain’s cultural commons; all authors and artists who died seventy years ago have their work freed of copyright restrictions. In the digital age, their works can be re-used and adapted in many more ways: paintings can be reproduced and turned into new artwork; novels can be adapted and retold; text can be freely downloaded to e-book readers – a best selling item this Christmas – and anyone can create audio versions.

Creative works in the public domain are the backbone of our rich cultural heritage. Nursery rhymes are adapted for modern themes, fairy tales turned into Hollywood blockbusters and hymns reprinted for church congregations to sing. The addition of new creative works to this heritage renews and reinvigorates our culture.

Wikimedia UK anticipates January 1, “Public Domain Day”, 2010 being a great year for additions to the digital Wikimedia Commons. The poetry of W. B. Yeats, the works of Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Rackham‘s classic children’s book illustrations all enter the public domain. When the complexities of copyright no longer encumber reuse of old works, a work that has been a “sleeper” can become a new classic. Perhaps the definitive example of this is “It’s a Wonderful Life“, the 1946 Frank Capra film that became a Christmas classic in the 1980s.

Wikimedia UK promotes the uploading of copyright-free text to Wikisource, a sister site to Wikipedia, so that it can be widely enjoyed. Audio recordings of public domain works may be added to the Wikimedia Commons site, and Wikimedia UK invites you to join us and help digitise and preserve our common cultural heritage. You can make it available for everyone to share, build on, and simply enjoy.

EDITORS’ NOTES

Copyright law:

Please note that Wikimedia UK does not give legal advice. Information on copyright law and public domain can be found in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended by the The Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations 1995.

About Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website with 345 million visitors worldwide. Read by around 40% of UK web users, it is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, a US charity. Wikipedia is collaboratively written by over 100,000 active volunteers world wide and all material is published under a free license.

About Wikisource:

Wikisource is a repository of free texts (literary, reference and general), and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. It was started on 24 November 2003, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

About Wikimedia Commons:

Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is another sister project to Wikipedia. It was started on 7 September 2004 and currently hosts more than 5 million images. UK works are accepted if they are released by the copyright owners under an eligible free license or if they are in the public domain under both US and UK law.

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 and Wikimedia Commons.

About Wikimedia UK:

Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Further information:

• Wikisource: http://www.wikisource.org/
• Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/

Contact details:

Michael Peel, Chair, Wikimedia UK

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

Andrew Turvey, Secretary, Wikimedia UK

• Email: secretary@wikimedia.org.uk
• Phone: +44 (0)7754 881 562

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A mosaic of 1,200 of the 5 million media files, forming the Wikimedia logo

2 September 2009, The Internet: Wikimedia Commons, one of the largest free media repositories on the Internet, reached the 5 million media files milestone today. Created just five years ago as a common repository of images for the different language versions of Wikipedia, it has grown to include video, animation, sound, and graphics files. Today, it is used by Wikipedias in over 270 languages as well as Wiktionaries (dictionaries), Wikibooks (textbooks), and other projects in multiple languages. With all content freely licensed, media from Commons are used by other individuals and groups including bloggers and news, education, and commercial organisations. The repository is the product of an international collaboration of over 800,000 volunteers, 20,000 of whom are currently active.

The media files come from a wide range of sources, from personal photography by Wikimedia Commons users to images from public archives. Everyone from every path of life can contribute to the repository, increasing the amount of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content available to the world.

One of over 1,700 featured pictures, and the winner of the “Commons Picture of the Year” competition in 2008

Wikimedia Commons started 5 years ago this month. It reached 4 million media files a mere 6 months ago, on 4 March 2009, after taking 8 months to go from 3 to 4 million files. Amongst the 5 million files are 1,700 “featured” pictures — the very finest on Wikimedia Commons.

In the last year, Wikimedia Commons has seen several substantial donations of media files. In December 2008, Bundesarchiv (the German Federal Archive) donated nearly 100,000 images. In March 2009, the State and University Library Dresden announced that they will donate nearly 250,000 images, which are in the process of being uploaded. These donations have been mutually beneficial: the archives have benefited from the work of Wikimedia volunteers in categorising these images, checking their descriptions, linking them with appropriate metadata and adding the images to Wikipedia articles. This has led to increased visibility of their works, and a substantial increase in visitors to their websites and the archives’ sales of prints.

An image of the excavation at Uriconium, Shropshire, taken by Francis Bedford, donated by Regionarkivet and digitally restored by a Wikimedia volunteer

In August 2009, Regionarkivet (Sweden) donated high-resolutions scans of 27 images by important 19th century photographers to Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia Commons. These included works by the British photographers Francis Bedford and Roger Fenton.

Wikimedia Commons is also currently receiving influxes of nearly 10,000 media files from two recent free photography competitions of public domain works held by museums: Wikipedia Loves Art was held in museums world-wide, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and Wiki Loves Art was held in museums across the Netherlands. Wikimedia UK is currently planning Britain Loves Wikipedia, a similar event to take place in museums across the UK, aimed at making Britain’s cultural heritage more visible, available freely across the world via the internet.

EDITORS’ NOTES

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.

About Wikimedia UK:

Wikimedia UK is the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. 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 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

Further information:

• Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
• Featured pictures on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures
• Britain Loves Wikipedia: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Britain_Loves_Wikipedia

Contact details:

Andrew Turvey, Secretary, Wikimedia UK

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

Paul Williams, Volunteers Director, Wikimedia UK

• Phone: +44 (0)7979 804 715

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