MARCsman is a tool by Magnus Manske, running on the toolserver. Its purpose is to convert image data in MARC 21 format into a Wikimedia Commons file description.

The tool is here. An example from the Library of Congress can be seen here.

The Library of Congress' MARC standards can be found here.

Collection license information is read from MARCsman/Collections.

Project Aim edit

The MARC records of the Library of Congress provide vital Metadata for image descriptions on the Commons. Much of this metadata can be "translated" into our Commons templates and allow us to improve our image descriptions and create proper statistics about these media files.

The Artwork template is most suitable for the information provided by the LoC. Using the conventional Information Template would not allow to include all metadata.

Another task is to automatically assign licence templates based on the various LoC collections. This will be an automated process and will not affect your duty to check the results - Rights assessment is your responsibility.

Structure edit

The Artwork template.

{{Artwork
|artist=
|title=
|description=
|date=
|medium=
|dimensions=
|institution=
|location=
|references=
|object history=
|credit line=
|inscriptions=
|notes=
|accession number=
|source=
|permission=
|other_versions=
}}

A detailed guide on how to insert the information from LoC.

|artist=
|title=
|description=
|date=
|medium=
|dimensions=
|institution=
|location=
|references=
|object history=
|credit line=
|inscriptions=
|notes=
|accession number=
|source=
|permission=
|other_versions=

Possible targets edit