Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Empowering Italian GLAMs/Midpoint Report

Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-06-01T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Midterm

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General information edit

This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.

Name of Organization: Wikimedia Italia
Title of Proposal: Empowering Italian GLAMs
Amount awarded: 85788.84 USD, 80160 EUR
Amount spent: 45190 EUR

Part 1 Understanding your work edit

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

√ An awareness raising campaign among Italian GLAMs. The project is indeed contacting all Italian museums through a communication campaign, press communicates and media relations at a national and local level, conferences webinars and monthly meetings, networking with stakeholders, emails (mass mailing managed with Wikimedia Italia’s CRM system, CiviCRM with reports on https://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Empowering_Italian_GLAMs/Invii_email_ai_musei) and direct and personal contact.

√ Having a system to monitor the implementation of open access by the Italian museums. https://www.adert.it/musei/report.php, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Musei/Liste

√ We created a tool to collect data from institutions, to upload documents associated to cultural institutions and to allow them to review Wikidata data. The tool is designed also for possible future translations. https://glams.wmcloud.org/

Changes:

It is unlikely that we will have 500 institutions releasing collections by February 2024. We are planning to double the number of case studies and to reduce that expected result.

Observations:

The dataset of all Italian museums edited and improved within this project is a very significant result: we did not expect it to be so significant and useful. It can support the work of Wikimedia communities, the work of ICOM Italia and research. We uploaded data from "Surveys of Museums and Similar Institutions" (collected in 2011, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) made by ISTAT (the Italian National Institute of Statistics), information related to wikiGLAM initiatives and we manually checked them in collaboration with ICOM Italia.
We furthermore created a system to contact all Italian museums. This experience can be replicated in other countries or continents (it has been tested on almost 4'000 institutions).

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

One of the most efficient strategies to involve museums and to disseminate open access was the organization of a regional event/workshop to present the project and to increase awareness. The first of these was organized on March 28 by ICOM with the collaboration of Wikimedia Italia, Creative Commons Italia, Department of Economics and Statistics (project's partners) and Lombardy Region. The video made available online allows all interested institutions to find information (https://www.icom-italia.org/webinar-tutti-i-musei-italiani-su-wikipedia-28-marzo/) In fact, 26% of the institutions that joined the campaign are from Lombardy. This successful strategy will be replicated by holding an event in Piedmont (on 29 may 2023) as well.

This successful strategy will be replicated by holding an event in Piedmont (on 29 may 2023) as well.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

One of the most troubling obstacles has been the rate at which institutions open massive emails. From the first mailings by regions, a low email open rate was noted, which highlighted some weaknesses in the communication strategy. The project team immediately sought solutions to address these issues and improve its strategy. In particular, the following solutions were considered:

revise the text of the email sent;
organizing more events with the aim of devoting time to listening to the curiosities, perplexities and problems encountered by institutions.

Another challenge arises from the current policy adopted by the Italian Ministry of Culture, which provides a closure that makes open access and its implementation difficult for Italian public institutions.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

Within the project we collaborate with cultural institutions and the Wikimedia communities.

Museum employees and institution referents are at the centre of our communication campaign and they can participate in workshops, monthly events, and most importantly they can train through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which are made freely available and aim to train on how to contribute to Wikimedia. They were made in collaboration with University of Padova and are available on eduopen.org.

The Wikimedia communities have been involved through the museum campaign already planned in May with a site-notice devoted to it. We also collaborate with Wikimedia Italia regional coordinators (volunteers) and we invite the communities to attend events and training.

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

Our efforts are helping cultural institutions open up their content by having support in policy change, including through creating a network for institutions. The biggest effort to engage participants and build the content was the sharing of a MOOC completely aimed at cultural heritage organizations (https://learn.eduopen.org/eduopenv2/course_details.php?courseid=531) and anyone who wants to learn how to use the different Wikimedia projects for cultural heritage and contribute to GLAM projects.

This is complemented by events and editathons with the aim of encouraging writing about cultural institutions, such as the writing week (May 15-21 - it:Wikipedia:Writing week/Musei italiani e non solo) and events (May 15 - it:Wikipedia:Raduni/Editathon alla Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense con Archivio Ricordi) on Italian museums, on the occasion of International Museum Day (May 18).

Our approach is designed for all museums, regardless of their size, location, staff and focus; the complete dataset and the support provided to all institutions is meant to create an entry point for anyone (not only major institutions).

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

So far we learned that:

Yes: we reach the vast majority of Italian museums. It is not an easy job considering that we have over 4000 museums but it is possible.
It is early to say if anything changed after we contacted them, but certainly we are testing a new approach and this communication campaign is allowing many institutions to hear about open access and starting understanding what is about
The museums in Italy which have already contributing to the Wikimedia projects are 63 (the data is on Wikidata now). Over 900 cultural institutions have been contributing to Wiki Loves Monuments and provided an authorisation to take photos of their buildings and collections (which is already a step toward open access)
We now have a system to monitor the institutions that have digital collections: it can be tracked with Property P2283 with value Q212805 based by the data of the Italian national statistics we uploaded on Wikidata. The result of the query can be accessed at https://w.wiki/6kdB
With a dataset and the use of CiviCRM we can indeed differentiate our proposals to institutions. At the moment for example we send email by region and we accompany the work with press communicates to local media.

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

Next steps:

Continue to improve the communication strategy and track issues that can arise
Make a recall for all museums
Increase direct and personal contacts with museums
Involve regions in organising events and in the communication
Working with the museums and accompany them
Produce the case studies

Part 2: Metrics edit

8a. Open and additional metrics data.

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Institutions contacted	Number of institutions monitored on Wikidata and contacted to involve them in a Wikipedia communication campaign to collect open content for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects	3000	6810	Many emails are inactive or have changed domain, this value will be more accurate in the second phase	Data retrieved from ISTAT surveys, and where possible, email addresses retrieved from other sources were enriched
Institutions reached	Number of institutions which reply to us with a positive or negative answer. We collect also attitudes, motivations and needs	900	135	47 institutions joined the campaign, of which 5 decided not to join (updated to May 25). Email opening around 30%. 135 museums network that joined project without procedure 16 museums that have decided to join but need to start the form 2066 institutions that received the email. many museums have the same email and emails are bounded by CRM, we will proceed to contact museums by groups (25 May → regions: Molise, Sardinia, Aosta Valley, Lombardy, Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Emilia-Romagna, Abruzzo, Apulia, Trentino, SudTirol)	Through the online form, via email (with the support of the CRM)
Institutions involved	Number of institutions which provides us with content	500	1190	Number of museums involved in different extends in Open Access	Through Wiki Loves Monuments, Empowering Italian GLAMs, MAB call (Museums, Archives and Libraries - MAB in Italian) and other GLAM project
People contacted collaborating with institutions	Number of people contacted working with institutions	1000	2082	N/A	Contact with at least one referent for each Museum or referent that sent us emails
People involved	Number of people involved indirectly in the Wikimedia projects, by producing content with open licenses and tools	600	47	People involved in releasing content with open licenses and tools	N/A

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	Number of institutions that publish an open license on their website or an open access policy	100	N/A	Data not collected yet	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	Volunteer work of the project coordinator (lead) for 328 hours and 15 volunteers for an estimate of 5 days each for a total of 600 hours	900	N/A	N/A	N/A

8b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments
Number of participants	Number of people involved indirectly in the Wikimedia projects, by producing content with open licenses and tools. We measure their involvement through our form and survey	600	47	People involved in releasing content with open licenses and tools
Number of editors	Please note that the project triggers indirect contribution to the Wikimedia projects (see above). We envision the participation of 15 volunteers.	15	29	14 Writing week’s Participants 15 Editathon at the Braidense National Library with Archivio Ricordi
Number of organizers	Please refer to the project team. We also plan to involve other 15 volunteers (not counted in this target).	11	35	9 staff of the project Dario Crespi, Sarah Orlandi, Cristina Dal Min, Alice Fontana, Marco Chemello, Alessia Minella, Federico Benvenuti, Guido Baratta, Deborah De Angelis, Daniele Scasciafratte In-kind contribution of University of Torino Enrico Bertacchini (senior researcher) 2 General staff of Wikimedia Italia engaged in the project: Alice Montrasio (administration) and Paolo Casagrande (communication) 20 volunteers Wikimedia Italia Regional Coordinator (17), Susanna Giaccai, Patafisik, Elena Marangoni Project lead volunteer Iolanda Pensa

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikidata	Curated item on Wikidata for all Italian museums and heritage institution with upload of statistical and research data related to the collections, the propriety, the digitalisation process, open access policy... We can monitor the list of curated item with a code but Wikidata doesn't allows us to report details on changes (this is real obstacle for producing relevant metrics)	3000	6810	6810 No. Of institution’s data from ISTAT 6522 No. of institution with a category on Commons (https://w.wiki/6kdQ)	N/A
Wikimedia Commons	Images provided by the institutions involved and uploaded on Wikimedia Commons	12000	40664	Sum of images received by form (N=77), images from Museo Egizio (N=2383); images from Musei Civici Reggio Emilia (N=309); images from Museo Civico Modena, (N=408), images from....... (to be completed with other case studies and new adhesions) WLM (N=37487)	N/A
Wikipedia	We expect articles on Wikipedia in Italian to be improved with data, content and images produced by the projects. We monitor this data. We expect that 20% of the articles related to institutions involved in the project will be improved.	100	69	35 articles created (Museum Writing week) 19 expanded or improved articles (Museum Writing week) 15 articles created or modified (Editathon at the Braidense National Library with Archivio Ricordi)	Reports from events
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

Many emails are incorrect and need to be corrected: this makes measuring the institutions contacted difficult and is still an ongoing process. We can monitor the list of curated item with a code but Wikidata doesn't allows us to report details on changes (this is real obstacle for producing relevant metrics).

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Yes, the project involves the volunteer communities and regional liaisons. For example, during the Piedmont region event, the regional coordinator is involved in the presentation of the Wiki Loves Piedmont. We also planned to share our experience during Wikimedia Europe and Wikimania Singapore.

11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.

Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).

Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.

Please find on meta the detailed report of all the activities in Italian https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Empowering_Italian_GLAMs/Relazione and the documentation about the case studies in English (under construction).

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance edit

12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

45190

13. Local currency type

EUR

14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
Provide links to your financial reporting documents.

Report intermiediate_Budget Empowering Italian GLAMs-2.0.xlsx

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dvdDAjqYxnDnFAbQxzxQsv0XMkW_PENJWVWNZhE9PMQ/edit?usp=sharing

We created a folder to provide you all receipts related to the expenses. Please let us know if you want to visualize it and we provide you the private link.

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

No

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

N/A

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

Thank you very much for the support in preparing the project and the availability to meet and discuss if needed. We are looking forward to the conversation and we will ask some help to better connect the project to the WMF international network.