User:Juandev/Acquiring scientific and specialized pictures

Project Goal

The goal of this project was to supply Wikimedia Commons with quality images from science and research, but also industry-related pictures including pictures of collection items (galleries, museums, zoos etc.) and accompany them with rich information layer.

Description of actual activities

The activities were divided into two parts. One part was focused on obtaining images from science and research, while the other part was based on Czech Wikimedians taking pictures of collection items and/or industry process or machinery.

The first part based on negotiation with researchers started with the juridical analysis of the Czech laws (especially Copyright Law) kindly supported by Wikimedia Czech Republic and its partners. The aim was to negotiate with copyright owners to release their quality science&research images to public domain. This took quite a long time from summer 2009 till spring 2010.

This analysis introduced us to the "students works" and "employee works". We also found out that students own copyright to their school works, but for all of their works done during student activities - school (or other hosting institution) must agree with such release and may add copyright tag. Employee works are works done by employees of various organizations. In these cases the copyright owner is unfortunately an organization, and it takes care of the employee works and their copyrights.

This analysis was very important for us to be able to establish the methodology, how and with who negotiate release of such works to public domain. Unfortunately the jurisdictional analysis was never completed.

The other part: acquiring specialized pictures was then performed by 5 trip to various picture-worthy plants (2 group trips and 3 individual). These trip have brought us 478 missing pictures of items or procedures and cost us 2 217 CZK ~ 123 USD. The number of images is still growing. We have covered the following areas.

Examples of acquired images

Area: complete process of drinking water production via natural and artificial infiltration
Information: cooperation of 2 Wikimedians, 24 files, ~5 USD, 80.00 % usage

Tanks with sand filters to remove precipitated iron
Settling pond for iron particles
Slow "artificial" filtration (a variation of bank filtration) to the ground
Drinking water pollution detector Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

Area: complete process of 8 bakery products production
Information: 1 Wikimedian, 174 files, 0 USD, 35.03 % usage

Dough preparation after mixing 1/12
Portioning of the dough 2/12
Empty trugs 3/12
Trugs flouring 4/12
Dough in trugs 5/12
Bread leaving in the warm room 6/12
Bread formation preprocedure via carving 7/12
Bread after carving 8/12
Insertion to oven 9/12
Oven filling 10/12
Taking bread out of the owen 11/12
Bread 12/12

Area: hand glassmaking tools
Information: cooperation of 4 Wikimedians, 79 files, ~81 USD, 11.39 % usage

"Svalák" is used in preparation of glass moult
"Klapačka" used to made the downer part of wine glasses
Preparation of glass moult using "svalák"
"Aftraipšár" used to elongate glass

Area: animals of Prague ZOO
Information: 1 Wikimedian (ongoing), 61+ files, ~26 USD, 19.33 % usage

Carduelis spinoides
Anolis luteogularis, Western Giant or White-Throated Anole
Garrulax affinis
Dryonastes berthemyi, Buffy Laughingthrush

Area: military equipment
Information: 1 Wikimedian, 143 files, ~4 USD, 7.69 % usage

Škoda 706 RTD, historical truck from former Czechoslovakia
Chieftain-Khalif, Jordanian/Iranian variant of Chieftain tank
BRDM-2RKh a variant of BRDM-2 amphibious armored patrol car
Lada 1500 SL car designed for the purpose of former Czechoslovak police

What lessons were learned that could help others succeed in similar projects?

We learnt that our scope was too broad to be sufficiently covered, thus we recommend for the future and other people to have a very narrow and clear scope.

Other problem was that the project had a very good scope in terms of required quality, but kind of forgot about volunteers, who are the natural spice of every project. Therefore, the rules of the participation in the project were simplified while the project was under way and the project was advertised in Wikimedia community. The conclusion is that volunteers should always be the first thing we care about, and that the scope should be related to interests of participant. For example, if there is an active volunteer who would like to do something difficult it's better to support that one volunteer than to attempt to have a broad scope which no one is particularly excited about.

We have also encountered problems with organizing team data harvest and providing detailed descriptions of the files (probably the most difficult, but also least entertaining aim of this project). In the future it would be better to take a video camera and record the actual descriptions provided by on-site guide, to be able to describe such pictures on Commons easily.

If we have a look on global usage of files and methodologies (i.e. images were placed to articles, new articles were written, files were categorized and described in detail etc.) we can list the following recommendations:

add your files to pages of different projects and language mutations after the upload
if needed write articles for pictures you took
leave pictures at Commons with detailed categorization

What impact did the project have on WMF mission goals of Increased Reach, Increased Quality, Increased Credibility, Increased and Diversified Participation?

We offered many specific images to Commons, which were previously missing. They are now placed in many articles in different Wikipedias. There are also many images of items which will find their place in Wikipedia, when articles about such specific objects will be written.

We cooperated with two institutions which open their door to us. Which means to us that Wikipedia has a respect within such entities and more institutions can be asked in the future to help to fulfil our goals.

Detail of expenditures

Expenditures can be divided into two parts. Travel costs and other, which covers expenditures for administrative material.

Trip 1 (Drinking water production) 100 CZK
Trip 2 (Baking products production) 0 CZK
Trip 3 (Nenačovice glassworks) 1536 CZK
Trip 4 (Prague zoo) 500 CZK
Trip 5 (Lešany military museum) 81 CZK
Other 110 CZK
Total: 2 327 CZK ~ 130 USD

The second run

The second run has started on the beginning of 2012. During this year there were done 3 way mapping 3 specific collections. Even we have a page on Wikipedia and Facebook, there are not crowds coming. Crowdsourcing doesn’t work here. We assume that the project needs and enthusiastic leader or leaders, who will not just take care of project goals, but also people. Attracting more and more participants and motivating them to bring more pictures. By the scope grant may help to GLAM and EDU activities.