Wikimedia Digitization User Group

Wikimedia Digitization User Group

Objectives / Activities edit

Proposed scope of the group

  • Bring together people and projects who digitize all kinds of public domain works (such as, records, photographs, artwork, and books) to generate a knowledge base to outline the processes and different methods of execution, focusing on the practical process, as well as, different alternatives for equipment (that is financially feasible and reasonable).
  • Create video, text tutorials and OER for different digitization projects.
  • Generate a knowledge base to outline the difficult process of rightsclearing, which is fundamental for safely uploading works to Wikimedia projects.
  • Organize workshops with other Wikimedians and the public in general in which we can explain and teach how different digitization projects work as well as various methods for digitizing work.
  • Support other Wikimedians, Chapters and Groups in their attempts to create other digitization projects.

History edit

For the user group, we will integrate members of two different projects (Public Domain Project and autores.uy) that will work together to achieve the goals of the WUG.

Swiss Foundation Public Domain edit

The Swiss Foundation Public Domain is a charitable organization under the supervision of the Federal Department of Home Affairs. The Foundation specializes in the conservation and utilization of public domain music and film material. We see our mission as rescuing recordings from past decades, produced on sensitive and easily damaged materials, from deterioration and potential oblivion. Under the working title "Public Domain Project" since 2009, the digitizing project is supported by WMAT, WMCH, WMDE, Zurich University of the Arts, SOS-ETH (Student organization of the Federal Institute of Technology), Init7.net (largest independent internet backbone in Switzerland) and other sponsors. Founders were Carl Otto Flisch (Music historian) and Philippe Perreaux (Copyright lawyer). The collection of the Project is 50'000 gramophone records (78 rpm shellac discs), various types of phonograph cylinders, vinyl discs and reel-to-reel audio tapes of radio broadcasts. Until now, the project has cleaned, digitized and copyright checked 1'500 of 78 rpm records, 533 of which are already in Wikimedia Commons.

autores.uy edit

autores.uy is an initiative of Creative Commons Uruguay and Wikimedia Uruguay and was created with the intention to gather information about Uruguayan authors and their works that have been scattered or unavailable. We are especially interested in authors' rights and public domain status. In Uruguay, authors' works are under this status for 50 years after the authors' death.

We create databases that are available under the CC Attribution - Share Alike License (CC by SA) and offer filters to be searched by the author's names, surnames, discipline, public domain status, sex, date of birth and death. All of this data allows for the study of authorship evolution in Uruguay, and helps to establish cultural public policies.

For those authors that are under public domain we include a link to their digitized works that are available in platforms like Internet Archive or Wikisources. In some cases, taking into account digitizations from universities, other institutions, and sometimes uploaded material digitized by ourselves.

At the moment, we have information of 12208 authors from Uruguay and nearly 1502 works linked (that are either digitized by the volunteer group or copied from already existing sources like IA, Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay etc.). The main team behind autores.uy is integrated by: 1 IT programmer, 3 librarian and 2 community managers and a group of volunteers.

Reports edit

Most recent report edit

Contact information edit

We have a mailing list intended to answer doubts, communicate new projects, share experiences, learn how to do a proper scanning and much more! Just join us in: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/digitization.

Interested in participating edit

The following is a list of users interested in participating in the Wikimedia Digitization User Group, and if they are already involved in a digitizing project.

User Project Country
Zeroth (talk) autores.uy / DIY Scanners Uruguay
Pepe piton (talk) autores.uy / DIY Scanners Uruguay
Señoritaleona (talk) autores.uy / DIY Scanners Uruguay
Pdproject (talk) Public Domain Project Switzerland
Miacara76 (talk) autores.uy / DIY Scanners Uruguay
ChristophZ (talk) Public Domain Project Switzerland
Adam Cuerden en:User:Adam Cuerden will show a mixture of restorations and personally-scanned items;
I've also given a lecture to the public in Edinburgh which was well-received on Illustrating History on Wikipedia.
en:WP:VERDI will show one project.
I find the biggest obstacle is being one person - so much I could do.
Scotland
Pineapples100 (talk) WMCL - English Editing/Intern/Moral Support Chile
Thelmadatter (talk) not involved but interested in starting here Mexico
Shyamal (talk) Some digitization, a lot of cleaning, conversion, research, article improvement and archival on the Internet Archive India
Yann long term Wikisource and Commons contributor, I tried to digitize books myself with mixed results France / India
Scanno DIY Book Scanner Project. Building bookscanners, writing & translating into Spanish, helping the technology to meet the users. Argentina
Rachmat04 (talk) managing nonpublic Wikimedia Indonesia digital library Indonesia
Satdeep Gill (talk) I have digitized a small story on Punjabi Wikisource using my iPhone. India
Viswaprabha (talk) Fast image aquisition using smartphones; Scantailor; page and work data tabulation using google spreadsheets India
Mounir Touzri I have digitized some Documents of the archive of Tunisia Tunisia
Jayanta Nath Mentor at KLMLGK India
Alex brollo (talk) I'm interested about OCR and djvu manipulation, and writing a DIY djvu text editor Italy
Vahur Puik We (= Estonian Photographic Heritage Society) are into crowdsourcing metadata enrichment for historic photographs (Ajapaik.ee). In 2017 we initiated the translation of the FADGI guidelines into Estonian (in June 2018 the translation is still in the reviewing phase). Estonia
Pablísima (talk) autores.uy and ongoing Wikimedia Uruguay's projects Uruguay
Bodhisattwa Mandal (talk) Indic scripts OCR and Proofreading India
Balajijagadesh (talk) Indic scripts OCR and Proofreading India
Asaf Bartov Hebrew digital library Israel
Sam Wilson Wikisource, Commons, ArchivesWiki Australia
Wikilover90 (talk) Working on the Projects of collaboration with Punjab Digital library and Municipal Library, Patiala India
Mauricio V. Genta (talk) Wikimedia Argentina digitizing project. Several ongoing projects (books and photography) Argentina
Pyb Wikimédia France: Wikipédia:WikiGrenierDIY bookscanner (more to demonstrate Wikisource) and 30 000 slides to digitilize! France
Sam/Jamie Tubers (talk) I have participated in a few digitization projects in Nigeria Nigeria
ProtoplasmaKid Digitization project with National Library of Anthropology and History of Mexico Mexico
Zeinebtakouti Working on a documenting and digitisation the books on Wiki Commons and GLAM project Tunisia
Hamed Gamaoun not involved but interested in starting here Tunisia
Felix Nartey Working on a digitization project with the National Archives in Ghana Ghana
Rachel Helps (BYU) Did some batch uploading in the Harold B. Lee Library where I work. We occasionally upload photos related to editing projects. Utah, USA
Spiritia (talk) Some image digitization in the frames of the Collaboration with the Bulgarian Archives State Agency and some book digitization for Bulgarian Wikisource Bulgaria
Jayprakash12345 Create Indic-OCR for Indic-Communities India
Adarshd8 Digitalization project Moon V1.0\(Gesture Controlled Hologram)for Indian Education System India
Pavan santhosh.s Digitizing Telugu books in Telugu Wikisource India
Satpal Dandiwal Digitising Punjabi language books for Punjabi Wikisource India
Marajozkee interested to start digitizing books, need someone to guide India
LibSciGirl Digitizing state and federal documents and other materials for the Arizona Memory Project United States


Resolutions edit