Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Australia/2011-10

On 13 October, Tony Naar was a guest speaker at the University of Canberra's Business, Politics and Sport unit. He spoke about the History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia project (HOPAU) and his responsibilities for collecting, managing and preserving the history of the Paralympic movement in Australia. In his talk, Tony takes us through the HoPAu project, the reasons for doing it, and how it seeks to utilise experts in a range of fields with relevant technologies to make the history relevant and accessible. A recording of the talk can be found here.

Peter Marsh, Vicki Epstein and Carmel Williams learning how to edit Wikipedia and upload images to Wikimedia Commons

A workshop was held on 31 October in Brisbane workshop at the State Library in the Southbank Cultural Precinct. Members of the Paralympic community, including former athletes, attended along with John Vandenberg and Craig Franklin, from Wikimedia Australia, and Leigh Blackall from University of Canberra. Paralympic community attendees included Carmel Williams, Pannkie, and contributors Vicki2, and AdrienneK. John Vandenberg provided an introduction to Wikipedia Content; as well as hands-on training workshop on improving and creating Wikipedia articles; and on transcribing the online library of public domain works in Wikisource. Craig Franklin provided an introduction to Wikimedia Commons and the opportunity for hands on experience of uploading images and dealing with the copyright requirements. Finally, Leigh Blackall from UC, helpfully assisted the APC attendees with their practical sessions.

Tony Naar talks about HOPAU (length: 52mins)

The Australian Paralympic Committee did another image donate from the 1996 Summer Paralympics. These images can be found on Commons in the Australian Paralympic Committee category.

On the blog dedicated to the project, an interview with Elizabeth (Edmondson) Mills was shared. She is the project's first Paralympic contributor, and has donated images from her personal collection to help with the project. These images were shared using a Creative Commons license. Another blog entry was posted by the project's Wikipedian in Residence about the process of nominating DYKs. A portal was also started for the project Outreach to help with efforts to organise cross wiki efforts.