Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia France/2012-03
Executive director hiring
Following reflections about Wikimédia France's future and development and after consulting the members, Thierry Coudray was hired as an executive director for 18 months. His mission is to enable a harmonious development and to prepare the future.
- Read the announcement on the association's blog (in French).
Board composition
As a consequence of Thierry Coudray's resignation from his paymaster position on March 15 to become executive director, the board member elected Sébastien Beyou paymaster and Willie Robert deputy paymaster (he holds the secretary position concurrently).
Association's actions for the past few weeks
Lectures and stands
Wikimédia France took part in a lecture on "Open data: understanding the issues" which was held at the Agora of Nanterre (north-western suburbs of Paris).
Wikimedians held information desks in the "Cité des sciences et de l'industrie" (sciences and industry City) in Paris, in L’Aigle (Normandy) and in L'Haÿ-les-Roses (southern suburbs of Paris).
Media exposure
Rémi Mathis was invited on national radio station Europe 1 in a program about the Internet. The program is available on video on Europe 1 website.
Working groups' actions
Blog
In March, three posts were issued on the association's blog.
Fewer people went on the blog in March compared to February: 2,244 unique visitors to 3,765 pages seen (3,168 visitors and 4,437 pages seen in February)
Education
Our responsible took part in a round-table for education professionals in Arcueil (southern suburbs of Paris) within the framework of the Press and Media in School Week.
A few members and one salaried employee held a stand at the National Congress of school librarians.
French-speaking countries
− DGLFLF - CC-BY-SA.
The General Delegation for the French language and the languages of France decided to publish the proceedings of the Estates-General of multilingualism in overseas territories — in which Wikimédia France took part in December — on Wikibooks in a collaborative way. The online release of this proceedings is being proceeded by the GDFLLF employees after two introductions sessions to editing by Adrienne. Contributions are active and of excellent quality (about 250 contributions since early February!), full of links to Wikipedia encouraging the reader to complete the articles.
- See the GDFLLF project on French-speaking Wikibooks.
At the same time pictures are being uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, as well as audio files exemplifying the various French overseas territories languages. Videos from the congress are to come.
- See the "Estates-General of multilingualism in overseas territories" category on Wikimedia Commons.
Our programs director presented the position of French language on Wikimedia projects at the conference of the "Biennale de la langue française". The presentation took much of its inspiration from the report produced in May 2011 by the association upon the request by theGeneral Delegation for the French language and the languages of France.
GLAM
Partnership with the National Museum of the Middle Ages
On March 21, Rémi Mathis signed an official partnership with the National Museum of the Middle Ages, better known as Musée de Cluny. This museum, located in Paris, has a very important collection related to the Middle Ages, especially the famous series of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn.
We have been working on this partnership for several months. We have worked on suggesing to the museum, not only giving cultural material or opening their doors to the Wikimedians, but also having a project for all the staff of museum to contribute on Wikimedia projects.
The project is to encourage all the staff of the Museum, from the curators and librarians up to the guides and other employees, to contribute about the Middle Ages and the museum. Wikimédia France will organize some workshops during which employees will learn how to contribute.
In the future, we want to organize the same type of workshops with the Society of Friends of the Museum.
The second part of the partnership is to help the Museum to insert Wikimedia content into their upcoming new website. Related to our future GLAM Toolbox, we want to discuss and make some tools for Museums and especially to involve the circulation of content between the Wikimedia projects and the museum website.
Wikimedia France help regional Archives on Wikisource!
Since January, we have helped the Departmental Archives of the Alpes-Maritimes (South East of France) to contribute on Wikisource. The vice-director of the archives has asked us for a project to edit a corpus of old religious documents of the 18th century, about 8,000 manuscripts pages talking about life and descriptions of the villages. This is a very interesting corpus. The Archives work with some students in paleography directly on Wikisource. They upload the manuscripts and correct them with the help of the volunteers of Wikisource and Wikimédia France.
It is the first time that we have some Archives working on Wikisource and it is very rare to have a big corpus of manuscripts. The communication about this project was very well received by the Archives community.
The description of the project and press release are available on Wikisource.
Lectures, round-tables and workshops this month
- March 2: lecture by PierreSelim et Léna in the "Archives and Libraries" department in the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail
- March 7: Round-table about scientific editions in the university of Angers. Adrienne talked about the collaborative creation of knowledge on Wikipedia
- March 19: Sylvain helped a group of librarians to discover MediaWiki and collaborative working
- March 21: Adrienne talked about "Museums and digitization of cultural content" in the "Rencontres de l'Orme" in Marseille (the "Rencontres de l'Orme" are a big annual conference about education and culture)
Progress of the projects
- PierreSelim is working on the description templates for the photographs of the Muséum de Toulouse. Some of the photographs are the only illustration of a species! The Museum asked us to retrieve back the descriptions of the files, because of the good job made by Commonists. Crowdsourcing works!
- Adrienne was in Lyon on March 26, to meet the Cultural Department of the City, and about ten cultural institutions of the City (Museums, Archives, Libraries). She presented the principle of the GLAM projects to involve the institutions of the city to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and open their contents.
- We have had our first contacts with the Quai Branly Museum, a museum specialized in indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, to imagine some ways of collaboration.
- The project to merge all the parts of the Trutat's photographs is in good way, the institutions are very positive to share all the photographs on Wikimedia Commons.
- We are preparing a workshop about the public domain for lawyers and GLAM, together with the Open Knowledge Foundation. It will be held in Paris on April 27.
Research and university
A member taught ten student librarians from higher educational institutions of Bordeaux(southwestern France) for three hours.
The training Put you knowledge to good use with Wikipedia in partnership with PRES Université Lille Nord de France came to an end in late March.
Two members taught university librarians at the Pierre et Marie Curie university, Paris.
Pictures and reports
Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC-BY.
The fact that a member was accredited for the fencing competition Challenge Réseau Ferré de France–Trophée Monal 2012 allowed her to upload a series of fencing pictures on Commons, where good-quality pictures were hardly to be seen on this topic. The picture on the right was recognized as a featured picture on Wikimedia Commons.
The cabale Île-de-France member (working group in Paris) don't go anywhere without the association's telephoto lens 70-200mm: they used it to take great-quality pictures of the Cemetery Père-Lachaise, among others. A picture showing La Douleur was also recognized as a featured picture on Wikimedia Commons.
A member was present for two days at the Paris Book Fair, where he took many pictures already illustrating several Wikipedia articles. All these events were the occasion to use the lense 70-200 Canon. A category grouping the 450 pictures taken with this lense are available on this page.
Blogposts
Contributors
- Contributors to the 44th monthly newsletter in French (from which this report is derived): Ash Crow, CarolAnnO, Jastrow, Jean- Frédéric, Moyg, PierreSelim, Serein, TCY, Thesupermat et Zetud
- Contributors to this newsletter: Matou91, Serein (GLAM) and Bapti.
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