Help! Cultural institutions meet Wikimedians - Part II

Posted on 29 July 2009 by Thomasin

Just over a week until GLAM-WIKI in Canberra on the 6-7 August, a workshop on how cultural institutions can work together with the Wikimedia community (and vice versa). Can you help?

In preparation for GLAM-WIKI, participants have been asked to answer a series of questions – and I thought the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums within the DigitalNZ community might like to take a collaborative stab at them.

These questions are more specific than the general thoughts I asked for in my first post on cultural institutions meeting wikimedians.

So if you’re willing, please post your answers in the comments below. You don’t have to post the actual numbers, particularly to part C (you could just say “yes” or “no”) – but if you want to, go for it! Anonymity is fine.

If you don’t feel comfortable sharing this information publicly, perhaps just consider the questions within your organisation and team.

A - In preparation for attending GLAM-WIKI it would be very helpful if you could ask the web-manager at your institution what percentage of inbound traffic to your website comes from people clicking through via Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects. What do you expect this percentage to be and are you surprised by the answer?

B - Please think of a topic that is integral to your institution (e.g. for the Australian War Memorial this might be "Australian military history") and type it into Google. Does a Wikipedia article appear in the first page of the results? Does it appear above your own institution's website? Does your institution have a mission statement that includes a phrase along the lines of "The [institution] is dedicated to helping people of all ages learn about [aforementioned topic]"? If so, has your institution previously investigated trying to fulfil this mission with Wikipedia as a one of the 'strings to its bow'?

C - Are you able to roughly calculate the financial cost to your institution of administering copyright/access to your institution's own and/or controlled and/or out-of-copyright content? Are you also able to roughly calculate the amount your institution makes in revenue as a result of this administration (for example, through content sales)? Is there a significant positive difference between these two numbers

I’m really interested to see what kind of collective picture we form. Aren’t you?

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I suggest adding a "google+" button for the blog! Hellen

--Elliptical Review • 2011-12-15 00:00:00 UTC


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