A first meeting at the Tropenmuseum

Yesterday I had the priviledge of presenting Commons as a project to the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. The Tropenmuseum or museum of the Tropics has not only a beautiful collection but also an important collection.

I am really thrilled with the potential the Tropenmuseum has for us. Their collection is of specific importance to the Indonesian language Wikipedias and to the Dutch and Srenang Tongo Wikipedia. It will also help us to offset some of the bias that is currently in Commons.

In the discussion we explored all kinds of subjects, copyright and licensing, photos and objects, original material and digitally restored material... It was quite exciting. The big reason for the Tropenmuseum to consider making their material available to us is because it will make our cultural heritage available to the world. The existence of the Indonesian and Srenang Wikipedias is really important in this. Another factor was that our community has proved to help with checking out and providing additional information on the images that we have.

One really fun fact; one of the curators of the Tropenmuseum is contributing a lot of information on his speciality :) This was something the Tropenmuseum learned only recently.

I did have time to enjoy the exhibition areas of the museum. They are fun, impressive and engaging.
Thanks,
GerardM