A whole lot of bad publicity is the result of the controversy between some in the WMF projects and the London based
National Portrait Gallery. Bad publicity because the crowds have been aroused to storm the ivory towers of the NPG with pitchforks, bad publicity because what should be natural partners are forced into opposing entrenched positions.
When you compare the WMF projects on the one hand and GLAM or galleries, libraries, archives and museums on the other they are starkly different. The
WMF is first and foremost about providing and preserving digital information while GLAM are about providing and preserving physical objects. Both gain their social relevance by making information as widely as possible to the public.
The average GLAM has such a huge collection of material that they are always fighting to preserve and conserve their collection while at the same time registering, annotating and digitising their collection. The financial demands of such an endeavour are great and every revenue stream is needed to just maintain the status quo.
The information provided by the WMF is based on the work of GLAM. Most
Wikipedias require citations and they are from publications that can be found in libraries. The originals of digital illustrations can be found in museums and archives and it is only when there are sufficiently annotated when we can trust them to paint the right thousand words.
The two communities are not far apart. It only takes a little effort and the “Wiki loves art”, Wikimedians are invited into museums and may make pictures, they are given special guided tours and lectures. When you ask politely, GLAM like the Bundesarchiv, the
Tropenmuseum are happy to provide much of their collection with annotations in a format that satisfies much of our needs.
The most important thing when you talk to a GLAM is a willingness to listen. What is their aim, what are their issues, how do they get their funding. It is easy to argue that an object that is in the public domain should be available in the highest resolution. It is equally easy to argue that it takes money to preserve the physical objects. The need for preservation is a perpetual one and thereby is the need for money. The need for access to the physical objects will also be a perpetual one because the annotations and the provenance of the digitised material makes the digitised material credible.
When we illustrate our articles, we can do without the distractions of discolouration, folds and tears and because we live in a digital world, we can make all these go away with tools like Gimp of Photoshop. We are lucky in our growing community of restorationists because their work is fantastic. The quality is of the highest standards and several GLAM expressed the wish that they had the time to do as good a job.
In this modern world many of the GLAM have a presence on the Internet but they find it hard to gain the same relevance they have in the physical world for themselves and their collections. When they partner with us both our publics have the same need for annotations, have the same need for quality information about the world they represent. There is a reciprocal need for what the other has to offer. GLAM and the WMF are natural partners in this. A great example of what a fine restoration can do is “
Know all men by these presents” by
Coles Philps. The original that is held at the
Library of Congress had a stain in the right hand side. The restoration by Durova brought this picture back to its original splendour and became a featured picture on Commons. It is now again of a quality where it could be sold as a postcard or a poster.
Yes, there is this thing called copyright but much of what can be found in an archive or a museum is either in the public domain or an orphan. For much of what is nominally copyrighted the GLAM do not know who the current copyright holder is or how to contact them. Many of the collections were donated to a GLAM but it is only recent that copyright is specifically addressed in the papers of transfer of ownership. Several GLAM have indicated that copyright is a cost and not a benefit and at the same time many of GLAM need to sell high-end copies of the material they preserve in order to survive.
Thanks,
GerardM
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"Rosie the Riveter" is an icon representing the American women who worked in war factories during World War II. At the time, Rosie was associated with a picture by Norman Rockwell.
Accordign to a presentation by the Library of Congress, this image is no longer that well known and is largely replaced by the "We can do it" picture. What I found most interesting is that the reason given for this change is copyright.
Spaarnestad and the Nationaal Archief uploaded some 800 pictures to Flickr. In the newsletter of the DEN there is a link to the evaluation report (PDF in Dutch). This is a summary in English.
I am really pleased to announce that we are talking with Spaarnestad Photo about developing a GLAM partnership relation. Spaarnestad is an important archive; it is also the home of several other collections.
When people think about security and hacking, they often think that hackers have to do incredible things to get access to systems and data. The truth is typically much more mundane. Many people and organisations do use software that is not secure. Many systems do not have all the latest patches. for all the "industry standard software" there are exploits. Typically hacking is using an exploit.
This is a huge undertaking with many issues, to get a feel for the issues, the Tropenmuseum has decided to start with a much smaller collection, a collection about Suriname and slavery. There are several thousand images in this collection and, it coincides with a presentation on the subject.
We also talked about how to keep people interested in the GLAM that cooperate with the Wikimedia Foundation. (GLAM = galleries libraries archives museums) and one of the initiatives of the Tropenmuseum would fit that bill. Every month they select an object that has something of a mystery about it and they ask the public to comment.
