#Statistics for our GLAM partners

At #Wikimedia #Commons we have been building great relations with many GLAMs. Many of them have provided us with awesome material that has found its way in our Wikipedias.

In this era of pressures on the budgets of GLAMs it is important to appreciate what it is that we give in return. A fuzzy feeling that we use their pictures as illustrations in our articles, that we use the cultural heritage that is conserved by these institutions does not really help them. It is like with the Wikimedia Fundraiser they want the facts, the numbers regularly so that they can consider the effectiveness of their partnership with us.

We are good at making use of GLAM material, we are bad at letting GLAMs know how good we are. The best we have is one of Magnus's toys called BaGLAMa. Magnus will be presenting at the conference in London and for this reason he ran an update with his tool so now we have numbers for March and October 2010.

Eruption of the Merapi volcano in 1930 used 6 times

For the Tropenmuseum, BaGLAMa indicates a big growth of the visibility of its material. In March its images were seen 1,871,789 times and this grew in October to 4,133,814.

Another of Magnus's tools, GLAMorous informs us how many images are used on the different Wikipedias. It can drill deeper and inform on what pictures are used where.

In order to maintain a healthy relation with our GLAM partners we need to do better. The traffic statistics have to be updated every month, access to statistics information needs to be in one place. The problem is not that it cannot be done, the problem is who is going to do it. What value do we give to out GLAM relations, will it become a priority or will we muddle on.
Thanks,
       GerardM