Friday, February 18, 2011

A #GLAM is born

Germany is famous for its beer, sauerkraut and sausage. Germany is also famous in the Wiki world because our GLAM projects started with the cooperation with the Bundesarchiv in 2008. Sadly the news from the Bundesarchiv could be better and they have never provided high resolution material to be digitally restored.

The cooperation with the hamburgmuseum will be  different. Like with the Tropenmuseum, it will start small and evolve over time.

The hamburgmuseum in 1930 - from the Bundesarchiv

About the project:
The hamburgmuseum runs an exhibition called "Wachgeküsst" about the restoration of a neo-classical country house of the 1830's - the "Villa Rücker". Some 200 pictures of this country house; paintings, photographs, floorplans, watercolour paintings and several images depicting the workflow of the restoration will be made available. A handful images will be provided in the highest resolution to be digitally restored and nominated as featured pictures. Wikipedians from Hamburg and elsewhere are invited to contribute their knowledge by improving articles related to the museum and the culture of Hamburg in general. This first project is about the Hanseatics of Hamburg and it will introduce the hamburgmuseum in the Wiki world.

The music room of the Villa Rücker

About the tasks:
A GLAM page will be established, categories created, images uploaded, descriptions written and articles improved. The biggest hurdle will be the upload of 200 images and adding information templates to them. I hope to learn this from Multichill who has developed this into an artform. The images will be selected by the hamburgmuseum and represent a cross section of what is available in the museum's archives on the "Villa Rücker". Statistics and figures will help us understand how things develop for the hamburgmuseum and for the wiki community.

Analog restoration at the hamburgmuseum

About the speciality:
With this first pilot project we start small but the quality will be high. Finding a GLAM partner in Germany who is willing to provide such material and some of that in high resolution is a first time occasion for me. I'm happy to tell the story of Germany's cultural heritage and help the hamburgmuseum share its content with the world.
regards,
     Peter Weis

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