Wikimedia news/numero 70/en

WikimediaNews - no. 70 - February 20, 2014
Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.

Wikimedia News no. 70 - February 20, 2014

Logo for Wikimedia Italia educational projects: "Wikipedia va a scuola" (Wikipedia goes to school) [CC-BY-SA 3.0]

Members' Meeting: the date is set

It is again time for the members of Wikimedia Italia to come together! The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 5, in Florence at The Hub.

It is particularly important to participate in this assembly, given the weight that the items on the agenda will have on the future of Wikimedia Italia: the participants will renew part of the Board, approve the budgets, screen the positions of members who do not comply with the fee payments ( all those members whose membership has expired in December 2012 will be considered forfeited). We invite you to regularize as soon as possible your membership status by paying the annual membership fee, in order to participate actively in the meeting: as usual, only members in good standing with the payment may vote.

Do not miss the forthcoming communications: full agenda, logistical details and the link to the list of on-line registration are coming!

Adopt a Wikipedia article at Degasperi

About 400 students of the Istituto di Istruzione Alcide Degasperi at Borgo Valsugana in Trentino are participating in the project Adopt a Wikipedia article at Degasperi. Guided by a series of lectures by expert Wikipedians Jaqen and CristianNX, students had the opportunity to learn how to contribute to the world's most popular online encyclopedia. The workshops were completed in December 2013, but the project has yet to live its most intense phase: each class has adopted a set of articles, and will have until April 5, 2014 to publish them on Wikipedia. The stakes are high: every boy of the working group judged best will receive as gift an iPad mini 16GB Wi-Fi. For the number of students and for the great synergistic work which involved the Institute, Wikimedia Italia and the local community, the initiative has had a strong echo: several newspaper articles were published and RAI had a television service in their local news. That the best ones win!

Museums and the Web: Archeowiki, present!

Museum and the Web is the largest international conference devoted to the relationship between museums and cultural venues on one side and digital culture (social media, mobile tour, augmented reality) on the other side. This year the event takes place in Italy, in Florence, from February 19 to 21 at Palazzo Vecchio. The title of the 2014 edition is Open Museums and Smartcities: Storytelling and Connected Culture: at the heart of the debate there will be tools and best practices that enable one to link the cultural heritage with the communities of the smart-cities of the future. Among the proposed projects that have passed the selection which ended on December 31, there is also our Archeowiki - New "archaeologists" in Lombardy. Real and virtual paths, a project by Wikimedia Italia together with other partners (Association MiMondo - Gruppo Archeologico Ambrosiano (G.A.Am.) - Non-European collections of the Castello Sforzesco - Fondazione Passaré) and supported by Cariplo Foundation. To recount the experience of Archeowiki, arrived in recent weeks in its peak stage, Anna Antonini and Sara Chiesa (Non-European collections of the Castello Sforzesco) will be present in Florence. To participate in the conference it is necessary to register on the site.

Archeowiki is a project that is giving us great satisfaction and makes us really proud: it approaches young students, elderly and disabled people to the less known cultural heritage of Lombardy and makes young guides and Wikipedians protagonist in this journey to discover the collections of archaeological finds. You can browse through photos of the project activities here, or support it by going to this page.

Wikipedia goes to school @ Asti

The educational potential of Wikipedia seems to be more and more evident, together with the importance of educating young students on how to make good use of it. The associations weLand and CRE[AT]IVE, already partners of Wikimedia Italia in the realization of Wiki Loves Monuments, are launching a pilot project to bring Wikipedia in the high schools of Asti. Teachers of the territory are offered the opportunity to attend a training course taught by expert Wikipedians; to apply and participate, teachers need to download the appropriate form, fill it and send it to the address info@we-land.com before the end of February 2014. At that same e-mail address, the promoters of the project will also respond to any other questions and inquiries related to the initiative. The best invitation to join may be read in the letter signed by the board of Weland: We look forward to jointly open a new chapter in the history of education and the sharing of culture!

Appointments

• February 22: Open Data Day Matera 2014 will be held at Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera, from 10.00 to 19.00, with a meeting entitled "Cultural population and transparency: for a culture of all people." On the occasion of the International Day of OpenData, Matera organizes an event in which a mapping of public goods will be started, also thanks to the decision of the Municipality of Matera to adopt the Wiki Loves Monuments resolution and release some cultural heritage under a CC-BY-SA license. All maps will be put on OpenStreetMap, while the collected data will be published on the OpenData portal of the Municipality of Matera. The hashtag chosen to communicate the initiative on social networks is #OpenMatera2014.

• February 27: Virginia Gentilini will give a presentation on Wikipedia at the headquarters of the Fondazione Edmund Mach in San Michele all'Adige, as part of a collaboration between Wikimedia Italia and the Institute of Agriculture belonging to the Foundation.

• February 27-28, Rome: LLuca Martinelli, member of Wikimedia Italia, will speak about Wikidata on the occasion of the international conference Faster, smarter and richer. Reshaping the library catalogue, promoted by the Italian Libraries' Association.

• March 1, Perugia: The Augusta Library of Perugia, in collaboration with the municipal administration, organizes the first edition of Wiki Loves Perugia. The meeting will be held at the Colle di Porta Sole Library from 9.30 to 13.30, and it is designed to improve Wikipedia entries related to Perugia and its cultural heritage. This first edition has gone so well that the entries are all booked already, so follow the progress of the initiative to take part in the next round!

• March 14, Milan: Pierfranco Minsenti, digital librarian, will participate in the Convegno delle Stelline with a speech entitled Wikipedia as a collaborative work environment for a cross-community of libraries. The aim is to define the impact on librarians of the collaboration of to Wikipedia.

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Notice: this newsletter is exclusively intended for information about Wikimedia Italia, both to its members and to the general public; as per Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial product