Wikimedia news/numero 27/en
Editorial
We did it! After nine months, we went to the end of the roadmap: our association is officially an APS (Associazione di Promozione Sociale, Social Promotion Association), since the newborn (and disorganized...) Province of Monza and Brianza failed to make opposition in the due time. During the last days our President frantically complied with all the requests from the Italian bureaucrats so that no obstacle could be found. Many thanks to her and Nemo, who spent months for achieving this result.
What does it mean? First, now donations to Wikimedia Italia are tax-deductible. Here (in Italian) it is explained how to donate in a tax-approved way.
Moreover, we were able to join Wikimedia Foundation 2009/10 Fundraising, having signed the Chapter Fundraising Agreement. If you donate to Wikimedia Italia you'll get the fiscal deduction and you'll help both Wikimedia Italia and Wikipedia with all its sister projects.
This is the time to study what we can do in 2010 to promote efficaciously the free culture. We created a commission whose purpose is to contact public and private institutions to obtain freed stuff. We look at what WM-DE managed to do in the Deutsche Fotothek project: after all, Italians museums are scattered all over the nation, and this heritage could be shared if texts and images were donated.
Libraries too are widespread: every one of them contains encyclopedic material, and librarians usually know local authors. Tuscany will give an opportunity to meet the librarians in the beginning of 2010: we have been contacted to organize a training day on Wikipedia.
We already have two open projects, Biblioteca and Musica, which may be boosted by the collaboration with libraries, music schools and music academies. But if we want that these projects become true we need people who offer their time.
In 2010 we hope for more participation from our members; we will also try to offer some stages and scholarships and to contribute financially to selected co-operation projects.
Our association is entering its fifth year. We want to cash our experience and show ourselves as a grown-up association: the second edition of the Festival of Digital Freedoms - that we will host again - will help us to get in touch with other associations sharing our ideals of free culture. Who knows what we may find!
During last year, relationship between WMI and Wikimedia Foundation staff was tense. This enforces our idea that it is wise to invest in local chapters, volunteers and their energy. If you keep sustaining - financially, too - WMF projects, everyone of us can add his card to complete the deck.
Speaking of cards... don't forget to renew your Wikimedia Italia card for 2010!
Xaura
What happened during last months
- September 19, Rome: the Assembly of Wikimedia Italia discussed the legal problems related to the association, the activities in the last year and the perspectives for the future, and renewed the social offices. In the Board, three members out of five are new; moreover, the first Ombudsman College, introduced last March in the new bylaws, has been elected.
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What will happen next months
- December 20th, Rome: "Creativity, Cooperation, Condivision II" at the Città dell’Altra Economia, within the "Altradomenica" meetings.
News from our groups
Wikimedia Roma
Following a proposal from the last meeting, we created a group based in Rome, now joined by several members. The group started the WikiTrips project: trips and walks both within Rome and in the outskirts, visiting a museum, a village, a monument, a park for collecting material to be published in the Wikimedia projects.
For the moment, two trips have been organized and duly advertised on the meetings page on Wikipedia: one in Sant'Oreste, a village not very far from Rome, whose article was lacking a lot of information, and one in ancient Ostia, where we mainly took photos. A WikiTrip is simply getting together and going to a place where, other than enjoying the beauty and chatting among us, we can collect useful material. There's not a strict commitment: trips have to be and to remain a pleasure, not an obligation.
We'd like to achieve a bigger participation, we still have to promote the trips in a better way, on other Wikimedia projects as well, and to involve other editors in the choice of the destinations.
In a future, we could have the goal to involve external people also, interested in collaborating and learning how to take part in Wikimedia projects, to be introduced to them not only through the trip, but also through a subsequent meeting for publishing together the collected materials.
GLAM
WMI is creating a special group for dealing with the relationship with memory institutions such as libraries, archives, museums and galleries (GLAM, you know?), in order to liberate content through the Wikimedia projects (especially Commons, Wikisource and Biblioteca).
The group aims to follow the footsteps of other chapters' similar groups, like the Australian GLAM.
The first event in agenda is a meeting with a group of Tuscan libraries for organizing a familiarization day with the Wikimedia projects,
News from our projects
News from Biblioteca
Following the discussions after the meeting in Vatican City about the web and the new media, an experimental translation project has begun: the translation of the 1st chapter of St.Marc's Gospel on Biblioteca.
News from Musica
The work about Francesco Paolo Frontini keeps going on with the publication of the Marinaresca and other works of the Sicilian composer.
News from wiki@home
DracoRoboter passes Wiki@Home through to Christian Cantoro's hands, who hit a long-awaited goal: to interview P.G. Odifreddi. Other interviews are being processed and will be published shortly.
News from WMF projects
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- Wikibooks:
- Wikinews:
- Wikipedia:
- Wikiquote:
- Wikisource:
- Wikiversity:
- Wiktionary:
Monthly strip
Editorial staff:
- Frieda Brioschi;
- Marco Chemello;
- Nemo (section "News from our projects")
- Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca")
- Christian Cantoro (sections "News from W@H" and "GLAM")
- .mau. (English version)
To contact the staff, write at: redazione@wikimedia.it or directly to the editor:
- Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda
gmail.com
Notice. This newsletter is exclusively intended for information about Wikimedia Italia, both to the members and to the general public; as per Art. 1, Comma 2, Legge 7 marzo 2001 no. 62, it is not an editorial product