Pressmeddelande 2013-06-05
Press release, Collection Days edit-a-thon Stockholm 2013-06-05
To remember the events that took place in 1989 and to describe the historical context that have shaped contemporary Poland, volunteers from Poland and Sweden will take part in an edit-a-thon on the 9th of June. The edit-a-thon aims at improving the coverage of the events in 1989 and the Polish history on the world’s largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
An edit-a-thon is an event where people come together to write new and expand existing Wikipedia articles in a language of their choice. Images from Europeana's portal and images digitized during the Collection Days will be used to illustrate the articles. The event is organized by Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedia Polska, and Narodowy Instytut Audiowizualny (NiNA) in cooperation with Europeana, and hosted by Dom Spotkań z Historią.
Wikipedia is the worlds sixth biggest website and is used by half a billion unique visitors every month to find information about anything from the football player Zlatan Ibrahimović to world changing events such as the fall of the Iron Curtain.
“Through this exciting new cooperation we can use the fantastic images that the general public will bring during the Collection Days, as well as the material from Europeana's enormous portal. This way we can add amazing pictures to the articles that we are working on. This really adds tons of value to the articles that we have on Wikipedia”, explains the coordinator of the edit-a-thon John Andersson from Wikimedia Sverige.
The memorabilia that is digitized during the Collection Days will have a CC-BY-SA license and can therefor be used on Wikipedia. The goal with the edit-a-thons is, on top of writing articles together and making Wikipedia better, to also get new people and new organizations involved in the work of the Wikimedia movement.
“If there are people participating at the Collection Days that would like to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia or our other projects, we will show them how so that they can share their knowledge with the world”, states John Andersson.
Contact the international coordinator if you have any further inquiries:
John Andersson, Wikimedia Sverige
Phone: +46 (0)733965189
Email: john.anderssonwikimedia.se
For additional Information, about edit-a-thons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_run_an_edit-a-thon
Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, supporting the same goals on realizing a world where all knowledge is freely available for every human being. This is possible through the US-based Wikimedia Foundation and a network of national associations called chapters which co-operate closely with the volunteers on the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia.
Wikipedia and the related sites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the 6th most popular web property world-wide. Available in more than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 23 million articles contributed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
Europeana brings together the digitized content of Europe’s galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to 26 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 2,200 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 29 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission. See also Europeana’s portal at www.europeana.eu. Contact person for Europeana regarding the edit-a-thons is Geer Oskam, geer.oskam@kb.nl.