Talk:National Museum GLAM Collaboration 2013-14

Sowmyan's role
I will be primarily associated with the non content activity for this project. The interactions with National Museum, mobilizing a core group of volunteers, arranging for accommodation are the actions I have undertaken. Content including content structure, content preparation, content delivery are primarily that of Arun Ram, Shyamal, Kondicherry, and Noopur. Pranav has been striving to bring support from WMUK and other global GLAM experts. Sowmyan 17:53, 14 December 2013 (IST)

Notes from the past mail based Interactions
I will be transferring a compilation of all interactions that took place over mail in this section so that these are readily available without having to search for mail.Sowmyan 17:55, 14 December 2013 (IST)

On Dec 7 Shyamal said: Have added a table of contents (tentative schedule without actual dates) that should be rough enough to rework and refactor but these are the basic topics that one usually expects. If there are specific areas that people are taking up and put in the dates on which they are handled, then it might be possible to reorder or rejig some of the topics between the available persons. I think there is a certain debate that must happen on the topic of copyrights, licensing and this one should ideally involve not just the participants but also some of the key decision makers. This should ideally follow a historic coverage of Copyright Laws, the origins of printing and publishing industry, the complications brought in by information technology, licensing and the Creative Commons.

On Dec 11 Noopur said: ...I know you said 2 article cycles but who decides which articles? Will we spend a day or two with students to decide what they want to work on? Just an idea: Would be nice if you keep Sunday as the day of Commons for students+visitors to the museum, put a banner outside about contributing to commons and so on. Once I have clarity on sessions, will make presentation and send it to you all for feedback.
 * The four days will be for bringing about a mindset, learn the basics, produce the first article to a large extent. The second article may be initiated, but may not get completed. In case some one wants to practice on 6th 7th and 8th of jan, we can possibly help. I will stay back to enable this flexibility. Konarak may also consider that. Noopur can also consider this. I am also considering meeting more potential agencies to partner with.
 * The choice of articles to release will be primarily that of the museum. Shyamal had a few ideas of what would be nice to cover. If others also have such suggestions, we may be able to request and influence the selection. I will be bringing a standee to be used during the event. As for contributing to commons by taking new photographs, Shyamal's suggestion in a talk with me was noteworthy. National Museum may have a lot of images taken professionally and of high quality. It may be useful to convince them about releasing these under creative commons.If we have barriers, it will certainly help if we can take new photographs. Better images can always be substituted later when they become available. Sowmyan 19:18, 14 December 2013 (IST)

Terms in Draft MOU sent for consideration
Draft

Between NM, New Delhi and WMIN, Bangalore

The National Museum is part of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, with a mandate among others to collect art objects of Historical, Cultural and Artistic significance for the purpose of display, protection, preservation and interpretation, as well as for dissemination of knowledge about the significance of the objects in respect of history, culture, artistic excellence, and achievements.

WMIN is a registered non profit society with goals of raising awareness and building capacities of individuals and institutions to access, develop and contribute to free and open educational resources and their dissemination and usage among the general public.

This MoU documents the pilot 'Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums' (hereinafter called GLAM) project between the two parties and their mutual agreements and understanding regarding usage rights and permissions, of the National Museum’s images, artefacts and documents (hereinafter referred to as the Collections) by WMIN members and community volunteers.


 * 1) This GLAM project, as detailed in Schedule 1, has been approved by the National Museum for a period of 1 year, (in multiple phases) from the date of signing of this MoU.
 * 2) National Museum asserts and affirms that it is the sole owner of their Collections. National Museum further affirms and allows WMIN members and community volunteers to digitize and upload the Collection to Wikimedia Commons, which is an online repository of freely licensed images, sound and other media files. Wikimedia Commons is a project of Wikimedia Foundation and uploaded files from Wikimedia Commons can be used in all languages across all Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikinews (or downloaded for offsite use), for free usage under the Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 4.0 license. This is more fully described under: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode
 * 3) All digitized versions of the Collections uploaded to Wikimedia Commons via this project, whether used in print, electronic, or online format, must be attributed as follows: “National Museum, New Delhi”. This attribution should also include credit to the photographer, if this information is available, and a URL to the National Museum’s website: http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/
 * 4) National Museum is aware that it retains the copyright to the digitized Collection and retains the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen and as described in Clause 3. It is also aware that any modifications made to the digitized Collection will not be attributed to the National Museum.
 * 5) It is agreed between the parties that WMIN members and community volunteers will facilitate the uploading of the digitized Collection to Wikimedia Commons with reasonable corrections, statistics, and metadata.
 * 6) National Museum recognizes that the digitized Collection may not be permanently kept or used by Wikimedia Commons or Wikimedia, as a whole. However, WMIN shall make the best efforts to ensure usage of the digitized collection within Wikimedia.
 * 7) The National Museum may, at its sole discretion, buy or install any equipment in the museum premises needed during the course of this GLAM project. The ownership of such equipment shall lie solely with the National Museum. However, WMIN and its members and community volunteers may be allowed, with prior permission, the use of such equipment for this GLAM project.
 * 8) This is a volunteer project and warrants no direct salary or any other payments to WMIN or to the volunteers of WMIN on the part of the National Museum.
 * 9) The National Museum agrees to make available its infrastructure office space, training room, computer and internet access facilities for the project team.

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 * Notes:


 * Pranav suggested the term be for less than 1 year. His thought was this can say 1 week more than the duration of the interactive program, and follow up a month later.
 * I think 1 year is appropriate. It may take 3 to 6 months to complete 100 artefacts. A larger period of understanding in a initiative does not constitute any extended obligation considering this is a volunteer driven initiative, and we merely set a community project in motion. Sowmyan 18:11, 14 December 2013 (IST)
 * I understand CC license version 4.0 is not yet approved by Wikimedia and we will continue to refer to version 3.0 Sowmyan 18:11, 14 December 2013 (IST)

Andrew Gray's talk
Andrew Gray from Wikimedia UK will be in Delhi and has agreed to talk at National Museum addressing volunteers.

A short bio of Andrew Gray: Andrew Gray is a librarian who has been working as a volunteer with the Wikimedia projects since first encountering them as a student in 2004. In 2012-13 he was the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library in London, helping researchers and academics work with Wikipedia and other open-content projects. He is currently working as the librarian at a scientific research institute in Cambridge, UK.

The subject of discussion in his talk of 45 minutes duration is expected to be:

Wikipedia and culture: experiences so far
 * Overview of Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects - audience, community, where we've got to
 * GLAM partnerships around the world - who we've worked with and what we did
 * Experiences at the British Library - what we did, how we did it, and how it worked out
 * The effect - what are people doing with these articles/collections?
 * The future - what's coming up, in India and elsewhere

invitation to volunteers
The following is the communication I had sent to solicit volunteers. The members were either Delhi based Wikimedians or people I had met during the CC launch event in November 2013. The names of members I added to the list of volunteers in main page is based on those who responded positively.

This mail comes to you because you are a resident of New Delhi and have participated / shown interest in the Creative Commons India Launch event held on 12th Nov 2013.

We would like to make an offer to be a special volunteer to you, subject to availability of seats when we short-list invitees, to participate in a GLAM event at the National Museum, New Delhi, in the period between the last week of Dec 2013 and the 1st week of Jan 2014. The actual duration will be about 4 or 5 days in this time window.

I will explain more about this opportunity below. Please send me a response about your availability, so that I can consider your name for the program. If you have any constraints, (such as specific dates on which you may be available or not available,) you may indicate them. In the event of our being able to accommodate that constraint we will do so.

GLAM is a Wikimedia and Creative Commons program wherein we work with the GLAM institutions, (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) to publish articles / upload media files for public consumption under the creative commons license CC BY SA 3.0. The National Museum is expected to release 100 artefacts for such coverage. These will be researched with available references, and Wikipedia article creation / edits or Wikimedia Commons uploads may be done.

This will give the volunteer a good insight into the artefacts, their importance, what the artefacts can tell us about history etc. You will interact with subject matter experts from the National Museum, and contribute to Wikimedia. About 4 experienced Wikimedians will guide you through the exercise. The event may be spread over 4 to 5 days to generate sufficient number of new additions about the 100 artefacts.

We hope to make this a fun experience with discovery, camaraderie, and a sense of satisfaction on bringing a lot of Indian heritage for global sharing.

We will also be organizing a talk by a Wikimedian from UK on 23rd or 24th Dec 2013, to the potential volunteers. This will be about how Wikipedia volunteers contribute to GLAM initiative.

Kindly let me know if you are interested.

Sowmyan 18:51, 14 December 2013 (IST)

Priliminary communication posted to members on mail lists
As part of our preparation for working with Government of India as a major partner, we are looking at building opportunities with some central Government ministries. The Ministry of Culture has jurisdiction over many Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. I have met with one department, and have sought appointments with several others. We have initiated communication with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, as well as Ministry of HRD. Thus we hope to see if more reference documents can be opened up for public use. I am happy to report we may be on the verge of a historic initiative as indicated below.

The Director General of National Museum, New Delhi is a very progressive thinker, and it did not take much time for us to come to a broad understanding to consider launching a GLAM initiative.

National Museum is open to supporting a GLAM pilot at their venue in New Delhi. Initially a select set of 100 or 200 artefacts may be covered as part of the GLAM pilot project. A preliminary agreement may be drafted and exchanged with them for review before formally signing it. Once the pilot is successful, it may be expanded to cover more artefacts and also be replicated in many other museums in India coming under the Central Government.

Wikimedia Chapter will have to provide the trainers who can teach a team of volunteers, and students. This should be both in the art of editing as well as the GLAM specific approaches of reviewing, selecting reference materials. A Volunteer force and students force with appropriate profile are already in place. Interested members from this pool may join, and can be chosen.

National Museum has a group of volunteers from among the public who act as guides, and take turns to be at the museum to escort visitors on guided tours. These are well read people, many of whom are retired people who are happy to do it in their spare time on a volunteer basis. Except for out of pocket expenses they do not receive any remuneration for their service. They may well be interested in becoming contributors.

National Museum has an in house "Institute of History of Art, Conservation & Museology". There are about 160 students studying here. After graduation, they go to work for various museums. These students can do the GLAM work as projects outside their curriculum.

Considering the students will have examinations in the next month, the program can start as early as last week of Dec 2013 or early Jan 2014.

We now look forward to volunteers to participate, teach as well as guide this GLAM initiative in India. Your participation in this Delhi pilot can lead to greater ability to lead GLAM work in your region. Sowmyan 20:41, 14 December 2013 (IST)

Volunteers who wrote back to be counted upon
The following Volunteers wrote back. They would like to edit and contribute to the GLAM work as participants. Technically the invitation suggested they may be co-opted when we have seats. The idea was that if a large number signed up, the logistics etc may have to be of a different scale and we may need to gear up differently or confine ourselves to remain within capacity. This list does NOT include the students of Institute of Museology or the Volunteers of National Museum.


 * 1) Rohini Lakshane - Mumbai based Wikimedian expects to be in New Delhi around this time
 * 2) Blessin Varkey - a member of an NGO in New Delhi
 * 3) Anubhuti Yadav - a Lecturer from a College in New Delhi
 * 4) Amarinder Singh - a winner of WLM 2013 contest
 * 5) Nitika Tandon - from CIS
 * 6) Swapnil Narendra - a writer and history buff who writes for children, from New Delhi, referred by Anirudh Bhati
 * 7) Rahul Giri - Student of Acharya Narender Dev College
 * 8) Gaurav Dubey - Student of Acharya Narender Dev College
 * 9) Avi Dhall    - Student of Acharya Narender Dev College
 * 10) Manisha Goel  - Student of Acharya Narender Dev College
 * 11) MOHD. ANAS   - Student of Acharya Narender Dev College

Sowmyan 20:56, 14 December 2013 (IST)