Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Contact with the Indonesian chapter

We are really working hard with the Tropenmuseum. A lot of things and people are involved when you want to produce the best results when you upload a lot of data to Commons. What annotations to upload, how do you make it visually clear that the material is from the Tropenmuseum? How do you inform officially that the Tropenmuseum gives assurances about copyright and licensing? How to write a press release....

While we are preparing the upload for material about Suriname, we are doing this as the precursor to a much bigger project. Some 100.000 media files about Indonesia. Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony and as a consequence many Indonesian objects found their way into the Netherlands and became part of the Dutch cultural heritage.

While we are working on the material from Suriname, we have started with the preparation of the Indonesian material. It brings with it all kinds of other issues. The annotations of the Tropenmusuem are in Dutch, but who is going to translate that and, into what language.. both English and Bahasa Indonesia would be important for us.. While I am extatic with how this project goes, it makes sense for the people of the Indonesian chapter to get to know the Tropenmuseum and once this relation is established how do I bow out..

The Wikimedia Foundation has a need in all its projects to bring information to people. In the communities of our Wikipedias, we have people all over the world who write up about the world as they know it. What is probably the one of the more important aspects of Commons is, is that it is a repository of mediafiles that is freely licensed and is made available for the whole world to use.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2 comments:

Ting said...

Hi Gerard, maybe you want to contact Revo (m:User:Meusault2004) . He is board member of WMID and lives in the Netherlands.

GerardM said...

Hoi, I know Revo.. he is a great guy.. the thing we are REALLY looking for is contact with the people in Indonesia. It is with the community that the Tropenmuseum hopes to build a relation. Not with a person who is conveniently near.

I did talk to the Tropenmuseum and the chapter and we are likely to have a skype conference call.. Once the collaboration is complete I may gracefully bow out :)
Thanks,
Gerard