My parents went on their honeymoon, and the rest is history - the Pikiwiki project as an example of enhancing outreach


My parents went on their honeymoon, and the rest is history - the Pikiwiki project as an example of enhancing outreach

Presenter Dror Kamir
Themes Content
About the presenter
Born in 1975 in Tel Aviv, Israel, currently lives in Holon, Israel. Studied Arabic, Arab and Muslim culture in the Jewish-Arab institute of Givat Haviva, and a B.A. graduate of the General Linguistic Department of the Tel Aviv University. Worked mainly in the fields of Natural Language Processing and translation. Became active in the Hebrew Wikipedia in April 2005, then became active also in the Arabic and English Wikipedias, but currently in a long "Wiki vacation" from all three, and focusing on promoting free-content policy in Israel as a board member of Wikimedia Israel, of which he was one of the founders, and as a volunteer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Attended 4 Wikimanias, including this one. Wikimedia Israel was established following the visit to Wikimania 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt, he delivered the presentation "Cross-Cultural Dialog through Wikipedia".
Abstract

Pikiwiki is the name given to the Israel free image collection project. This project was conceived as a cooperation between three Israeli NGOs: The Israel Internet Association, The Center for Educational Technology and Wikimedia Israel, as a method to increase the participation of Israelis in the Wikimedia Commons project, and the awareness of the Israeli public to the issue of copyrights - when they apply and why certain material should be released under free license.

The project includes a special localized interface. The interface is in Hebrew, and it includes only licenses and legal advices which are relevant to the Israeli users. The bodies involved in the project organize various events in which the public is called to search family albums and other private materials in order to find images of historical value or depictions of interesting sites in Israel and its vicinity, scan them, and share them with the public under free license.

In addition the project management does its best to convince local archives, especially in small communities, to scan the images they keep and upload the digital versions under free license through the Pikiwiki interface.

I am going to talk about the motivations and advantages of such project, and about our experience which is accumulating gradually. The main points are: (1) the importance of localizing the interface (2) the legal impediments and how they can be overcome (3) how such a project is perceived by the public and what kind of images one can expect to get (4) the contact between this project and the veteran community of the Commons - problems and cooperation and what we can learn from them.

Language English
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