Awesome work, folks! Let me know when the pictures are out :)
I hope we can do our own version of this in New York City one day with a "Mollusc-a-thon" in the back shelves of the local natural history museum. Thanks, Pharos On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nick Jenkins <nic...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > Just a quick note to say that we had a great time on Friday at the > Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and it was very interesting. > > Quick description of what happened for those that could not attend: > > We met outside the museum shortly after 10 AM, were greeted by curators, > and went to the Museum's café, and the curators from the different areas > introduced themselves and shouted us teas/coffees, and we chatted a bit > and they were very friendly and open. Also explained were the > concerns/issues with photographing both people (e.g. they got us all to > sign release-forms before taking any of our pictures) and pictures of > things (moral rights of the creators, something I was not aware of). > Because of this, I didn't feel it was appropriate for us to take > pictures, so sorry, but to the best my knowledge there are no photos of > the event taken by Wikipedians (although there may be some that appear > on one of the Powerhouse blogs this week, taken by the imaging/media > part of the museum). > > Then we (probably around 9 or 10 Wikipedians were present + 3 or 4 > curators + 2 media/imaging people) went through the public area of the > museum for about a hour and were given a tour with explanations of the > background and significance of some of the major items. Then we went to > the backstage area, in an adjacent building, where some of the items > that are not on public display are held. We saw Mawson's sled in a photo > studio, and one level down saw a wide variety of items, including > historic clothes (some of which were around 200 years old, but which > were stored in such ideal conditions that they looked brand new / in > mint condition), telecommunications/telegraph items, and historical > medical equipment (bleeding kits, surgeon's kits), and many other items. > > Then we had lunch, which they again shouted us, and chatted a bit. Also > a reporter from Triple-J interviewed some people for a story they are > working on for the "Hack" program about Wiki-edit-wars. Then in the > afternoon most people went to a meeting room, and discussed things, such > as licensing issues (Q: what licence should be used for images if the > Powerhouse wanted to try releasing a few images for use on the > wikipedia? A: Suggested CC-By-SA), and so forth; and a few people went > to the cafeteria and worked on articles for items we had seen. In the > meeting room we only had one computer on a projector, and we > collectively edited a few items (e.g. history of the Powerhouse Museum), > and made a list of possible images to request, and so forth. More > detailed notes & links to discussed articles and requested images & so > forth are available at: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/Powerhouse_Museum_2009-03-13 > > We wound up around 4:30 PM. It was very interesting, and the amount of > material and knowledge (at the museum, in the heads of the curators, and > in the internal databases at the museum) is truly vast; but the issues > that are being grappled with seemed (from my perspective) to be how to > fulfil the museum's mission in an increasing online environment, how > that relates to the wikipedia and finding areas where there's a good > synergy and commonality of purpose, and also questions and complexity of > licensing (for images of items and details about items), and all the > cultural issues of interfacing the two different cultures and ways of > operating. > > I thought it was a very positive day, and I left very much with the > impression that these were good people who genuinely wanted to help. > > A big thank you to the all curators, such as Matthew Connell, for > showing us around and being such great hosts, and a big thank you to > Liam & co for organising this. > > -- All the best, > Nick. > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaau-l mailing list > Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l > _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
