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 [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
