Sure, it's Wikipedia in that if you get an image of a painting on Commons you can illustrate the associated article with it - this is an advert for the museum, sort-of "wanna see the real thing? Go *here*". For letters or other forms of writing, it might well be Wikisource - and you can bet your ass the museums haven't heard of that.
>From the point of view that, I shouldn't have to fly to Berlin to see the cool stuff they have on display, there's a point. I have a strong suspicion that the German phrase that's been translated into "content liberation" has many, many more nuances that work well with the custodians of such institutes. The issue is, can we find a neat way to put it across in English? To those of us involved with Wiki projects it really is a no-brainer to share everything with the world, but these people have employees/curators/volunteers to worry about - not to mention keeping the bricks and mortar premises where they're storing the art, or other valuable material. To "sell" releasing this to Wikipedia to folks like that you need to consider that they want to see their institution continue. "Content liberation" is ideologically sound for those who have embraced the wiki way, but for a lot of other people - esp. those controlling fine art and significant literature - it has to be sold as a way to promote the material they are caretakers of, and encourage support of the places where it can be displayed. To sum up, I see "content liberation" as the ideological goal we aim for, but we have to live in the real world. There has to be a clear focus on reassuring those running museums and galleries that WMF isn't out to steal their customers and eat their lunch - you have to convince them that making copies of work available is going to highlight what they have, and that only there can you view it in "eyeball Xmillion pixels" resolution. Reality is that the Wikimedia/Wikipedia pages for any art they have are going to rank far higher than their own archives. I'd say there is a degree of responsibility to refer people back to them, and encourage people to actually go to the physical premises. Sure, the "content liberation" allows millions who might never have seen a work to see a photograph, but there should be an effort to encourage those fit, able, and affluent enough, to go see it in person. What I take from "content liberation" is that you no longer need to go to the museum because it is online. That is most definitely not what I think should be encouraged, nor a realistic pitch to those who you want to share content. Brian McNeil -----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Michael Peel Sent: 10 April 2009 13:31 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Membership drive template On 10 Apr 2009, at 12:23, Thomas Dalton wrote: > 2009/4/9 Andrew Turvey <andrewrtur...@googlemail.com>: >> Hi Mike, >> >> I got "content liberation" from the Berlin chapters' meeting > > I wasn't in that part, but apparently one of the things said during > that session was that liberation isn't a good word to use. I was at that meeting, and that's what prompted my earlier email. :-) Brian: bear in mind that some museums have a large amount of their works online in digital form, so in that way they're already "liberated". Also, it's wider than just images - think bit of text/ letters/papers/books, sounds, videos, etc. as well. Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
