New subject: [Wikimedia-in-mum] GLAM-India: Wikipedia and NHHM collaboration

11 Feb 2012

Dear all,
I am extremely delighted to announce India's first (?) GLAM collaboration
with a State institution in New Delhi, the capital of India. The* National
Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum (NHHM)*, New Delhi has approved our draft
and we will soon begin a 6 month pilot project with them.
I have been corresponding with their director for over 2 months now, since
the GLAMcamp in Amsterdam. After a series of conversations with the
Director, Dr Ruchira Ghose, I sent in an approval and after two meetings,
she sent in a revised proposal to the Ministry of Culture in India. Just
two days ago, the Ministry approved this project and has also provided her
a small grant to support our incidental expenses. NHHM has over 30,000
objects including pottery, textiles, metal work, paintings and more.

*Goals:*

   - 6 month pilot project to churn out 25 'Good Articles'.
   - Training staff and capacity building
   - Recruiting 10 new editors from art colleges to work on site for
   digitization/documentation
   - Make the museum a regular avenue for GLAM meets

Note: Good Articles here doesn't mean GA by en-WP standards. We intend to
create at least 25 articles with substantial information. Would like your
inputs on this.

*Challenges: *

   - Delhi has a small community, so we *really *need help from EVERYONE
   possible, local and global
   - The staff members are only comfortable with Hindi, so we'd appreciate
   ALL help possible from hi-WP editors
   - *Biggest challenge: *India is a vast country with craft traditions in
   millions of villages. So, at the time of acquiring, many art objects do not
   come with published information, documentation and references. Much of this
   stuff is 'word of mouth', oral traditions and stories of artisans etc. We
   have asked the Museum to start documenting and publishing these stories
   under their Publication cell BUT that will take time. Do you think using
   oral citations in this case would be helpful?
   - Since this is my/our first time, we will appreciate guidance on
   scanning, making an MoU and help creating/maintaining the project page. Can
   someone please help? *makes puppy face*

I apologize for this really long mail but, my next meeting with the
Director is on the 14th of February when we will start our 'lead-up'
program to the project.
*To all the WiRs: *Did you make some sort of a program schedule or a
timeline that I could use?

I would love all your suggestions on this project and am *very* excited to
make my own share of GLAM contributions and mistakes :) Of course, now we
will also start contributing to TGIM.

Cheers,
Noopur

-- 
Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690