I have always thought the most likely organization to be willing to let us put our texts on their walls (via a QR code most likely) would in actual fact be zoos. Think about it! :-)
But, for fine arts galleries or major museums the process and policies of label writing is a very complex thing. Lots of people/departments involved, lots of policies and style guides (which wikipedians can relate to!) and lots of discussions about how to fit accurate content into small spaces without either dumbing down nor filling up the wall with text. I once did a multi-week internship at the [[powerhouse museum]] in order to research and write *two* labels for a temporary display!
Suffice it to say that no museum is going to, at this stage, outsource their label writing to Wikipedians - it would be too much of a political decision within the organisation as you can imagine. [perhaps a small/volunteer organization might though...]
That's just my experience though... Others might find other, more amenable GLAMs!
-Liam
Peace, love &
metadataGeni
This is an excelent idea - of course if we mounted a bar code as well and they had wi fi or internet phone carrying customers then we could use Google Goggles and supply it in different languages....
I tried suggesting this at one museum and I got the impression that they were worried about "doing their job" of course they can use our text and take nearly all the credit for just doing a print.
Roger
On 31 January 2011 23:39, geni
<geniice@gmail.com> wrote:
I was recently in the Portsmouth natural history museum (or as the
natives call it Cumberland House). When I was there I saw this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58992329@N03/5406060116/
If you look at the text in the right column (may need to view image at
full size) you will find that it is not only dated (it's treating 1982
as recent) but is treating the [[Almas (cryptozoology)]] thing
seriously. The museum doesn't really have any money so this isn't
something that is likely to be fixed by them any time soon.
I think offering to replace it with wikipedia based text along the
lines of say [[User:Geni/museum_sign]] would fall within 7-8 of:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Business_Plan#Mission_and_Objectives
I don't know how much doing such a replacement would cost but I would
be surprised if it passed the limit of our micro grant program.
Wikimedia-UK would need to be involved to cover use of the logo and
the like.
==Advantages==
*Museum gets a better sign
*New way to spread wikipedia content
*Gives us the chance to produce a real world example of the type of
signs we would like to see (QR code and the like)
*Helps draw attention to gaps in Wikipedia (in this case it failed to
mention how much Neanderthals weigh)
*It may get us some good will with the Portsmouth museum service which
since they hold one of the larger collections of ship paintings could
be kinda handy
*May get us some new editors who are interested in working on such signs.
*It's a concrete real world activity that we can point to as an
example of what we are doing.
==Disadvantages==
*Might be more expensive than expected
*Images are an issue in this case (need to check copyright status of
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Homo_neanderthalensis_models
)
*Scale we can do this on is limited both financially and finding
people to write such signs
==Neutral==
*They might say no
--
geni
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--
Roger Bamkin
(aka Victuallers)