[Foundation-l] National library of Serbia and Wikimedian projects: call for ideas

Thu Oct 11 12:11:16 UTC 2007

Milos, this is very interesting. I'll send to you a private email with ideas! :)

OK, I realize that I sent this in very bad time for new ideas. The
point is that this is an open call and you are welcome to give your
input whenever you want. Until that, I/we would try to make deals
which are possible to implement according to our number and free time.
This is not a lot, but enough for the beginning.

On 10/9/07, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a good relations with Sreten Ugricic, director of National
> Library of Serbia [1]. So, we are able to make a lot of things there.
>
> However, I realized that possibilities for cooperation with the
> library are much bigger then possibilities of Wikimedian community in
> Belgrade. Between 5 and 10 Wikimedians and CC-ians who are willing to
> work on that are enough just for very small cooperation projects.
>
> So, there are two major questions:
>
> - What are your ideas for cooperation?
> - Do you have ideas how to help?
>
> For now, it is too early to organize any kind of meeting. I would like
> to hear your ideas (of course, AFAIK, brainstorming inside of the
> Serbian community is ongoing).
>
> Note that National Library of Serbia is a large one. Not so big as
> Congress Library, but big enough. There are a lot of important books,
> some of the important books exist only there etc.
>
> They are in the process of digitalization, they are even developing
> their own software (based on free software), and they are one of the
> richest cultural institutions in Serbia.
>
> Because of that ideas shouldn't be limited on "borrow us a book which
> we need" and similar. It may go up to the cooperation between WMF and
> NLS on some globally important project.
>
> BTW, you may think about other cultural institutions from Serbia which
> have data which are globally important. For example, AFAIK, Yugoslav
> Film Archive [2] has the second largest film archive in the world.
>
> However, for all such projects participation of the global Wikimedian
> community is necessary because we are operating with the same 10-20
> people for all projects.
>
> [1] - http://www.nbs.bg.ac.yu/index.php?change_lang=en
> [2] - http://www.kinoteka.org.yu/ (in Serbian)
>