[Wikisource-l] repositories of content

Thu Jul 13 18:35:00 UTC 2006

Hello

As some of you may know, Brad and I were in DC for most of this week, where  
we werre joined by Mindspillage and NullC for some fascinating meetings  with 
people from the Smithsonian, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library  of 
Congress, and the National Geographic Society. One of the  primary purposes 
of these meetings was to identify content that we can use  for our projects, 
including Wikisource. The meetings were  very informative and productive.

Given that there are certain legal issues involved, I will wait for Brad to  
describe in greater depth the outcome of these meetings. I will, however,  
describe two meetings that may have more immediate results for the Wikisource  
and Commons communities. 

Mindspillage and I had a great meeting with Lawrence (Larry) Swiader, the  
Deputy CIO of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has given us permission to  
use any and all of the material created and licensed by that Museum  according 
to the terms of our license. This includes images, video, video  transcripts, 
audio, and text, including the new Holocaust encyclopedia  that they are 
building on line (in seven languages), and which they plan to  be the most 
comprehensive encyclopedia of its kind in the world. All they  are asking for in 
return in attribution. Essentially, although this was not said  in so many words, 
they are releasing all of their in-hourse material according  to the terms of 
the GNU-FDL. Larry was especially excited by the prospect of our  people 
participating in the translation effort. I would like to point out that  this is an 
outstanding repository of material, not just about World War II and  the 
Holocaust, but about other modern instances of genocide, including Armenia,  
Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. They have no problem whatsover with our  translating 
their proprietary formats into free software formats such as .ogg  files. 

At the end of our meeting, we discussed the need for a contract to  formalize 
this agreement. Brad will be drafting one to send to their counsel,  and 
things should be underway quickly. In the meantime, I encourage you to look  
through their materials and see what is there. 

The Library of Congress meeting was also quite spectacular. They also  have 
enormous archives which they are willing to share, but I am noting  here that 
some of their materials still fall under copyright so greater caution  must be 
exercised. Over the next few weeks, we will better identify what is  there for 
the taking. 

During our talks, they made mention of the fact that many important  
historical documents may have been scanned, but they have not yet been  transcribed. 
One of the repositories mentioned was the Thomas Jefferson archives  at 
Monticello. Speaking of this particular archive, they told us that the work  was so 
daunting that the Jefferson people (and other groups as well) have taken  to 
outsourcing the transcription work to India. I would like to suggest to the  
current Wikisource team and additional volunteers that we jump at this  
opportunity to help in the realtime preservation of these documents, which are  of 
enormous historical importance. My other suggestion is that we contact these  
organizations in an organized manner, rather than as individuals, so that we  
appear organized and do not duplicate efforts.

Finally, we have now contacted some of the most important repositories of  
content in the United States and we were welcomed by them. I encourage  
Wikimedians in other countries, representing other languages, to make the  same 
coordinated effort with their local repositories in their respective  languages. 

More to come, 

Danny
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