[Wikisource-l] repositories of content

Thu Jul 13 20:31:42 UTC 2006

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>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.
>
This seems, in principal, to be a welcome development.

>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historical documents may have been scanned, but they have not yet been  transcribed.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.
>
I realize that Jefferson was prolific, but it comes as a surprise that 
this would never have been done before in the 180 years since his death 
given that historically philosophically he is one of the most important 
of US presidents.  This kind of material needs to be available in two 
formats.  The digitized scans would be essentially uneditable to 
preserve historical accuracy.  Even scans modified to improve contrast, 
or to eliminate foxing or chicory-cup stains are derivatives of this 
stable corpus.

Transcriptions need to be subject to various hierarchies of 
editability.  Disputable readings of handwriting, links, references and 
footnotes, translations, commentaries.  It would be wise to establish 
protocols to account for all of these possibilities.

You also mentioned the National Geographic Society in your 
introduction.  What is being offered there?

>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. 
>
Very much, though I think that much of this should be handled through 
the national organizations and domains.  Nationality is a more important 
issue here than language.  It is not unusual for countries to require 
that funds raised through deductible charitable donations be expended 
within that country.  We also need to remember that the United States is 
unusual in its policy of putting all of its documents in the public 
domain.  The kind of negotiation that may be needed to approach that 
reality elsewhere may be more easily accomplished from within the country.

Ec