wikipedia loves art 2009 and britain loves wikipedia 2010

Wikipedia Loves Art 2009Britain Loves Wikipedia 2010

Nad ia Arbach

D igital Program m e s Manage r

Victoria and Albe rt Muse um

Wikipedia Loves Art 2009

Lead partner: Brooklyn Museum

12 participating museums – V&A the only one from the UK

Purpose: to update Wikipedia articles with new images

User-generated, collaborative, open

Britain Loves Wikipedia 2010

V&A lead partner with 18 museums from around the UK

Shorter list of themes

Quality rather than quantity

Participating museums

Marriage chest (cassone) by Valerie McGlinchey

18 museums and archives signed up to participate

Only 8 museums had any photos submitted

Participant numbers

Reliquary by Jenny O’Donnell

The V&A had 50 participants on the day and a few more during February 2010

14 participants submitted V&A photos

40 participants in total contributed to the competition, but some were staff

Eligible photographs

530 eligible photographs

347 from the V&A and 183 from 7 other museums combined

Unbalanced participation

Need to limit number of photos from each participant

Labours of the Months (July) by David Jackson

Uploading system

Wikipedia Loves Art 2009: Flickr

Britain Loves Wikipedia 2010: bespoke uploader

Flickr allowed communication between participants; bespoke uploader made museums’ jobs easier

Cupid and Psyche by Barry Green

Timing and deadlines

No set deadlines for museums to finish checking photographs or for judges to pick winners

Public communication fizzled out soon after the final submission date

Judging took 7 months

Spice Box by Pawel Ficinski

Image rights issues

High-resolution, high-quality images of V&A objects being posted under CC share-alike licence

Truth and Falsehood by Iza Bella

Use of images to illustrate Wikipedia articles

April 2010: 12 uses of V&A photos

October 2010: 61 uses of V&A photos across Wikipedia sites in 12 different languages

80 uses of photos taken at all participating museums

Bone china chocolate cup by David Jackson

‘Apart from adding a lot of photos for use on Wikipedia and by the Museums, I found there were a lot of areas in the Museums (and a lot of objects too) which I had either forgotten or maybe never previously discovered.’

St Stephen Preaching by David Jackson

Nadia ArbachDigital Programmes ManagerLearning & Interpretation DivisionVictoria and Albert Museum020 7942 2194

n.arbach@vam.ac.uk

Medicine Bottles by Jenny O’Donnell