Sofia Zoo Powered by WikimediaKaterina Zareva , Rositsa Gyurova Educational Department in Sofia ZooVassia AtanassovaWikimedians of Bulgaria User Group

Joint Project with Bulgarian Wikipedia “Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia”

• Funded by Wikimedia Foundation Project start: 1 May 2012 Project end: 30 April 2013

• Main goals Creation of new information plates for the exhibited biological species in Bulgarian and English, containing multilingual QR codes to the full Wikipedia articles with detailed information.Contributions to the Bulgarian version of Wikipedia with the creation and improvement of articles about the exhibited biological species.

Project funding• The whole budget of the project:

BGN 8467.00 EUR 4330.00

• Budget sourcesWikimedia Foundation grantVoluntary co-funding

• Budget allocationMetal constructions for holding the platesPrinting the PVC plates Brochures and promotion

64%

36%

5

57%38%

Voluntary labor• Plates design: Donated by Edouard Loigerot• Plates content: Staff of Educational Dept. of Sofia Zoo• Wikipedia articles: Wikipedian community• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, Zoo Staff and Volunteer

Photographers, Fotolia.com

The new information plates in Sofia Zoo

The new information plates in Sofia ZooAquarium and terrarium plates

The QR codes

• Multilingual QRpedia codes to Wikipedia articlesThe code is generated with the web application http://qrpedia.org/ starting from the Bulgarian article BUT using the species’ Latin name: http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varecia_rubra which redirects to the Cyrillic one.

Red ruffled lemurbg: Червен гривест лемур

lat: Varecia rubra

The generated QR code is linkedsimultaneously to all versions of this articlein different language versions of Wikipedia.

It is opened to the user in the languagetheir mobile device is set on.

The QR codes in action

Project Results• Designed, printed and installed information plates: 260+.• Improved Wikipedia articles: 110+ • New Wikipedia articles: 150+• Ongoing collaboration

Project Impact• Stabilizing the infrastructure in the Sofia Zoo

• Increasing the educational value of the Zoo

• Increasing the involvement of the Wikipedian community with the Zoo

• Improving the quality of Wikipedia (and generally, online) information in Bulgarian related to animal species

• Encouraging innovation by using modern information and communication technologies in the Zoo–visitors interaction

Future plansWhat’s next?

• Arrangement of a free WiFi zone across the Sofia Zoo

• Evaluation of the the impact of the plates• Analysis of visitors’ experience • Analysis of QR code performance• Analysis of Wikipedia readers’ interest in articles for the

exhibited species

Challenges

• No QRpedia statistics, only statistics for articles visits: seasonality, trends, etc. • Raw data: http://github.com/bmanolov/wikimedia/blob/master/wikipedia/stats-

for-zoo-species/view_stats.csv

2010-01 2011-01 2012-01 2013-01 2014-01 2015-010

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Ягуар / Jaguar / Panthera onca

Sharing our experienceIf you want to have similar project or QR codes in your zoo:

• Produce multilingual QR codes to Wikipedia using http://qrpedia.org (only this application maintains the multilingual interwiki links).

• For non-Latin-based languages, use the redirecting Latin names for better QR code raster and easier use.

• For Wikimedia Foundation funding, first contact for support your local Wikipedia community http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG

Further information:

• Project: http://bit.ly/wikizoo• Report: http://bit.ly/wikizoo-report• BG Coordination page: http://bit.ly/bgwpzoo

www.zoosofia.eu