Relazione sulle attività 2017/en

Introduction

The association Wikimedia Italia – Associazione per la diffusione della conoscenza libera (hereinafter referred to as Wikimedia Italia or WMI) was founded on 17th June 2005 in Canino (Italy). WMI is a non-party, non-political, non-profit association that actively contributes to the diffusion, the improvement and the development of knowledge and culture throughout the world.

Wikimedia Italia social purpose

Wikimedia Italia members from 2005 to 2017

Wikimedia Italia collaborates with Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit American organisation that manages Wikipedia, the online multilingual free-content encyclopaedia cooperatively written by volunteers. Wikimedia Foundation hosts Wikipedia in all languages and other projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Italia works alongside Wikimedia Foundation but does not represent Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia in Italian legally in Italy. Wikimedia Italia is entitled to use Wikimedia brands and logo exclusively for its institutional activities. Similarly, Wikimedia Italia is chapter of OpenStreetMap Foundation but remains independent from it.

In particular, Wikimedia Italia aims to spread out the philosophy that inspires Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap projects; Wikimedia Italia members contribute to one or more Wikimedia projects and share the underneath values of these projects. Being part of this association facilitates the exchange of views and experiences at world level and allows to be directly involved in the development of Wikimedia and its objectives.

Wikimedia Italia members' actions on Wikipedia are carried out in their own personal capacity and the association does not take any responsibility and does not give any guidelines or advice in this respect.

Wikimedia Italia members

Wikimedia Italia members pay an annual membership fee of 25,00 euros. Honorary members have equal rights as ordinary members but do not pay the annual membership, while supporters are all those people and organisations contributing to Wikimedia Italia with important donations in order to sustain the maintenance, the improvement and the further implementation of WMI projects. Wikimedia Italia was founded by 18 members on 17th June 2005. On 31st December 2017, WMI registered 412 members.

Members in 2017 divided by region

• New members (from January to December 2017): 87
• Decayed members: 94
• Average age: 47 years old
• Youngest member: 19 years old
• Oldest member: 92 years old
• Gender:
  • Women: 93 (22,57%)
  • Men: 319 (77,43%)
• Region of residence: regions where the higher number of members reside are Lombardia (109), Lazio (48), Emilia Romagna (40), Veneto (32) and Piemonte (26). The other regions have less than 30 members. 12 members live abroad (see chart).

Coordinators

As in 2016, in 2017 regional and thematic coordinators have been appointed: 31 during the first semester and 27 during the second one. In some cases, some of them were new members, in others cases they were volunteers who had already covered that role. On 5th February 2017, a meeting with the participation of 21 coordinators, 4 staff members and 3 members of the board was organised in Rome.

Staff

Wikimedia Italia recruits some staff members for more intensive activities together with some collaborators for specific external activities. In 2017, a reorganisation of the staff has been started in order to make the workforce structure less hierarchical and more linear.

Activities

Institutions and free culture

Seminar in BNCF in November 2017

In 2017, several collaborations with libraries have been established, numerous courses and events have been successfully organised and the relationships with the main Italian institutions were particularly fruitful.

One of the most outstanding results is the collaboration formalised in June 2017 between AIB and Wikimedia Italia in favour of the public domain. The agreement stipulates the commitment of both sides to work together for the promotion of various initiatives, such as training courses and advocacy activities, encouraging the diffusion of open licences and the free use of digitised works in the Italian libraries.

At the same time, the Italian law legge 124/2017 allows to take pictures of pages of documents or other print volumes with personal equipment (e.g mobile phone), without prior authorization, in libraries and archives. Wikimedia Italia has contributed to accomplish this result thanks to the advocacy activities related to this topic organised in 2017.

Institutions and participation to projects

Libraries

One of the 300 images digitized in 2017 from the Acta Eruditorum, public domain works in the BEIC catalogue

Within this positive context, the association has promoted more than 30 events and training courses in different libraries throughout the year. These initiatives have involved more than 1000 participants, among which more than 150 were new contributors to Wikimedia projects.

This growth has been encouraged by an enhanced presence at the convention named convegno delle Stelline, where the WMI President outlined the benefits of Wikidata and open data in general. The annual convention Sfide e alleanze tra biblioteche e Wikipedia also was very successful. It was held at the Central National Library in Florence (Italy) and more than 270 people participated to this event.

With regards to workshops, the training launched at the beginning of the year with the Biblioteca San Giorgio di Pistoia has generated 33 new articles on Wikipedia, while in the training with Sistema bibliotecario Seriate Laghi more than 20 librarians were involved. The workshops organised at the Biblioteca di Area Linguistica dell'Università Cà Foscari (BALI) have been the most successful ones with the participation of about 40 new contributors each.

One of the main innovations of the year was the establishment of the collaboration with the Department of digitised bibliographic services of the University of Turin (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Modern Cultures) which will employ part of its vast bibliographic archive in Wikimedia projects. Moreover, in the Biblioteca delle Oblate (a library situated in Florence), a weekly assistance service for Wikipedia has been tested for 3 months.

Museums and archives

In 2017, the format editathon, based on the collaboration between museums and archives, was particularly appreciated. Writing marathons on Wikipedia represent a way to involve museum staff in the creation of new articles related to the collections of their museum or other interesting topics. This allows to train museum staff while promoting the collections of each museum.

The most relevant editathon promoted by the association in 2017 was the one realised at the Gallerie degli Uffizi, which involved 40 participants, including 13 experienced users and 7 museum staff members. As part of this initiative, which was largely covered by the press (see the paragraph Communication), 11 new articles were created on Wikipedia and other 8 articles were improved.

The event at the Uffizi paved the way to an expanded and more systematic collaboration with this such important museum. The same can be said for the editathon realised in Bologna at the Archivio Videoludico della Cineteca, where 19 participants created 13 new articles on videogames and science fiction. Other writing marathons were hosted at the Archivio di Stato (on the occasion of International Women's day), the Museo del Novecento in Firenze, the Museo del Palazzo di Bonifacio VIII ad Anagni, the Istituto Piemontese per la Storia della Resistenza (Istoreto) and the Museo storico della Guerra di Rovereto.

Furthermore, different activities were realised in collaboration with the Polo museale della Campania on the occasion of the project Reach Out (progetto Reach Out): about twenty students from the Economics Technical Institute "Enrico Caruso" in Napoli were involved in the promotion of the Palazzo Reale collection on various Wikimedia projects. This activity started in December 2017 and will be concluded in 2018.

Among the numerous editathon promoted, it is worth mentioning the meetings held at the Villa Bernasconi di Cernobbio. In relation to the project Liberty tutti, the local administration in Cernobbio and the social cooperative Mondovisione, in collaboration with Wikimedia Italia, promoted three meetings in April, May and December where the participants created 16 new articles about the Villa, its owner and his textile company and the other main monuments in the surroundings. During the event held in December, the first "wikistazione" was inaugurated in the Villa. This is the first room dedicated to Wikipedians ever set up in a museum.

Others

The user group WikiDonne took part to different international initiatives (WikiWomenCamp a Città del Messico, Wikimedia Diversity Conference a Stoccolma, La mujer que nunca conosciste) and to the online editathon promoted each month at international level. As a result of these activities, more than 60 new articles dedicated to standout women were created in Wikipedia. During the La mujer que nunca conosciste, a worldwide initiative promoted by Iberocoop, a prize-giving final ceremony was organised in April at the MACRO museum in Rome. During this event 49 new articles were created.

The editathon promoted across Italy thanks to the commitment of many volunteers are the most significant events. The most participated and successful marathon was Art+Feminism, an event concomitantly held in March all over the world with the aim of creating and improving articles on women working in the arts as well as encouraging women's involvement in the production of Wikipedia contents. In Italy, this initiative was propmoted in 6 different cities: Roma, Milano, Venezia, Firenze, Battipaglia and Potenza. These editathon led to the creation of 80 new articles on Wikipedia in Italian thanks to the contribution of about 100 participants.

Institutions and contents issue

Libraries

In 2017, the Wikipedian in Residence Marco Chemello continued his activity at the Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura (BEIC). He created 81 new articles thanks to the contents freely issued by the Library and digitized 4200 pages on Wikisource, including various works from collana Scrittori d'Italia Laterza publishing house. Furthermore, the illustrations taken from the Acta Eruditorum have been digitised and added to the more than 19 000 images already uploaded since the beginning of the collaboration. Moreover, a first location referencing prototype (prototipo di georeferenziazione su base OpenStreetMap) was realised for Paolo Monti's photographic archive: this project was publically presented on 16th March at the Italian Librarians national convention held at the Palazzo delle Stelline in Milano.

Previously established collaborations continued to produce good results. Among the others, it is worth mentioning the collaboration with Biblioteca Comunale di Trento and the related project "Geografie dal mondo antico" which led to the digitisation and publication of 150 maps from the XVII and XVIII centuries on Wikimedia Commons.

Archives

The energic group ICAR

Two new collaborations with Wikipedians in Residence (WIR) were established in 2017: the first collaboration started in September 2017 with Istituto centrale per gli archivi (ICAR), while the second one was created in October 2017 with the Istituto centrale per i beni sonori ed audiovisivi (ICBSA).

During the first four months of activity,the WIR Marco Chemello organised a training on Wikimedia projects for 13 ICAR staff members. Thanks to the ICAR staff's contribution, 24 articles on Wikipedia in Italian were improved and 81 images were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.

Luca Martinelli at ICBSA focused on the database instead: during the first three months of the collaboration about 1100 elements were corrected and more than 360 missing elements were created on Wikidata.

Others

Connected Open Heritage, a project promoted in 2016 from Wikimedia Svezia with the support of the UNESCO and the contribution of Wikimedia Italia and realised in collaboration with GAR and DecArch. The aim of this project is to improve and generate knowledge related to the world cultural heritage, especially to all those sites at risk because of wars, natural disasters and negligence, and ensure that this knowledge becomes digitally accessible through free and open licences. As part of this project, Wikimedia Italia gathered and released under an open licence on Wikimedia Commons more than 1000 images of cultural heritage taken by Italian archaeologists and volunteers working in the field in Syria and Jordan. The numerous images of this projects were included in the exhibition "Opera Libera" at the Museo nazionale etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome with the collaboration of the MiBACT.

Wiki Science Competition: after one year since the creation of the competition, a group of Italian volunteers launched a photo contest in Italy with the aim of presenting Wikipedia through scientific images that can be reusable and accessible to everybody.

Education

New brochures for schools

In 2017, the activities with schools and universities continued in numerous regions in order to promote free knowledge among students, teachers and professors. Furthermore, the association made significant progress for the ministerial recognition of its trainings and workshops provided to schools and universities.

Collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research

An important accomplishment was the signature of a three-year agreement (Protocollo d'Intesa) with the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. This result represents a significant step towards the strategic objective of encouraging as many teachers and professors as possible to use Wikimedia projects as learning sources. In particular, WMI undertakes to make training sources available for schools and universities. The association is also committed to the realisation of schoolkits that will help teachers structure certain activities using Wikimedia projects. In January 2018, after only one month since the signature of the agreement, WMI released the first 8 schoolkits which helped teachers use Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversità and Wikisource while covering different topics such as women, cultural heritage and multilingualism.

Activities in schools and universities

Students from Potenza in a library while creating contents for Wikipedia and Wikibooks

More than 1800 students and teachers took part to Wikimedia activities in numerous schools in Italy. From north to south, Wikimedia projects were used in more than 30 institutes not only as a way to share knowledge but also as a special learning tool to develop transversal and multidisciplinary competences. In addition to presentations and courses, the workshops carried out in numerous schools represented an opportunity for many students to actively contribute to different Wikimedia projects while interacting with the international community, which resulted in almost 300 young students who became contributors to WIkimedia projects.

Among all projects, it is worth mentioning the project WikiMemo va a scuola, developed as part of the event Fano Loves Wiki realised to promote the creation of articles on the history and culture of the city of Fano.

From a collaboration with Fondazione Trentina Alcide De Gasperi, WMI developed the project "WikiEHL: l'enciclopedia del Patrimonio europeo" involving six classes in four different schools in Trento and surroundings, from January to May. Students from these schools created 11 articles on different sites that were awarded the European Heritage Label (EHL).

Another positive aspect in 2017 is represented by all those collaborations with schools born after initials projects, such as, for instance, the project developed in the high school Liceo delle scienze umane E. Gianturco in Potenza concerning the implementation of the Sportello wiki in order to support teachers in the structuring of learning paths based on the use of Wikimedia platforms, especially Wikipedia, Commons, Wikibooks and Wikivoyage.

In September, numerous projects were started for the school year 2017/2018 which will clearly continue in 2018, such as the projects developed at the Istituto Comprensivo Dante Alighieri in Cornate d'Adda and at the Liceo classico statale Quinto Orazio Flacco in Potenza. The first one is a project involving 10 different classes tpgether with their tachers who participated to some ad hoc training courses. Many members of WMI have been working together with these students and teachers on Wikipedia and Wikivoyage.

The project at the high school Liceo Flacco in Potenza will involve students from different classes who will create open access contents (articles and images) starting from some original documents and sources stored in the school library. In this way, they will contribute to the dissemination of ancient culture through Wikimedia projects.

Concerning the universities, WMI members gave classes in more than 16 Italian universities. One of the activities involved more than 600 students and brought almost 100 new contributors. During the year, the project WikiTim was implemented at the LUISS University in Roma, at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and at the Università degli Studi di Catania, involving about a hundred of students from different faculties who completed and created new articles on the digital know-how, also adding unpublished images from the historical archive Telecom Italia di Torino.

Open science

In 2017, more than 3000 scientific publications were put in open access thanks to an awareness-raising campaign addressed to researchers (not all of them have a free licence). This initiative echoed internationally and, with a small investment, obtained numerous texts in free licence and arose the attention of about 3100 researchers interested in cooperating with Wikimedia Italia.

This result, 60 times higher than the fixed annual objective, was attained thanks to the big scale of the awareness-raising campaign (the researchers who were contacted were members of non-Italian institutions in 95% of the cases) and to the collaboration with some successful initiatives such as the Dissemin (CAPSH association based in France).

The initiative aiming to gather professors on the occasion of a big convention, and recruit new members among them, was not realised, but the communication on the best practices realised in various universities brought at least one new member among the professors using Wikipedia as a learning tool.

OpenStreetMap

Mapping in Verona

2017 was the second year of activity for Wikimedia Italia as the Italian chapter for the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

Since the signature of the agreement with the Club Alpino Italiano in October 2016, coordination activities have been started in order to establish guidelines on the mapping of pathways and for the organisation of events in different locations and along different paths in Italy. OpenStreetMap gained thousands of new users and hundreds of new collaborators.

Civil protection, fire departments and emergency workers express their deep interest in OpenStreetMap. Press articles as well as conferences on database and mapping services proposed by OSM after the earthquake in 2016 promoted the spreading of collaborative tools and boosted the interest of individuals and officials all over the country in OSM project.

Numerous projects involving OpenStreetMap were developed by universities and other research institutes and, when it comes to geographical information, OpenStreetMap maps or elaborations appear now quite often. In December 2017, the first OSM workshop in school was initiated at the Technical Institute Avogadro in Torino. From January 2018, students will discover community and collaborative platforms by working on the widest free geographical database, which will hopefully deploy new interesting careers opportunities for them.

The most satisfying accomplishment of the year was the allocation to Italy of the international conference State of the Map 2018 thanks to the proposition made by Wikimedia Italia which, in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano, will bring hundreds of volunteers, researchers and NGOs near Wikimedia Italia headquarters.

At the end of the year, 31 events were organised (mapathon, conventions, mapping parties and trainings) with more than 1200 participants. In Italy, the community added in OSM 1 364 000 street numbers, 72 750 points of interest and more than 68 337 km of routes and pathways.

The success of the initiatives related to this project gives hope for the future. During some events, neophytes managed to correctly change data on the field with only few hours at disposal, which is evidence of the fact that a complete and capillary mapping could be feasible even in case of limited resources.

Wiki Loves Monuments

The 6th edition of WLM in Italy was a success thanks to the communication strategy, the inauguration of the exhibition Opera Libera in Rome, the prize-giving ceremony at the Acquario Civico in Milano as well as the visibility brought to some of the winners in the international contest. However, no progress was made concerning the overcoming of the already known legal problems that hinder the promotion of the Italian cultural heritage.

Figures

In general, quantitative indicators show that the increase of the amount of work dedicated to the project implementation does not correspond to better impacts and results. The low growth of the number of participants, despite the increase of the number of important authorisations, can be understood as a symptom of fatigue or lack of interest from the public: the lists of monuments that can participate to the contest are growing but they are far from covering the whole Italian territory.

The 2017 edition offers various suggestions for the future development of the OSM project:

• Italy is third out of 52 countries for the number of photographers and photos, involving more than 990 participants who published 20 000 photos of 7769 Italian monuments (+28,8 % compared to the 2016 edition). However, the objective of 1200 participants was not attained.
• 877 institutions (+38 % compared to 2016 edition) collaborated with Wikimedia Italia for the promotion of the contest, providing authorisations for the reproduction of numerous monuments. The collaboration with the Comune di Milano is particularly relevant since it gave authorisations for more than 80 monuments.