GLAM/Newsletter/May 2024/Contents/Poland report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue V, May 2024

Poland report What's up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland in May

Heritage Guard Network

Heritage Guard Network Logo
Damage from shelling at the Yelets Monastery
Historical building after being hit by a Russian missile, Kharkiv
Evangelical Church in Żeliszów
Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in V'yazivka

The second live working meeting of the Heritage Guard Network project team took place in Georgia on May 13-15. The meeting was attended by: from Wikimedia Sverige - Eric Luth, from Wikimedia UG Georgia - Mehman Ibragimov, from Wikimedia Ukraine - Olesia Lukaniuk, and Wikimedia Poland was represented by our Open Culture Manager - Kamila Neuman.

The meeting in Tbilisi was aimed at evaluating the activities of the ongoing Heritage Guard Network pilot project so far, making changes and improvements that will increase the effectiveness of our activities and better coordinate them, and planning the next steps in the project.

Heritage Guard Network (HGN): Empowering Communities to Safeguard Cultural and Natural Treasures through Crowdsourced Digital Efforts aims to create long-term, sustainable networks that compile, build, and share best practices on how to successfully crowdsource data and information on cultural and natural heritage in danger.

The project is focused on developing analyses and recommendations on how to use crowdsourcing, especially through the Wikimedia platforms, for the digitization of cultural and natural heritage in danger. The result will be four papers dedicated to legal, engagement, risk and technology related aspects of the topic.

Partners, experts and volunteers are encouraged to get involved in the development of these four papers!

If you represent an organization (company, NGO, institution or other) and you would like to get involved please fill in this survey: Partner Assessment Survey

If you want to join the project (especially the Working Groups) as a volunteer please fill in this survey: HGN Volunteer Survey

The aim of this pilot project to establish a long term network, where continued engagement of partners, experts and volunteers will be crucial. The project team is in the process of preparing future applications for the continuation of the project.

There are several ways to contribute to the project. One is to join working group meetings, which are held regularly and provide a space for organizations, experts and volunteers to provide input, opinions and experiences.

For more information, visit the project website.

This project is funded by the Swedish Institute.

The Cipher Girls project on Wikipedia at the Impact'24 conference

The Cipher Girls project is an initiative aimed at raising awareness of women's contributions to the fields of cryptography, mathematics, computer science, and engineering, with a special focus on their role in breaking the Enigma ciphers during World War II. The project extends the educational activities of the Enigma Cipher Center, whose mission is to disseminate knowledge about the history of Polish cryptography.

The Poznań Heritage Center and the Enigma Cipher Center have reached an agreement with Wikimedia Poland to develop knowledge in Wikimedia projects about women's contributions to the fields of cryptography, mathematical sciences, and computer science, as well as in communication and conspiracy, with particular emphasis on the heroines of Polish ciphers from the 1939-1945 period and the heroines of the digital revolution within the Cipher Girls project.

The collaboration includes educational activities such as edit-a-thons aimed at enriching the Polish-language Wikipedia with biographies and achievements of these extraordinary women.

The first such event was an edit-a-thon about Cipher Girls, organized as part of a prestigious international economic and technological congress IMPACT CEE in Poznań on May 15, 2024. With 8 multimedia stages, 23 thematic tracks and more than 650 speakers, the event attracts more than 6,000 participants, creating a unique platform for the exchange of ideas. This year's guest speakers included Michelle Obama.

Role of Wikimedia Poland Wikimedia Poland, in cooperation with volunteers:

prepared the project page,
ensured the encyclopedic validity of proposed articles through volunteer involvement,
recruited volunteers for the event, and
led the promotion of the event in its promotional channels.

The initiative on behalf of Wikimedia Poland is coordinated by the Manager of Open Culture, Kamila Neuman, and was represented on-site by the Expert in Event Organization, Marek Lewandowski. Katarzyna Kucharska from the Enigma Cipher Center is responsible for the project and event organization. The event accompanied an exhibition about the Cipher Girls. During an edit-a-thon about Cipher Girls, Wikimedia projects were edited by 3 Wikimedia Poland volunteers: Klara Sielicka-Baryłka,Grzegorz Gogacz, Marcin Szwarc and five employees of the Enigma Cipher Center.

We would like to thank all the volunteers for their participation in the event and for their support in preparing it.

Record number of files from Polona in Wikimedia Commons

In May, over a million files from Polona were added to Wikimedia Commons! This is a record number of contributions to the free multimedia repository as part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration with the National Library of Poland!

Polona is a Polish digital library containing collections from the National Library of Poland and cooperating institutions.
Over 4,400 resources from Polona illustrate the Polish Wikipedia and other language versions.
Polona files appear on over 7,500 pages in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including illustrating the article North America.
This has been made possible through the work of Wikimedian-in-residence Wojciech Szczęsny at the National Library as part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration.
As part of the GLAM-Wiki collaboration, the Wikimedian-in-residence adds resources to Wikimedia Commons, uses them to illustrate Wikipedia and Wikidata, creates and develops Wikipedia articles, and enhances Wikidata, thereby increasing the visibility of Polona’s resources online.
You can find the category with over a million Polona resources on Commons here: Images contributed by the National Library in Warsaw
These include illustrations from botanical, zoological, and anatomical atlases, but also countless portraits, maps, and old city illustrations. You can easily find them here: Books in the National Library in Warsaw
Selected scans of materials are uploaded from Polona to Commons (e.g., only pages with illustrations, not whole books), as individual page scans are available in Polona.

Illustrations from French, German, and English fashion magazines, circa 1855
Bolesław Biegas in his studio
Engravings of various animals from "Angenehmer und nützlicher Zeit-Vertreib," 1756
On Rospuda Lake
Atlas of the plant kingdom, 1900
Łowicz cutout, 1909
Polish folk cutouts - Łowicz and Kurpie styles, 1924
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, 1902
Catalog of the Archbishops of Gniezno
Irena Krzywicka