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JISC to fund development of TEXTUS project

February 3, 2012 in News, OKF Projects, Our Work, TEXTUS

The following post is by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

We’re delighted to announce that JISC will be funding the initial development of the TEXTUS platform as part of its Digital Infrastructure Programme.

TEXTUS will be a lightweight, easy-to-use platform that will enable users to read, share and collaborate around public domain texts. It will use tools already developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation such as the Annotator and build on the OKFN humanities projects such as Open Shakespeare.

Goldsmiths University will lead the project with technical development and community work to be undertaken by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Open Philosophy

The six-month JISC funded project will focus on developing a first instance of TEXTUS to be deployed as Open Philosophy on openphilosophy.org. Open Philosophy – which will focus on providing access to and encouraging scholarly collaboration around philosophy texts – will be developed in close consultation with the project’s academic advisory board, students from Goldsmiths University and project partners Oxford and Royal Holloway.

It is one of the main goals of the project to develop a tool that can be used by students and scholars to enrich their teaching and research, so user-centric design principles will be followed throughout to ensure that real researcher needs are addressed appropriately. There is a dedicated Open Philosophy mailing list that will focus on discussions about the content to be made available on openphilosophy.org which you can sign up to here.

Get Involved

Those interested in getting involved should contact sam.leon [at] okfn.org or send us a message on twitter @TEXTUSProject check out the TEXTUS Project website.

Quick links

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by Sam Leon

Annotators of the World Unite!

February 2, 2012 in Annotator

The following post is by Andrew Magliozzi founder of FinalsClub.org and one of the developers working on the Annotator javascript library and the AnnotateIt service.

Scholars, bring us your ancient, worn, and insightful annotations. We have the tools to help you collect and connect your knowledge of Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Eliot and others. Together we can create a comprehensive repository of commentary on the best that has been thought and said.

Embracing a common mission of openness, our source code will always be libre, our standards compliant, and our knowledge free. Organizations from Cambridge, US & UK, California, and Vienna are working together to combine our technologies and innovation to provide you with the ability to annotate and share any text, image, PDF, map, or video online.

We are also on the verge of rereleasing 273 public domain texts with 9000+ annotations from top young scholars at Harvard, Columbia, UChicago and other top institutions. In addition to the web, we also aspire to make our best content available on mobile reading devices, so curious minds everywhere can share a common discourse anytime, anywhere. Because we believe you should always control access to your knowledge, we will ensure your data has simple permissions and measures for portability.

If you are a developer, designer, or scholar, we could use your help to create, curate, and map our global knowledge graph. Together we can transform 21st century scholarship within and without the ivory tower. If you want to get involved, please join the conversation about our software and our scholarship.

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by Sam Leon

Monmouth the Wiki Town

January 27, 2012 in Wikimedia

The following guest post is a guest post by John Cummings, Wikipedian and founder of the Monmouthpedia project.

Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town. The project aims to cover every single notable place, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible. We will use QRpedia codes, a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. QR codes are extremely useful, as physical signs have no way of displaying the same amount of information and in a potentially huge number of languages. We aim to have 1,000 QRpedia codes in Monmouth by April including in the museums. We are going to have a free wifi network throughout the town and tablets in the museums to lower the cost of access to the information.

So far contributors have created 54 new articles and improved 70 articles, we’ve had 6 articles on the Wikipedia English language main page in “Did you Know?”. Contributors are choosing to learn how to edit Wikipedia and to give their time for the combined knowledge of others, I think this demonstrates how much people value free information and it’s benefits. It’s been amazing to teach people simple tools to give a wider reach to the information they have.

I started Monmouthpedia because I wanted everyone to have free and easily available information about the place in which they live. I grew up in Monmouth, I knew enough about the area to make a start by myself and make a plan that other people could see what I was doing and join in and add to and change. Local groups and the councils (Monmouthshire County Council have recently adopted the Open Government License) have been wonderfully supportive and there is a well connected network of people who are willing to help. Wikimedia UK have been very helpful and have put a lot of time and effort into supporting me. I feel as though for the large part I have been pushing against open doors, I’ve had a steady stream of new people to teach Wikipedia editing to since I started.

The project is still very much a work in progress, we are starting to work with schools and other groups, there is such a wide range of opportunities for so many groups of people to be involved, it feels like we’re trying something new every day.

For more info on the project visit monmouthpedia.org, you can Tweet at it on @Monmouthpedia and to get in touch with John via email it’s john.cummings [at] monmouthpedia.org.

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by Sam Leon

Wikipedians in Residence: Two Years of Open Culture

January 27, 2012 in Open GLAM

The following guest post is by Lori Byrd Phillips 2012 US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation. She was the second person to become a Wikipedian in Residence, and has served in that role at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for the past year and a half, where she is now also part time staff. It is cross-posted from openglam.org.

Wikipedians in Residence from left to right: Liam Wyatt, British Museum; Lori Phillips, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis; Benoît Evellin, Wikimédien en résidence au Château de Versailles; Sarah Stierch, The Smithsonian Institution. Photo by Andrew Lih (cc-by-sa 3.0).

It was just under two years ago when Liam Wyatt proposed a concept that seemed so bold, it required the British Museum to run a risk assessment before they’d agree to it. Liam suggested that he serve as the “Wikipedian in Residence,” a role that would allow him to put into practice the idea that cultural institutions should share their knowledge with Wikipedia. Thankfully, the British Museum agreed. That basic premise has turned into a global movement known as GLAM-WIKI (Galleries,

Libraries, Archives, and Museums). Today, the GLAM-WIKI community is made up of Wikimedians from around the world who work to establish models and best practices that help cultural institutions share their resources with Wikimedia.

Prior to Liam’s residency in June 2010, cultural institutions had donated images to Wikimedia Commons, but there had not yet been an institution that committed to establishing a relationship with the Wikimedia community. The concept of building a mutually beneficial cooperation is at the heart of the Wikipedian in Residence scheme. The main role of a resident is to serve as a liaison between the museum and Wikipedia. Projects still include image donations, but now more often focus on staff workshops, outreach events (such as “Backstage Passes”) to connect with local Wikipedians, and on-site events (such as “Edit-a-Thons”) that help get cultural content out of the filing cabinets and into Wikipedia.

Following the British Museum, the Wikipedian in Residence trend began to spread. My residency at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis began in August 2010, followed in early 2011 with the Château de Versailles, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and the Museu Picasso. By May 2011, two more major institutions joined in: the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In July 2011, Daniel Mietchen became the Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science. Working with the Open Knowledge Foundation, this was the first residency to adapt the GLAM model to open science — an exciting advancement of the Wikipedian in Residence concept! Even more residencies began in late 2011, including the Israel Museum, and many are in the works for 2012 and beyond.

I’ve enjoyed watching the evolution of the Wikipedian in Residence concept as it has been implemented in different institutions. Each residency has shown its own strength. At the Derby Museum, Roger Bamkin followed through on an idea to improve the multilingual capabilities of QR codes in exhibits. What resulted was QRpedia, a QR code-generating website that detects the language of the user’s phone and links to the Wikipedia article in that language. QRpedia has now been implemented in museums in the US and Europe and has been nominated for a Smart UK award.

Dominic McDevitt-Parks, the Wikipedian in Residence at the NARA, has broken new ground in facilitating the digitization and transcription of primary source materials through Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. NARA’s cooperation with Wikipedia has been strongly incorporated into their broad strategy of increasing digital accessibility to their holdings and has proven to be a point of pride for the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero.

The concept of the Wikipedian in Residence has come a long way since the British Museum’s big gamble. Now, those who have served as Wikipedians in Residence travel the world presenting projects to increasingly enthusiastic cultural professionals. In April, four residents will come together from three countries to present at the American Association of Museums, the largest and most significant museum conference in the US. I can’t wait to see what incredible residencies and cooperations are around the next corner.

For additional information about Wikipedians in Residence, see the information page on GLAM Outreach or the GLAM Infographic.

Tags: glamwiki, open culture, open heritage No Comments »

by Sam Leon

Open Legislative Data Conference, Paris, July 6th-7th

January 25, 2012 in Events

The following guest post is from Regards Citoyens, a French organisation that promotes open data.

As part of The Law Factory project we are running an international conference for hacktivists and academics working on parliamentary monitoring and legislative studies. The conference will take place on the the 6th and 7th of July in Paris.

The conference will be held in English to ensure maximum participation from communities all over the world. At the event, a team from the project we have been working on with SciencesPo will unveil the first prototype of our legislative evolution monitoring tool.

Participants are welcome to give a 15 minute presentation or 5 minute lightning talk. Submissions should be made online before 1^st April.

More details online on The Law Factory’s website!

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by Sam Leon

A Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online

January 25, 2012 in Public Domain

The following is a post by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator for The Public Domain Review and other Open Knowledge Foundation projects. It is cross-posted from the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Public Domain Working Group Blog.

At The Public Domain Review we’re always scouring the internet for public domain gems. It’s simply incredible how much of our shared cultural heritage is now available for free online. But with so much content out there and with so many different digital collections to choose from it can often be difficult to know where to start looking for interesting and curious works. On top of this, it can often be difficult to understand what you’re allowed to do with a given work and what the license that is applied to it actually means.

It was because of these difficulties that we decided to write a Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online. In the guide you’ll find information on how to collect leads, an overview of the main online public domain collections (e.g. Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive & Wikisource) as well as some basic legal information about licensing and the public domain.

Happy exploring! If you come across something that you think could be featured on The Public Domain Review give me a shout at sam.leon [at] publicdomainreview [dot] org.

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by Sam Leon

Public Domain Review Posters

January 9, 2012 in Public Domain, Uncategorized

The following guest post is by Adam Green, editor of The Public Domain Review.

It’s been a year since the launch of The Public Domain Review and we’ve now featured over 30 articles from prominent artists and scholars and displayed hundreds of curious, freely downloadable public domain delights. We’ve had contributions from the historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsely, the writer Andrew McConnel Stott, and, lined up for later this month, a piece from the novelist and 2011 Man Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes.

It was always our mission to demonstrate the value of the public domain to as large an audience as possible, and in 2012 we want even more people to enjoy what The Public Domain Review has to offer, and join in the process of sourcing and publishing interesting public domain material for the world to enjoy.

So, in celebration of our first birthday, and to help spread the good word we’ve created a set of Public Domain Review posters that are available in both US letter and A4. Please do post these up wherever you think there might be interest and do let us know where you’ve put them up, so we can track the interest they generate. Posters have already started to go up in libraries, departments and student unions around the University of London, but we want to see them up in universities and libraries in many other cities for the public domain is of value to society the world over!

Download a Public Domain Review poster

Tags: poster, public domain review No Comments »

by Sam Leon

Season’s Greetings from the Open Knowledge Foundation

December 24, 2011 in Musings

‘Tis the season to be jolly. This year when preparing your Christmas feast why not take some inspiration from Mrs Beeton and her legendary 1861 Book of Household Management…

Words of wisdom from Mrs Beeton…

“In December, the principal household duty lies in preparing for the creature comforts of those near and dear to us, so as to meet Old Christ-mas with a happy face, a contented mind, and a full larder. And in stoning plums, washing currants, cutting peel, beating eggs, and mixing a pudding, a housewife is not unworthily greeting the season of good will. “

Poultry

“The cost of poultry varies considerably, being affected both by theseason of the year and the district in which it is purchased. It is well to remember that poultry almost invariably rises in price at Christmas, and also tends to be expensive when no game is on the market. These considerations borne in mind, the table below will give a reliable average of prices.”

“Fattening Turkeys for the Table. Turkeys grow very slowly ; there-fore, the earlier they are hatched the better when it is necessary that they should attain their full growth by Christmas.”

Boar’s Head

“In ancient times the boar’s head formed the most important dish, and on Christmas Day was invariably the first placed upon the table, its entrance into the hall being preceded by a body of servitors, a flourish of trumpets, and other marks of distinction. The dish itself was borne by the individual next in rank to the lord of the feast. The custom of serving a boar’s head on a silver platter on Christmas Day is still observed at some colleges and Inns of Court. So highly was the grizzly boar’s head regarded in the Middle Ages that it passed into the cognizance of some of the noblest families in the realm ; thus it was not only the crest of the Nevilles and Warwicks with their collateral houses, but it was the cognizance of Richard III …”

Christmas Pudding

And if none of that takes your fancy – shake it up a little…

All images and text are from Mrs Beeton’s Household Management which is in the public domain and the full text of which is available online at the Internet Archive.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has been involved in and supported the Open Knowledge Foundation this year. It’s been a great year in the open data space, so Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. See you back here in 2012…

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by Sam Leon

“Yes We Scan”

December 23, 2011 in WG Open Government Data

Take a look at the campaign being run by Carl Malamud and John Podesta called “Yes We Scan”. It’s an effort to encourage the US government to make plans to digitize the contents of all national libraries including the Library of Congress. In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, John Podesta and Carl Malamud point to the economic, scientific and social benefits that would arise from a large scale digitization of America’s cultural riches currently held in the vaults of various national institutions.

With reference to Thomas Jefferson’s decision to donate his library to the government of the United States, the letter calls on the present administration to use the power of the internet to realise Jefferson’s vision of government as an agency that encourages the wide diffusion of knowledge for the benefit of society:

We ask your help to achieve this 21st century dream, making the vast resources of our federal government available to all on the global Internet, making access to knowledge a right for all Americans and a defining contribution for our future.

The letter directs you to a corresponding e-petition that can be viewed and signed here.

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by Sam Leon

Opening up Domesday Book

December 19, 2011 in Public Domain

The following guest post is by Anna Powell-Smith from the Open Domesday project. Anna is a member of our brand new Working Group on Open Humanities.

Domesday Book might be one of the most famous government datasets ever created. Which makes it all the stranger that it’s not freely available online – at the National Archives, you have to pay £2 per page to download copies of the text.

Domesday is pretty much unique. It records the ownership of almost every acre of land in England in 1066 and 1086 – a feat not repeated in modern times. It records almost every household. It records the industrial resources of an entire nation, from castles to mills to oxen.

As an event, held in the traumatic aftermath of the Norman conquest, the Domesday inquest scarred itself deeply into the mindset of the nation – and one historian wrote that on his deathbed, William the Conqueror regretted the violence required to complete it. As a historical dataset, it is invaluable and fascinating.

In my spare time, I’ve been working on making Domesday Book available online at Open Domesday. In this, I’ve been greatly aided by the distinguished Domesday scholar Professor John Palmer, and his geocoded dataset of settlements and people in Domesday, created with AHRC funding in the 1990s.

I’m very happy to announce that we’re now able to make full-page, high-resolution images of the Domesday folios available under CC-BY-SA. You can browse or download the folios en masse at the Internet Archive (recommended), or page-by-page at Open Domesday.

I’ve also been working on a RESTful API to Domesday Book, to accompany the release of the folios. Our API supports geographic queries, and returns the economic and social statistics for each settlement in Domesday – from the number of households to (where listed) the number of pigs, sheep and oxen.

As an example, here is the folio entry for Marsh Gibbon in Buckinghamshire, still a thriving village today:

Marsh Gibbon in Domesday Book

Domesday is not often descriptive, but this entry gives us a glimpse of the state of the English population. The entry tells us that Marsh Gibbon held 11 households, including 3 slaves, and it has woodland on which the locals paid a tax of 30 pigs. The owner in 1066 was one Aelric, and he still lives there “harshly and wretchedly”.

There are entries like this for nearly 15,000 places. We hope that this data release will lead to some interesting new applications (may a thousand iPad apps bloom) and research – like this population heatmap of Domesday England, created from Professor Palmer’s raw data by Andrew Bevan at University College London:

Population heatmap of Domesday England

To end on a downbeat note, it’s worrying that among historic texts, Domesday may become the exception, rather than the rule, by being available under an open licence. The only reason we are able to make the folios available at all is that Professor Palmer took his own images of the Ordnance Survey’s photozincographic copies some years ago, and has kindly agreed to release them for the benefit of others.

In particular, although the British Library has teamed up with Google to make thousands of historic texts available online, it seems the digitised copies will not be truly open, as Glyn Moody has warned.

But enough grumbling – I hope you enjoy the Domesday data. If nothing else, it’s something to show elderly relatives over Christmas! Please contact me with comments.

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