Queensland content on Wikipedia...State Library trainers visit Miles

On Monday 20th June, Michelle Swales and Troy Keith from the State Library of Queensland arrived in the town of Miles to launch a pilot project initiative between the State Library and Wikimedia. Wikimedia is of course the company responsible for one of the world’s most famous websites, Wikipedia and Wiki Commons.

The aim of the project is to enhance the presence of Queensland related information on Wikipedia through regional training in creating content and building an understanding of how Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons work.

Fourteen people from local public libraries, museums, galleries, historical societies, council workers and local historians where amongst the participants. They where really excited about the opportunities for putting their local history or organisation’s content up on Wikipedia and reaching a world wide audience.

The State Library's Queensland Memory section, which includes the John Oxley Library, is keen to continue developing our relationship with Wikimedia as we have a bilateral agreement wherein any new content and images added to Wikipedia by the public can then be downloaded and added to SLQ’s collection.

The State Library's Resource Management staff are working with Wikipedia so that metadata from Wikipedia/Commons can be directly downloaded into our catalogue when new content is passed on... pretty clever stuff!

The project is also a fantastic way for Queensland Memory to promote the 50,000 images added to Wiki Commons in December. More information on this donation can be found here.

Being one of the world’s most recognised and used websites means content from the John Oxley Library can now reach a new audience with millions of people around the world looking at Wikipeidia articles and using Wiki Commons images daily.

An amazing example of how this resource is linking, engaging and enhancing our collection is one of the images added to Wiki Commons by State Library, a photograph of an aircraft, which was recognised by a Wiki user in Germany who is a plane enthusiast.

Based on the plane’s registration number in the photo he added extra information on what the number meant. The number identified the plane as a surplus WW1 plane. It was then used by QANTAS as part of its first airmail fleet in 1922 and was used on the regular Charleville to Cloncurry route. This info was then downloaded back to SLQ and added and updated the record onto our OneSearch catalogue. Having the images out in the public domain license free means we can encourage people to use our images in different ways, as exemplified in the wierd and wonderful products of Library Hack.