User:John Cummings/Archive/blogpost

Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town - specifically, the Welsh town of Monmouth (Trefynwy). The project aims to cover every single notable place, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible, but with a special focus on Welsh. This is a different scale of wiki-project. The project is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK, Monmouthshire County Council intend to install free town wide wifi for the project.

Monmouthpedia uses 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.

People involved
Monmouthpedia is jointly funded by Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK. There are many people involved, all the local and worldwide contributors, the local museums, Monmouth library, Roger Bamkin, 2 phd students studying it as part of their course, a history degree student on placement with me working at the museum, a steering meeting with council heads of departments, a number of local volunteers helping me with organisation and artwork (including the image at the top of this page by Dilly Boase). Harry Mitchell (HJ Mitchell), (RexxS) and myself have been teaching how to edit Wikipedia and upload images inc foreign languages at two secondary schools. The Wikimedia UK board held their meeting in Monmouth this month on the 21st and 22nd of April which was live streamed. A full list of partners can be found here.

Charles Rolls Challenge
We recently ran the Charles Rolls Challenge, a multilingual competition to reward people writing articles. So far contributors have created over 450 new articles in 25 languages and improved 145 existing articles and over 1000 new images. There have also been 24 Monmouth related articles on Did you Know? We will be starting a new competition shortly.

winning images

Also a special thanks to Llywelyn2000 who wrote 50 articles in Welsh, he chose not to enter the competition. I'm currently working with him on a Welsh Wikimeet and the possibility of making Android available in Welsh, ***QRpedia*** If anyone would be interested in helping with this please get in touch.

Making the content available in the town
We want to integrate this content into people’s everyday experience of the world in a free and easily accessible way, offering visitors a level of information (in their own language) not available in physical signage and allow residents can learn more about the town where they live.

We will be the first town in Wales to have free and open wifi available to everyone. We use multilingual QR codes (pictured), a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. We will have over 1,000 QR codes in Monmouth by our celebration day on the 19th of May. These included:


 * Ceramic plaques(pictured)there will be over 50 around the town. They are made by a local art therapy centre, Swan Court Studio.
 * Fingerpost signs ceramic plaques on pedestrian signage giving them Wikipedia articles, maps and trails
 * Town map signs There are several town maps, there will be QRpedia codes on them linking to articles, maps and trails
 * Shire Hall A local museum and tourist information point, QRpedia codes will be used to give museum visitors and tourists more information
 * Monmouth Museum
 * Monmouth Library The librarian are creating QRpedia codes for the inside cover of books, to give information on the authors
 * Stickers in shop windows qrpedia codes that link to the history of the profession and the goods and services that they sell:

We are also working on grouping the content by people's interest, allowing people to make online maps that can be accessed through QRpedia codes around the town on maps and signposts.

Monmouth Museum
Monmouth Museum has a large and ranging collection including many notable objects.The most important thing is to make intergrating and using Wikipedia within the museum sustainable, the objects on display change over time, it's important to help the museum staff understand WIkipedia and how to create qrpedia codes themselves. The museum curator Andrew Helme (appears in the video at the top of this page) is interested in what Wikipedia can do in terms of making the museum information available to as wide an audience as possible in as many languages, something not possible using traditional labels.

There is a student on placement with me and the museum from the University of Wales, Newport, Roisin Curran who has become effectively the Wikipedian in Residence for the museum, writing specific articles for notable pieces in the collection and upload images from the museum collection.

Shire Hall
Shire Hall is where we often meet including our steering committee meetings, it was where the first meeting was held with Steve Virgin, Roger Bamkin, me and local groups. It has a very small collection, it is the building and the events that took place within it that are important. We are trying to find ways to offer interpretation with a high level of information without impacting the space. It also functions as a tourist information centre, using qrpedia they are able to offer information in many more languages than before. They also have a large store of images and a set of professionally made videos I am working with them to release.

Celebration Day
There will be a celebration day in the town on the 19th of May where we'll:
 * show off what has been done
 * provide Wikipedia drop in sessions to teach people how to use WIkipedia and explain what's happened in Monmouth
 * there will be an exhibition of images uploaded to commons
 * there will be cake and balloons

To find out more and to get involved go to GLAM/MonmouthpediA