Wikipedia:GLAM/YMT/4th Month Report

Overview
This seems to have been the month things have really come together. The release of the Middleham Hoard coin images has led to the creation of an excellent Middleham Hoard article which also gained a Did you know? posting on 12 Feb leading to around 6000 views. Additionally, images from the W.A. Ismay Studio Ceramic Collection were uploaded to Commons leading to their use on several articles and the creation of a biography for William Alfred Ismay himself. Further, plans are now underway for a major edit-a-thon on March 16. The primary theme for this are the biographies and achievements of York's 19th and early-20th century luminaries.

Middleham Hoard
The Middleham Hoard images were released last month (see | the third month report) but took a little while to get noticed on Wikipedia. I found that leaving messages on WikiProject pages was less effective than leaving messages on specific articles such as List of hoards in Britain. I began an article for the hoard itself through Articles for Creation to avoid potential CoI and in the hope that the curators themselves might find some time to edit. However, it proved that JohnBod and BabelStone came to the rescue and did a great deal of work to create the article. We each had some issues dealing with the AfC backlog and bureaucracy but another specific request to Shii led to the creation of the article. Subsequently, Babelstone submitted the article for a Did you know? posting on 12 Feb leading to around 6000 views. Attempts were also made to promote the coin images on the talk pages for Hoard, Coin, English Civil War, Counterfeit money, Piracy and Spanish real. I was particularly keen that the coins might be useful on the poorly represented topic of counterfeiting and the popular Piracy article but there has been no response as yet.

W.A. Ismay Studio Ceramic Collection
The enormous collection of Studio pottery collected by Ismay and now held by YMT was subject to a Google Cultural Institute project for which brand new high-quality photographs were taken. Subsequently, I was able to upload these images to Commons: Category:W.A. Ismay Studio Ceramic Collection. These have now been used on the biographical articles for some of the potters, Ismay's article and the main Studio pottery article. The Ismay article was created from scratch by Theroadislong. I hope that I can make accessible some of the research on the collection written by curator Helen Walsh and improve the content in addition to the images presentation.

Edit-a-thon plans
The plans for a major edit-a-thon on March 16 continue. The event has been promoted through a geonotice for UK Wikipedians, the YMT news pages, the University of York's archaeology department mailing list and Twitter. This has led to a small number of early sign ups.

Other plans
I have been invited to give a talk to the Friends of York Art Gallery on February 27th. I have titled this: 'Sharing art in the 21st Century: The opportunities through Wikipedia'. I am hoping that this might draw out more volunteers on fine art/art history and build connections for the future. The online catalogue of YMT's collections is now in a live, internal beta allowing me to begin proposing collections for upload through the GLAMwiki Toolset mass-upload tool. I am also hoping to select other image sets for upload manually such as coins and medals, and some of the Vale of York Hoard in advance of the British Museum Vikings exhibition.