Presentation by Mathias Schindler at GLAM-WIKI. http://glam.wikimedia.org.au

1. The anatomy of a 100,000 image cooperation
German Federal Archives,
Wikipedia and the greater picture
Mathias Schindler
Wikimedia Germany e.V.
GLAM-Wiki
August 6th, 2009 Australian War Memorial Canberra

2. Wikimedia Germany
http://www.wikimedia.de
• Registered Association under German Civil Law
• Founded in 2004
• Approved as a charitable organisation
• Money comes almost exclusively from donations
• Does not run the German language Wikipedia
• 8 full time employees, 2 student trainees
• http://www.wikimedia.de

3. Bundesarchiv
http://www.bundesarchiv.de
• higher federal authority
• Purpose: to permanently collect and keep
archive material and to make it usable for
scientific purposesI
• Operating under the Federal Archive Act of
1988
• Currently owns about 10 million images, many
of them not yet digitalized

4. Cooperation
• In 2007, the Bundesarchiv started its online
image repository
• It was possible to look at thumbnails,
everything else was to be paid for
• No freely licensed material
• So we wrote a friendly email...
• 12 months of negotiation later, a contract
between the Bundesarchiv and Wikimedia
Germany was signed

5. Terms of the Agreement
• The Bundesarchiv is providing Wikimedia with
images under Creative Commons (by-sa)
• The images are usually scaled down
• The minimum size is currently 800px on the
larger side
• Wikimedia in return is going to help match
person authority file records between
– Wikipedia
– Bundesarchiv
– German National Library (PND)

6. Status
• Matching status completed after 3 months
• Feedback from the Wikipedia community was
extremely positive
• Images were integrated into Wikipedia almost
instantly
• Limitation to 800px is currently considered to
be acceptable
• Feedback to the Bundesarchive was positive
as well, their traffic is now at all-time highs

7. Feedback

8. Matching Authority File Records

9. Matching Authority File Records

10. Matching Authority File Records

11. Matching Authority File Records

12. Matching Authority File Records

13. Wikipedia as a starting point

14. Referencing the Source

15. German National Library

16. VIAF.org

17. A network of authority

18. Bi-directional linking

19. Bi-directional linking

20. Ongoing Efforts
• We are looking for more archives who are
willing to enter such a cooperation
• We are also trying to get access to
bibliographic databases and authority files to
improve our ability for these matching
processes
• On March 31st, we signed a new cooperation
agreement with the State and University
Library of Saxony with similar parameters
• In the very long run, we anticipate this model
to be attractive even for more commercially
oriented image archives

21. Thank you
Mathias Schindler
Wikimedia Deutschland
mathias.schindler@wikimedia.de