Wikipedia:GLAM/Museo Galileo

WIR Museo Galileo

2016 April – June

	Wikipedia in Italian		Wikimedia Commons
	Wikipedia in English		Wikidata		Wikisource

The Museo Galileo contributes to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects with high-quality contents. A Wikimedia Italia consultant has been working for some month in-house at the museum and remotely in order to support a fruitful collaboration between the Museo Galileo and Wikipedia.

The Wikipedian in Residence made this project start and promoted understanding of the Wikimedia world among museum staff. He was also in charge of organizing resources to be shared with the Wikipedia community and supporting the uploading of contents (images, bibliographical sources, texts, and translations).

What is Museo Galileo

The Museo Galileo is located in Florence owns one of the world’s major collection of scientific instruments, notably the original instruments of Galileo Galilei. The collection includes the rare scientific instruments that belonged to the Medici and Lorraine collections 16th-19th centuries). The museum is housed in the Palazzo Castellani, also known as Castello d’Altafronte, an 11th-century fortress on the right bank of the River Arno. The Museo Galileo library houses about 150,000 books concerning the history of science. The antique book collection consists of nearly 5,000 works and includes the Medici-Lorraine Collection, made of volumes mostly about physics and mathematics which were gathered over the centuries by both Tuscan dynasties.

The collaboration in a nutshell

The figure of the Wikipedian in Residence at the Museo Galileo was established in February 2016, following an agreement between Wikimedia Italy, ICOM Italy and [Museimpresa (press release, Italian only). After a public selection, a consultant has been shortlisted for a two-month work.

Wikimedia Italia members will enjoy free access to the Museo Galileo for a 5-year period starting from February 4, 2016.

Who is working on the project

The 2016 Wikipedian in Residence at the Museo Galileo is Simone Massi ("Archeologo" on the wiki projects). Contact him for any questions.

Museo Galileo

See participants' contributions.

Marco Berni
Elena Della Valle
Elisa Di Renzo
Elena Fani
Alessandra Lenzi
Laura Manetti
Anna Passavanti
Ilaria Poggi
Daniela Pozzi
Camilla Rotoli

Wikimedia Italia

Board of Directors, legal representative
Giuliana Mancini, Director General

What we have done

Training

• May 4, 2016. Introductory workshop: “From wiki to Wikipedia” (Italian only)

• May 11, 2016. Advanced workshop: “No Panic: How to Use Wikipedia”

• June 6, 2016. Training workshop with young researchers in the history of science from the European University Institute in Florence [1]

Editing

The museum staff had already created some dozens of articles in the past, most of them on the protagonists of the history of science. These pages have been checked together with the Wikipedian in Residence in order to find weak points and improve their quality, and correct possible shortcomings or differences from project guidelines as well.

• 50 of 50 pages

Articles

The Museo Galileo made available a series of contents pertinent to instruments, biographies and historical scientific subjects, both in Italian and English, which have been used to create new articles or improve articles already present in Wikipedia.

• 388 articles created/modified (in Italian) • 57 articles created/modified (in English)

Images

A number of images of instruments from the museum collections and portraits of scientists have been uploaded in Wikimedia Commons to be used for illustrating the related articles.

pictures uploaded in Commons Category: Museo Galileo

Other

• Question-and-answer session with Simone Massi on reddit.com, June 15, 2016 (in Italian)

The project goes on

The museum will continue to collaborate with Wikipedia with the help of its own staff as well as the researchers who permanently work with the institution. Moreover, every contribution that Wikipedia users may offer will be appreciated. Main goals of the projects will be the following:

• amplify and improve the articles that are too concise and/or lacking in bibliographic references

• create and translate articles in different languages.