In 2015 Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden made a selection of its collections of images and other media available to the public using Wikimedia platforms. A temporary Wikipedian in Residence had been employed for seven months to effect this media donation and to inform staff and external parties about the opportunities Wikipedia offers.
Period: May - November 2015 (uploads: May 2015 - January 2016)
Naturalis has put much effort over the last few years since 2010 into digitising its biological documentation, including some 5 million herbarium sheets and about 3 million other documents of biological and historical import.[1] Naturalis has donated hundreds of thousands of images to Wikimedia in 2015-2016 in this project and intends to continue uploads to Wikimedia Commons.
3585 donated images (1.3% of the total donation) were used in 4814 articles in Wikipedia's in 41 languages and nine other wikimedia websites as of May 24, 2016. Refer to the web counter.
10.5 million (10,483,897) page views of article pages on wikimedia sites containing these images (May 1, 2015 - May 1, 2016). In January 2016 alone there were 1.8 million (1,824,563) page views. Web counter. By March 2019 the number of page views of donated images exceeded 71 million (compare the graph).
46 (non-unique) persons attended Wikipedia meetings, including editathons. Curators with various specialties discussed this project in four meetings with the Wikipedian in Residence. Progress was reported in a meeting with about 40 Naturalis staff members (see Meetings).
Tens (hundreds?) of Wikipedians with diverse biological and other expertise included images from this donation in the Wikipedia pages noted above. On the image database Wikimedia Commons, they improved the categorisation of thousands of donated images, including the proper modern nomenclature of genus and species. Furthermore, Wikipedians made cut out and enhanced versions of Naturalis images. These processes continue as of May 24, 2016.
The Wikipedian in residence collaborates with the Dutch working group Project Nature of the local Dutch Wikimedia chapter. Please send me your remarks, suggestions and criticisms. Hansmuller (talk) 15:19, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This project was made possible by the kind help and advice of numerous Naturalis curators, IT- and other staff, many expert Wikipedians and the Dutch Wikimedia chapter Wikimedia NL.