CEE/Newsletter/May 2018/Contents/Macedonia report

▲
Contents

Macedonia report: Field work of expeditions & Final editing class on the education program in "Krume Kepeski" Primary school, and GLAM activities

Spring Agroexpedition in Sirkovo & Wikiexpedition in Pijanec region

By Македонец

Mario Šarevski with the farmer Vele Kocev on a tractor during the Agroexpedition in Sirkovo

On 4^th of May, with the visit of the crops in the village of Sirkovo in the Vardar valley of the central part of Macedonia, we have officially started the Agroexpeditions for this year. With this visit, we aimed to photographed and collect information about the most cultivated agricultural crops in this region as well as those with a long historical tradition and the newly sown crops. Primarily, we had a focus on the Papaver somniferum, commonly known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, which has a very long historical tradition of cultivating in Macedonia as well as it is one with the highest quality of units of morphine content in the world. Additionally, we photographed seedlings of vegetables, orchards of cherries, peaches, apricots, pears and blooming vegetable crops in this period. Agroexpeditions will continue throughout the spring, summer and early autumn with main focus of the most authentic agricultural crops and seeds of Macedonia.

Group photography of the members of the Wikiexpedition in Pijanec

This expedition in Pijanec region was supposed to be held at the end of 2017, but for many reasons it was postponed to 2018. We later said it was the first one this year and we planned it for the weekend around Easter, but because of the bad weather conditions, the expedition was not held again. However, the team was determined to go and conduct the expedition, although the weather was variable throughout the weekend. Thus, with a one-month old list of villages to be explored, with a sleeping reservation, on Friday afternoon (on May 11th) the team headed towards Delcevo in the easternmost part of Macedonia. In addition to the usual members, Toni Ristovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Nino Bogdanovski, this time a new member joined the expedition and that is our photographer, Elena Markova (Serene Survival). In two days were visited 16 villages including Trstija which according to the decision of the Ministry of Local Self Government in 2014 is one of the newest and most recently recognized villages. Within this Wikiexpedition were also explored the oldest church in the region dating back from the Medieval times, the Memorial house of the 19th century's Razlovci uprising and several other cultural-historical landmarks.

Final editing class at "Krume Kepeski" Primary School

By Македонец

On 23^rd of May, we realized our second visit of the "Krume Kepeski" Primary school where we held the final editing class with the students of the 9^th (final) grade. Considering the fact that this is the first time ever to conduct the education program in the upper grades of a primary school we had considerable results and observations regarding the outcome of the entire work done within the project. The project which provisionally (and colloquially) was named "Wikipedia in elementary schools" was attended by students who attend the classes of the optional subject "Study of the homeland" whereby with their research enriched or created new articles on Wikipedia on Macedonian Language. After the introductory lecture about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, held in February, some of the students created accounts and tried to edit on Wikipedia but due to the lack of knowledge and instruction their work remained unpublished. On this final editing class, in a period of just around one hour we succeeded with 10 students to create 8 new articles: 7 articles for rivers in Macedonia, 1 article for a cave in Skopje region with an image taken and uploaded on the Wikimedia Commons by the student and 1 improved article about a village in Western Macedonia done by a schoolgirl who carried a written text on paper for the village of Zerkle, which was a task for her homework on the subject "Study of the homeland". Due to the limited possibilities of only 5 registered user accounts from one IP address and the fact that there was no internet in the school: from our mobile router we created 5 user accounts with students, and another 5 on the internet from a mobile device shared by the teacher Slobodan Trajkovski. Considering all the work done and its outcome, we will closely observe in the summer period and made a new plan in order to improve this project in the future.

GLAM activities

By Violetova

In the first four months of 2018, we have four new agreements signed with GLAM institutions in the Republic of Macedonia: with the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje, with the State Archives in the Republic of Macedonia, with the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje, and with the Institute of National History, for collaboration this year. As a result of GLAM Macedonia members according to those agreements, 250 new articles were created, 104 existing articles were improved, 200 references were added and 25 files were uploaded.

The focus of interest in the first four months were the themes of the World War I and World War II, special the activities of the partisans in Macedonia.

Wiki Tour in the City Library

By Violetova

On 4th of June 2018 we held Wiki Tour in the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. This is due to good collaboration between GLAM Macedonia and the City Library. The Wiki Tour was organized by Wikipedian in Residence in the Library. Wiki Club members from the secondary school in Dracevo were participants on the Wiki Tour. They were introduced to the library's facilities, to the ways on how to use the professional literature, as well as to the reading rooms and attractive programs organized by the Library. The Wikipedians were allowed to see the bookbinder room, where many of the used books are replenished. А special interest aroused the meeting with the employees in the periodical department.

The Wikipedians were introduced to the rich collection of daily, weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines. They were introduced with the first issues of the newspapers published on the territory of Macedonia. Motivated by detailed explanations from their host on the meeting, Valentina Malic-Andonovska, the Wikipedians offered a new type of cooperation: searching for texts in the magazines and newspapers, and to create articles on Macedonian Wikipedia out of the texts. The library also showed interest in such future cooperation.