Grants:IdeaLab/The Global Nursery Rhyme Archive

The Global Nursery Rhyme Archive

Nursery rhymes, songs and finger play are an important part of pre-school education and human culture, but there are very few openly licensed videos of them on commons. In fact, there is no vocals or video of "the alphabet song," one of the most well known children's songs in English!

These nursery rhymes often have accompanied actions, and sometimes are sung. For these rhymes and songs, it is difficult to get across how to do them with text only, so video is an ideal medium.

They are also, although not always, in the public domain, so putting them on commons is usually not a problem. Songs still under copyright will not be added.

idea creator• Mvolz

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created on17:55, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

There are almost no nursery rhyme videos on Wikipedia; those that exist are mostly made by me and of poor quality.

What is your solution?

To record parents, teachers, and librarians performing these rhymes, songs and games.

Unfortunately, I am not a videographer, and I do not currently have access to my own recording equipment. I would need to either rent or buy the equipment or hire a videographer for this (or find an interested Wikimedian who could volunteer their time or equipment!)

Project goals

I would like near complete coverage of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nursery_rhymes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_playground_songs

Ideally in both English and American accents, as many English people prefer to see videos in English accents.

I would also like to cover non-English songs. Where I live has an extensive international community and I would like to record non-English speakers performing traditional nursery rhymes and songs.

Get Involved

About the idea creator

As a first pass, I have created these videos: c:Category:Nursery_Rhyme_Videos_by_Mvolz. Previously, there was only one other nursery video on commons (from YouTube). They are currently being used on en Wikipedia articles such as w:Round_and_Round_the_Garden.

However, there are some problems with these videos in their current iteration:

The videos are of poor visual and audio quality as they are recorded with my built-in laptop audio webcam.
I have an American accent and am mostly recording English nursery rhymes as I am an American living in England.
I am just a parent, not a professional singer.

Participants

Especially needed are people who are videographers living in the environs of Oxford, UK that could help videotape volunteer singers,

OR people who would like to participate by using their own equipment in their own region and finding their own people to videotape!

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