International Archives Week 2021

International Archives Week 2021

CALL TO IMPROVE THE PRESENCE OF ARCHIVES ON WIKIPEDIA

7 TO 11 JUNE 2021

From Monday 7 to Friday 11 June 2021, the International Council on Archives ICA, will celebrate the third International Archives Week IAW2021 focusing on the theme ‚Empowering Archives‘. ICA invites archival and records management professionals and organizations to join for virtual conversations on the topic of empowering archives.

With this call, Wikimedia Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Association of Swiss Archivists VSA-AAS want to give an impulse to support this initiative, despite the actual circumstances. In consulting the geographical map linked below, you will immediately see, that there is a lot to catch up regarding Wikimedia content on archives in the respective countries.

We thank all the volunteers and authors engaging in our projects and we hope you will continue to make a contribution to free archival knowledge by adding and completing the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikimedia sister projects on topics related to the theme of International Archives Week 2021 ‚EmpoweringArchives‘. In keeping with the International Archives Week and this year's focus, we invite you to help us completing and improving the presence of archives on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

Thank you for participating!

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An initiative by Wikimedia Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Association of Swiss Archivists

«Empowering Archives»

International Archives Week 2021 is about
accountability, collaboration and inclusivity

This year's International Archives Week is about discussing how archives empower accountability and transparency, through access to information for holding governments to account and ensuring that citizens can protect their rights. Or how networking and collaboration enable ICA to empower archives and the profession to help us achieve our goals and objectives for the professions and our institutions through the support of allied professions while helping other sectors and the general public understand what we do. And finally, ICA would like to discuss how to challenge current archival theory and practice to make it more diverse and inclusive of different voices along with different histories.

ICA is inviting the records and archives community to reflect on the following three main topics:

Accountability & Transparency and how archives, archivists and record managers are accountable in their own spaces and are supporting the accountability of other institutions.

Networking & Collaboration and how archives, archivists and record managers are strengthening their network, enabling more collaboration within the sector and other professions, and working on being more collaborative to develop new archival practices and approaches.

Inclusivity & Diversity and how archives are starting to engage in learning and acting on more diverse and inclusive spaces, practices and conversations.

Consult the Geographic Archives Map for linked Wikimedia Content

The following geographic map locates Archives in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, based on Wikidata records. If you want to know which archives already have a Wikipedia article and which do not, as well as the respective quality of the article, you can find out by using the link to the map below. If you are a Wikidata expert, help us to improve and inject additional meta data into Wikidata to complete the information base for archives in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

Have fun exploring!

Archivlandkarte Schweiz, Österreich und Deutschland

How to read the geographic map:

Black symbols: no Wikipedia article
Red symbols: one Wikipedia article
Orange symbols: at least two Wikipedia articles
Green symbols: four Wikipedia articles

How to participate & contribute

Wikipedia Articles

As a beginner or intermediate Wikipedia author you can contribute for example by improving and completing an existing article, inserting appropriate images and image galleries, inserting links to archival collections on webarchives and portals, updating info boxes or inserting Wikidata info boxes into Wikipedia articles. If you are an expert Wikipedia author you might engage in creating a completely new article. You can consult the geographic archives map and explore archives with no article, and write about a cultural institution or translate an existing article in a different language. Please remember, if you want your new article about an archive to be reflected on the geographic map, you have to interlink it in the Wikidata record of the respective cultural institution.

We have set-up an outreach dashboard. If you want to enroll and assign the articles or categories you are working on for International Archives Week please click here. The registration on the dashboard is optional.

Outreach Dashboard

Wikimedia Commons

If you like to work with media files, you might want to upload collections, archives related images and documents to Wikimedia Commons. Please remember that taking onsite photographs need to be compliant with the legal framework when uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Maybe you still have many images, you did not have time to share and upload into Wikimedia Commons. Nevertheless, some institutions have released images collections and documents under a free license the past years. The collections are accessible through their portal or webarchive but are not yet available in Wikimedia Commons or embedded in a Wikipedia article.

Wikidata

If you like to work with meta data, you can help us to complete the geographical visualization on archives in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, linked to Wikimedia content on Wikidata. Every contribution counts.

Links

Wiki Project Archives cantonales vaudoises
Europeana-Sammlungen online Link
UNESCO Digitale Bibliothek - Open-Access-Material für die Forschung Link
Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv Online-Zugang Link
Archivbestand der ETH-Bibliothek Link
e-Helvetica der Schweizerischen Nationalbibliothek Link
Archivdatenbank der Schweizerischen Nationalbibliothek Link
Bilder-Archiv Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde Link
Zugang zu den audiovisuellen Archiven des IKRK Link
Online-Katalog der Schweizerischen Nationalphonothek Link

Contact us!

If you like to contribute to this Wikimedia project, you need support in the activities for International Archives Week, or you want to learn more about the association, contact the respective chapter directly or me in the role of Wikimedia IAW project manager.

Debora Lopomo
GLAM Program & Partnership Manager, Wikimedia Switzerland
(Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums)
debora.lopomo wikimedia.ch

Find the list of contact persons by Wikimedia chapter in the table below:

WMCH	WMAT	WMDE
For voluntary community
DE: ulrich.lantermann wikimedia.ch FR: flor.mechain wikimedia.ch IT: ilario.valdelli wikimedia.ch	verein wikimedia.at	kultur wikimedia.de
For cultural institutions
debora.lopomo wikimedia.ch	raimund.liebert wikimedia.at	holger.plickert wikimedia.de
For communication and press
kerstin.sonnekalb wikimedia.ch	claudia.garad wikimedia.at	alexander.moeller wikimedia.de