Open Jordanian Heritage

In this initiative, we aim to increase the visibility of Jordanian cultural heritage on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. At present, information about Jordanian archeological sites and cultural heritage does not exist online, or is very difficult to access. This project is a collaboration between Wikimedians of the Levant, the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) and the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR).

Scope

We have started reaching out to local research institutes that house information about Jordanian cultural heritage, with the goal of partnering with them. These partnerships are flexible and highly dependent on the other party's terms, but in general we are seeking:

donations of images and metadata;
access to resources such as books and academic research;
participation in Wikipedia edit-a-thons;
to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects among the archaeological research community in Jordan.

Projects

Qasr Al-Kharanah, a famous Umayyad desert castle. CC-BY-SA 4.0, by Bashar Tabbah.

Edit-a-thon at ACOR

7 October 2019: Was hosted by ACOR and in partnership with several other organizations with similar interests. Participants were briefly trained on how to edit Wikipedia, and were asked to choose from a list of about 200 important topics about archaeology in Jordan. You can find the event on the outreach dashboard. The results included 13 articles in Arabic and English contributed by 45 volunteers. Page views exceeded 35,000.
1 February 2020: Hosted again by ACOR and facilitated by Raya Sharabin from Josa/Wikimedia Levant. The even included a brief training workshop followed by a Wikipedia editing session. The event has produced around a dozen articles and almost 5,000 words. Almost two dozen people were trained, 25-50% of which were ably to successfully create a Wikipedia page. A valuable output was building great connections with the academic archaeological community in Jordan. A professor even invited Wikimedia Levant to launch an Education Program at a major national university.

Photo Donation

On 7 October 2019, the Jordanian photographer Bashar Tabbah has kindly donated +250 photos for over a hundred heritage sites around Jordan from his personal collection. The invaluable collection is available on commons.
Since late 2018, a donation is being discussed with ACOR Archive, a rich collection of over 30,000 photos of valuable sites in Jordan.

#1Lib1Ref

Planning!

Wikipedian in Residence

Since early February 2020, ACOR has recruited two volunteer, part-time Wikipedians in Residence: Neal and Areen.

That's the first time a Wikimedian in Residence program has been implemented in Jordan. The two part-time volunteers have been greatly contributing to the Open Jordanian Heritage Project and are exploring new opportunities and events to promote participation.

Network of partners

American Centre for Oriental Research
Photographer Bashar Tabbah

Links

Dashboard

Campaign dashboard linking all events

Wikimedia Commons

Project page
Category page (all media files are uploaded here)

Facebook Group

Open Jordanian Heritage Facebeook Group

List

Main article: Open Jordanian Heritag/Editathon