Triciaburmeister

I am a staff member at the Wikimedia Foundation, but this is my personal user account. I only use it for volunteer activities. All wiki edits I make as part of my job are under my organizational user account(s): User:TBurmeister_(WMF).

Current wiki work

July-August 2022: Facilitating a "How to Edit Wikipedia" peer learning circle at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
August 2022: I'm helping Wikimedians in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and DC to organize a local meetup in Pittsburgh for Wikimania 2022.

Past wiki work

I created the article on wikipedia:Christina Thürmer-Rohr as part of the 2016 Art+Feminism Meetup in Pittsburgh (which I helped organize).

Women of the Whole World and DDR publication copyright

Years ago, I worked in a library, managing periodicals. In the course of my work, I encountered these fabulous publications from the mid-1960s. I took photos / scans of the covers myself. I am now attempting to determine if I can put those images on Commons. This is my journey.

What I want to do:

Add an article for "Women of the Whole World", the publication of the Women's_International_Democratic_Federation (and mentioned in that article: add a link! also, add a link and a page for FR https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9d%C3%A9ration_d%C3%A9mocratique_internationale_des_femmes).
Upload the pictures I took of some of the publication covers from the 1960s to Commons.

My copyright / licensing questions and research:

- Can I put the photos I took of the physical magazine covers on Commons? The issues for which I have photos range from 1960 to 1964 at the latest.
  - Research: woohoo, I might be in luck! All the images I have are from magazines published in or before 1964. So, per Commons:Licensing: "For works first published before 1964, copyright lasts 28 years after publication, and is therefore currently expired unless the owner filed for renewal during the window between 27 and 28 years after publication."
  - Also: these were published in East Berlin, in the former DDR. So even though US copyright law probably doesn't apply...there's not really a government entity that still exists that would have laws governing this copyright...right? This is very fun and complicated.
  - Not helpful: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Soviet_Union
  - Not helpful: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Germany
  - Read sections of https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/index.html as suggested by the aforementioned Germany commons copyright rules page. Didn't get a clear answer there, other than determining that this is probably not considered a "press publication" because it's more of a periodical (academic / artistic).
  - Okay, so after a bunch of online research I still can't find anything (in English) about what happened to DDR copyright law after German reunification. The safest bet would be to assume that the current German rule of author death + 70 years applies, IF these are not actually public domain. I still feel like they might be? So, now I need to figure out how the concept of "author death" applies to an organization, not a person. Before I do that, I'm going to try to find a copy of one of these issues and see if it has any copyright statement in it. Maybe the communist ladies made this content freely available for all time when they published it, out of an act of solidarity? (a girl can dream)
- German National Library record: https://d-nb.info/010611312
- https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/1398843
- https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C3347032
- UN article snapshot from the Wayback Machine
- https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000641475

Random articles to improve

Recreate wiki article about David Throckmorton, this awesome Pittsburgh jazz drummer. Use better sources, like:

Improve Chaff (I can't remember why, but sure)