Commons:GLAMwiki Toolset

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Goodbye ceremony for the GLAMwiki Toolset (2022)

The GLAMwiki Toolset has been removed from Commons. Other tools, like Pattypan or OpenRefine, are recommended for batch uploads.

Welcome to...![edit]

Welcome to the GLAMwiki Toolset. Sharing just got a whole lot easier!

The GLAMwiki toolset tried to enable galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) to easily make their digital content accessible to Wikipedia users and all of the world. The tool allowed GLAMs to automatically upload large batches of digital versions of their content to Wikimedia Commons, the online media repository of the Wikimedia movement.

Previously, it was difficult for GLAMs to upload their collections on Wikimedia Commons without direct help from an experienced Wikimedia collaborator. Now, with the GLAMwiki Toolset developed by Europeana, GLAMs can directly upload curated batches of their content using the toolset. Anyone with basic knowledge of dealing with metadata can do the job. No additional technical knowledge is required.

Read the announcements on the Europeana blog and the Wikipedia Signpost

GLAMwiki Toolset
The tool Project history User manual Users & their uploads

Usage so far...

1,289,883 files have been uploaded using the GLAMwiki Toolset over the years

See all the files at Category:GWToolset Batch Upload

By 211 people and organisations (as of May 2017).
27,217 of these images were used in 67,450 Wikipedia articles pages in dozens of languages (as of April 2017)
Combined, those pages were viewed 27,660,448 times in the month of April 2017.

Examples of files already uploaded using the GWT (full list of upload projects)
Eurasian Spoonbill (2011), Stichting Natuurbeelden collection
The White rabbit - from The Nursery Alice (1890), British Library collection
Piazza di Monte Citorio (1980s), Library of Congress collection
Ship salvaging the wreckage of the Tay Bridge (1880), National Library of Scotland collection
Portrait of actor Sawamura Sojuro III in the role of Kakogawa Honzo (1795), Rijksmuseum collection
Broome County Alms House, Binghamton, N.Y. (1876), New York Public Library collection
Couvent des Filles-de-la-Croix (1892), collection of the French Ministry of Culture
Art Blakey at the Umeå jazz festival (1979), Collection of the Swedish National Heritage Board

Instructions[edit]

Flyer illustrating the GLAMwiki Toolset distributed at Wikimania 2014.

To use the GLAMwiki Toolset you will need to prepare, test and upload.
Because of how versatile this tool is, there are several reasonably technical steps that need to be completed to make a successful upload. Because it is so powerful there are also special permissions required.

To prepare:

Create a user account on Wikimedia Commons (this website) and also on Commons Beta. The person using the tool will need to know how your collection is mapped with metadata in order to match it with related content once it is uploaded. They might also like to subscribe to the Wikimedia Commons mailing-list.
Request a "GWToolset userright" on Beta (how?) Once you have a successful test upload there you can then ask for the same user right on Wikimedia Commons itself.
Choose an online multimedia collection that is appropriate for Wikimedia Commons - open licensed (i.e. CC BY-SA, CC BY or Public Domain), open format (JPG, OGG etc), and sufficient metadata preferably in English (need advice on selecting content?)
Create a flat-XML file with all the relevant metadata for your chosen multimedia collection (want help producing this?)
Create Wikimedia Commons Partnership and Institution templates (need advice on templates?)
Investigate the appropriate Categories to add to the files in your upload (Need assistance choosing these?)

To test:

We need to whitelist the domain you wish to upload from at a sysadmin level. You can achieve that by making a request via Phabricator. We generally process these changes soon, however, if you know you will need a whitelist change (for a workshop for example), ask the change at least one week before you need it, and include the deadline in the task, otherwise, we can't guarantee your request will be processed on time. Please document in your request:
1. any attachment to a GLAM institute;
2. the name of any trusted Commons user who endorse the change, if any;
3. links to a relevant image gallery, or 3 independent images (with metadata, no deep link);
4. if there is any emergency, please state so in the description and set the bug priority to high.
Undertake a metadata detection and metadata mapping with the GLAMwiki Toolset (step by step screencast)
Test your work by uploading to Commons Beta and see that it looks correct. On an average, it takes about 4 hours to upload 2000 images

Upload!

For full documentation, read the user-manual.

Once your content is uploaded[edit]

Once your content is uploaded, it is ready for re-use. It would be a good idea to contact a local network of Wikimedians to use your content in Wikipedia articles and in other sister projects. Here you have a list of existing Wikimedia chapters.

The content will be stored in Wikimedia Foundation's servers. Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation that encourages content to be used by anyone in the world while respecting the particular licence of each file. Your content may be used to better illustrate hundreds of articles on Wikipedia, for instance.

Contact[edit]

GWToolset demonstration screencast from the documentation manual

Please contact us if you have any remarks or questions. Join can discuss issues on the commons-l email list, or contact one of the Toolset coordinators:

Anyone on the list of current users of the tool
Or your local chapters representatives
If you a member of the Europeana Network there is specific assistance available for you.

Technical documentation[edit]

As hard as we have tried to make this tool easy to use, its power and flexibility means that it is not a simple 'one click' operation.

Therefore, a manual with documentation and video tutorials has been developed.

You can also view the software extension on MediaWiki.org, as well as its technical architecture and design.

Thanks[edit]

The toolset has been developed in partnership with four national chapters of the Wikimedia movement (Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Nederland, Wikimedia France and Wikimedia CH) and led by Europeana, Europe's digital library, museum and archive. Dan Entous was senior developer the tool.

To read about the development process and see the original project plans, visit GLAMwiki Toolset Project.