In an effort to improve fashion knowledge on the web, Sound & Vision's R&D team and Europeana Fashion organized a series of edit-a-thons with Wikimedia volunteers and fashion institutions around Europe. The experience and knowledge gained from these events are now compiled in one handbook, The Europeana Fashion Edit-a-thon Handbook for GLAMs.
Fashion and History
Fashion is undoubtedly a significant cultural medium. Whether we realise it or not, the clothes we choose to wear every day have historical roots and contemporary meaning. The blue jean, the t-shirt, the sneaker or a shirt with a button down collar all have an interesting history, which most of us seldom consider.
If someone did want to learn about fashion history, their first stop would most likely be Wikipedia. As fashion is underrepresented on the online encyclopedia, however, they might be let down.
Improving Fashion Knowledge
Europeana Fashion aims not only to gather hundreds of thousands of digitised fashion objects, but also to increase the amount of fashion knowledge on the web and make it more visible. This we try to accomplish through setting up Wikipedia edit-a-thons.
An edit-a-thon is a set time when people get together and edit Wikipedia, usually focusing on a specific topic. Partnering with Wikimedia and having edit-a-thons benefits all parties involved:
- They help spread the word about the work Europeana Fashion is doing;
- They improve public knowledge about fashion history on Wikipedia;
- They provide contextualization to the beautiful materials Europeana Fashion puts online;
- They connect different communities, bring them together around a shared passion and allow professionals in the field a compelling networking activity;
- They stimulate participating partners to reflect on the ways they make access to their collections available.
The Handbook
These benefits, along with guidelines and tips on how to organise an edit-a-thon, are listed in the handbook. Loads of experiences, expertise, and research made this handbook possible. So far Europeana Fashion has coordinated edit-a-thons at institutions in Israel, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Sweden and Italy. Members from these participating institutions, along with Wikimedians from across Europe, assisted and reviewed the work done by the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, who are in charge of Europeana Fashion’s collaboration with Wikimedia.
In the handbook, any GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum) can find all the basics to hosting an edit-a-thon, including an overview of Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Wikimedians, ways to ensure a successful edit-a-thon, how to measure success, tips for getting content on Wikimedia, event promotion, as well as a suggested day programme, a 3 month preparation agenda, and an abundance of relevant links.
Wikimedia and GLAMs
This handbook comes at a crucial time for GLAMs and Wikimedia. Recently there has been a large surge of institutions that are looking to become more open and make their collections more accessible to the public online.
The Handbook is not Europeana’s first collaboration with Wikimedia. There is also the GLAMwiki Toolset Project which strives to make it easier for institutions to batch upload content to Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia is perhaps the most widely known organizations in the world that strives to make information more “open”. In the words of founder Jimmy Wales, “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge”. Europeana Fashion shares this goal with a specific focus on fashion objects making Europeana Fashion the perfect intermediary between fashion institutions and Wikimedia, two bodies that rarely meet.
The edit-a-thons offer fashion institutions the opportunity to get comfortable working with Wikimedians and vice-versa, to learn about opening up their collections and to give the public a participatory opportunity making cultural heritage more inclusive and raise “open” awareness.
This handbook will help any GLAM, not just fashion institutions, organise a successful edit-a-thon and make Wikipedia richer. We can hope that by increasing the publicity of these edit-a-thons more GLAMs will follow suit, causing a domino effect. You can download it here!
