GLAM/Newsletter/March 2026/Contents/Germany report - Outreach Wiki
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GLAM
March 2026
Contents
This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue III, March 2026
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Single page version
Germany report
Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki
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By
Wuselig
A little background on the KuWiki Working Group
The full name is
kuwiki.AG Kunstwissenschaften + Wikipedia.
There is an English Language page that will give you some background:
kuwiki.Working Group Art History + Wikipedia
Some members of the group at a bi-monthly video-exchange
For me as an art loving Wikipedian, without an academic background in Art History the unique feature of our group is the eye-level exchange between experts and volunteers. The initial members were students and PhD students who wanted to introduce the tools of our Wikiverse into academia, but also improve the quality of the depiction of art and art-history in Wikipedia with the fruits of their studies. In these last five years kuwiki.AG has brought Wikipedia and its sister Projects behind the ivy covered walls. In addition to the chapter coordinated
GLAM-activities
where we largely approach GLAM-institutions from our side (outreach), the members of the kuwiki.AG are working from within their various institutions, whether as students, staff, emeriti, to amateur/dilettants, like I, but always in the role of a volunteer Wikipedian. Not embedded like a Wikipedian in Residence, nor in the role as a payed editor.
The working group gets together in bi-monthly online-meetings to coordinate their activities.
kuwiki's activities
Poster Session at Wikimania
The initial and still defining project was the
Living handbook
Vademecum
to familiarize Wikimedians with the concepts of Art History and Art Historians with the concepts of Wikipedia when writing articles about art-related topics.
Various topics are picked up, presented, discussed, explained in an open to all interested parties on-line forum called
tips & tools
on an irregular, but frequent basis on Thursday nights.
kuwiki presents their work at various congresses hosted by arthistorical societies like the "
deutscher verband für Kunstgeschichte
", at the "Tag der Provenienzforschung", or "Kongress für Kunstgeschichte". But also at WikiCons and Wikimanias.
But it also organizes own congresses, like
Provenance loves Wiki
in 2024, where the focus was on
Provenance
Research and whether Wikidata is a suitable and persistent tool for mapping ownership of artwork.
Collections, Archives & Research Data
in 2025 focused on how Wikidata and research data from various institutions could be reconciled. This year's
Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki
put into focus how especially museums could utilize the potentials of the different Wikimedia projects.
Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki - Cologne, March 27-29 2026
Interior of the Schnütgen Museum
A presentation at the conference
The meeting at
Museum Schnütgen
was organized by kuwiki in collaboration with the museum and with financial and logistical support by Wikimedia Germany (WMDE).
On Friday afternoon we started with an introduction to the
360° Tour of the Museum Schnütgen
. And how the museum is planning to further enhance this with explanatory links to the exhibitions.
Next a project was introduced that is trying to map
Early Modern Hospitals in European Cities
An example of the organization of
a local edit-a-thon
at a local museum with a local community to enhance the visibility of women artists in this institution was presented, as well. Whereas this might not be new to our community of Wikimedians, the audience of this conference reaches beyond our community.
ECHOLOT
was introduced next. A project that aims to reconcile various cultural databases with the Wikimedia Ecosystem.
11th century door of
St. Maria im Kapitol
A choice of various guided tours through the museum and an adjacent church on Saturday morning helped to get the participants get into conference-mode again.
The Museum Schnütgen presented
their digitized inventory books
, which are archived in the
Heidelberg Accssion Index (HAI)
The
Prometheus-Bildarchiv
is just as old as Wikipedia. It has 4.150.000 images of art, culture and history from 136 databases.
Wikipedia:Museen BW
was an initiative of the Baden-Württemberg official coordinating organization for museums and the Wikipedia Community to built 1:1 partnerships between Wikipedians and local museums to bring their content into the Wikipedia projects.
The
LVR Industrial Museum
which unites the industrial museums in the Rhineland reported on their outlooks and referred to
best practice experiences with Wikipedians
in the past.
A Wikipedian's rabbit hole project about how a side-remark in a book by a local historian inspired a Wikipedian to follow through. He had written about a temporary art-depot on the
Hohenzollern Castle
during WW II to safeguard artworks from Cologne museums, among them the Schnütgen Museum. The remark was, if it wouldn't be possible to recreate this collection, if only just virtually, and the Wikipedian said, "
can try
“.
A follow up on last years
Bringing together Collection Data and Wikidata via AI
followed.
The following presentation focused on the intercultural interpretation of descriptions on Wikidata. Are we really talking about the same thing (item) when we see it translated in other languages? But this takes on an even graver dimension if we uncritically adopt phrases and terms from historical data that was put down reflecting the biases of the creators. A "transfer" of an object could be a voluntary, gift, a sale, but also been part of an extortion process, robbery, or loot. The latter of course almost always put down in the more euphemistic terms. One of the projects tackling this problem is
Wikidata:WikiProject TheRoK
The project
Gotha transdigital
couldn't be presented in person. Since the end of 2024 there are growing efforts to bring the results of these digitization efforts
into the Wikipedia projects
to enhance their visibility and reuse.
usefulQueries
was introduced as a new tool to foster art historical approaches to Wikidata in the future.
Saturday ended with traditional local Kölsch food and nice talks, sponsored by WMDE, but because of their sponsoring restrictions the
Kölsch
tap had to be taken individually.
Sorting the bar-camp sessions
Sunday morning was taken up with two 60-minutes bar-camp sessions where the lessons learned in the last two days were taken to the practical tests and potential applications by the participants.
Follow the
Documentation Page of the Conference
as more and more of the presentations and results will appear.
Just around the corner
Le donne di Villa Massimo
(April 10 - 12, 2026) at the
Villa Massimo
in Rome and hybrid.
Previous
"Germany report"
In this issue
March 2026
From the team
Albania report
Aruba report
Bolivia report
Brazil report
Colombia report
Czech Republic report
Germany report
India report
Italy report
New Zealand report
North Macedonia report
Portugal report
Serbia report
Sweden report
Switzerland report
UK report
Ukraine report
USA report
Biodiversity Heritage Library report
AvoinGLAM report
Memory of the World report
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