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Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge/Get Started

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A guiding path that makes the collaboration among cultural institutions and Wikipedia easier. It has been created for WikiAfrica and gives its contribution to the GLAM project.

Share Your Knowledge   Get Started   Guidelines   Current work   Evaluation in 2012   History  


→WikiAfrica   →GLAM



Why you can share your knowledge


Who can be involved?
Share Your Knowledge is addressed at cultural institutions. Its attention is mainly devoted to non-profit private institutions of any size which either produces or owns cultural content (documents, texts, books, images, videos, collections, monuments, artworks). These institutions could be a foundation, museum, gallery, publisher, festival, biennialle, documentation center, archive, cultural center, cultural and/or voluntary association (NGO, ONLUS, development cooperation institutions).
Share Your Knowledge 2011-2012 is a pilot project over a set time period that is aimed at involving a limited number of selected and invited institutions.
Why should you take part in it?
Each institution has got, produces and commissions cultural content in the form of publications, research, databases, music, artworks, essays, documentation, theater pieces, videos, images, press releases, artists and authors' biographies, didactic material. This content represent one of the most important resources for any cultural institution. By enhancing access to this content, the institution is acting on their mandate and sharing their content to a far wider audience.
What do you have to do?
Before you start
1 - Decide if you would like to share your knowledge
  This can take from 1 minute to 12 weeks depending on the institution structure


  • share the spirit and the aims of Share Your Knowledge
  • adopt Creative Commons "Attribution Share-Alike" free license (CC BY-SA, Wikipedia compatible) on a selection of contents (i.e.: 500 texts, images, videos, documents)
  • aim at involving staff, collaborators, partners and audience in enriching Wikipedia
  • be available to test your own experience
2 - Designate a reference person or coordinator
  1 day


Designate a reference person with an active role in the institution. This person is in charge of following the Share Your Knowledge guided path.
3 - Sign an agreement
  1 hour


The institution sends lettera27 or Wikimedia local chapter or WikiAfrica at the Africa Centre a letter of agreement (example letter in English, in Italian).
Please note: the institution must decide how it wants to collaborate with Wikipedia and with which content.
The time and resources needed to be involved

The path proposed by Share Your Knowledge lasts 1 year.

✔ It takes about 120 hours/3 weeks for the reference person in charge of following the project path. The reference person should know the institution very well and should have an active role in it; he or she can be a volunteer or a salaried person. For those who would like to give their contribution directly to Wikipedia it is necessary to get used to the encyclopedia language and procedures for at least 2 weeks.
✔ The webmaster needs about 3 hours to update the footer of the website in order to add the authorisation to use the documentation (Creative Commons licenses) and to check out the statistics of the various websites at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the project.
✔ The press office needs about 3 hours to send one or two newsletters out about the project and its evolution.
✔ The administrative staff or those who are in charge of contracts and partnerships need about 3 hours to add the licenses details on to the contracts and partnerships.
✔ Optional: an intern, assistant or a Wikipedian in Residence might help the reference person. An intern might decrease the hours of input required from the reference person.
Apart from the amount of hours required from the people involved, no money is needed to carry out Share Your Knowledge.