The Wikipedia Benefit
There is somewhat of a change of heart going on for museums on having images from their collections on Wikipedia. While some still jealously attempt to protect their objects and images in their collection that are in the public domain, others have begun to realize that there is a “Wikipedia benefit” to their museum.
Where I work, the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), Wikipedia is the top referrer after search engines and internal referrals and is ranked 11th overall over the past year on MHS’ main web site. The same holds true with referrals from images used on Wikipedia from our collections. Wikipedia.org is ranked 9th overall over the past year as a referrer to our visual resources database.
It is important to note that by policy, Wikipedia does not publish original research, material on Wikipedia needs be cited from somewhere else. This is good for the Minnesota Historical Society and other museums and cultural institutions on two levels, first, people are directed from Wikipedia articles to their site from either footnotes or “External links” relating to the article. Secondly, the museum or institution also becomes an authoritative source of that material and thus more relevant. The Minnesota Historical Society’s massive web site has an amazing amount of data on topics relating to Minnesota History, much of it buried, and even if it is accessible mnhs.org may not be the first site folks think of when they want to look up Minnesota topics and people such as F. Melius Christiansen. After Google search Wikipedia has become the place people go to to look up information. Wikipedia may be the first place to go to for information on F. Melius Christiansen but Minnesota Historical Society can be the authoritative word on F. Melius Christiansen. So cool….
The Minnesota Historical Society has gone from watching people add information on Wikipedia to actively adding information, links and images ourselves. It has been baby steps, adding or correcting links from relevant topics to pages on our site like our Finding Aids and also adding, first public domain images of the Governors of Minnesota then later adding non-free (copyright protected) images of Minnesota Governors to Wikipedia under an educational license. We also have been adding original images of objects from our collection to illustrate relevant articles. The M8 Greyhound, The William Crooks, Globe, and oddly enough Vending Machine, are among some of the pages in which we contributed original images.
Wikipedia Loves Art/Museums Love Wikipedia
MHS is not alone in enjoying and understanding “The Wikipedia Benefit”, 15 museums have participated in Wikipedia Loves Art event. Coordinated by the museuo-digerati Brooklyn Museum, Wikipedia Loves Art is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles.
While these institutions are interested making their collections more accessible and getting it where the people are, it doesn’t hurt that it will be items from their collection that will be illustrating articles on Wikipedia. Seeing something online does not necessarily make you want to see it less, it might actually have the opposite effect. It may wind up giving it a somewhat minor celebrity status. Image two people visiting the Brooklyn Museum and saying to each other… “Hey! Isn’t that the painting that illustrates the Oedipus Complex on Wikipedia?” MHS was unable to jump on the Wikipedia Loves Art band wagon at the time but I would love to start an event among historical societies called Wikipedia is History. 🙂
The “M” Word
What is happening here (at least in part) is marketing. Again, many museums working on the web are loath to use the word, however when Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself talks about people taking pictures of art for the Wikipedia Loves Art scavenger hunt and says, “…which of course helps the museum…” he is indirectly talking about the museum marketing itself and its collections through Wikipedia. As mentioned before, one of the problems is not about getting museums to push their content out on the web but rather how to pull people back to both their web site and ultimately the museum itself. Unfortunately if done incorrectly museum work on Wikipedia can ultimately lead to just another cool siloized project that does little to connect users back to the museum.
However, it is important to emphasis a few points here when working on Wikipedia.
1. Be Transparent and Honest
Do not try to hide your intentions. Your IP can be traced. You more likely to get help and understanding if you commit a Wikipedia faux pas if you are up front about your intentions. Trying to hide who you are or mask your intentions will only get you ill will if you are found out and risk bad PR for your organization. BTW: A good rule of thumb is to void editing your own museum’s entry on Wikipedia and then only editing it to correct inaccuracies (ie: hours and location).
2. Be Relevant
Think before you post. As a museum approach Wikipedia as a long term relationship when posting. The entries and information you add is not about a quick release of information. You may have spent a lot of time and money on your shiny new exhibit or program but is it really relevant enough to add on Wikipedia? Probably not. Trying to clumsily and brutishly ram through material that resembles a press kit will only result in a backlash. Also when adding links to the “External links” section only link to your site not if it’s about the topic, but if it adds information to the page.
3. Be Prepared to Lose Control
That is, be prepared give up control. Wikipedia is not your site. You may not be happy if one of your images winds up illustrating an article that your organization is less than thrilled about. Many organizations have decided (or discovered) that the cost of not participating is greater than or offsets the loss of control. Besides most have found out that with the advent of social web they do not have the control over their brand that they once did anyways.
4. Lurk a bit
Do your research upfront. Spend time monitoring pages and edits to those pages. Read the discussion pages of topics and other discussions that go on in Wikipedia. And even with all the lurking be prepared to get flagged and have something deleted. Wikipedia is a complex environment with it’s own rules and regulations. Understand, that while they do want submissions they have guidelines in place for quality control. I have found that if your intentions are well meaning, other users and Wikipedia administrators can be very helpful. If they cannot point you in the right direction to correct an error, will explain why your submission was deleted.
While adding Minnesota Governor images to Wikipedia we had four of them marked for deletion. I found out that I had filled the image template out incorrectly and also while it was possible to use a non-free image it could only be used when no free equivalent was available. It seems since those four ex-governors where still living there was the potential to take a free image of them. So the images were deleted and Wikipedia will have to wait for a free image or until they die. The living governors images were deleted however, I was given guidance on how to fill out the non-free use template correctly so the other images would not get deleted by technicality.
