What's on Wikipedia?

Kwong Sue Duk on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwong_Sue_Duk

Wikipedia● Wikipedia: http://wikipedia.org● Kwong Sue Duk on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwong_Sue_Duk

For any exhibition, there is a lot of background work that goes on beforehand. Research, preparation and planning.

A good place to start is a review of what is on Wikipedia. Aim to add something that isn't already covered.

For me, Wikipedia is proof that there are more good people in the world than bad people. Anyone can put whatever they like onto the site, and yet it doesn't descend into chaos. Over time, it gets bigger and the quality remains quite acceptable.

Here is the first part of the Wikipedia entry for Kwong Sue Duk, as it appeared at 8:30 pm, 8 February 2012. It isn't perfect, and could use a good edit.

Look at the revisions the starting version from 17 April 2006. (To my surprise, I created this article. I had forgotten until I checked it for this talk.) In between times, about 25 people have worked on it, adding a picture, improving the language and structure, fixing the links and adding categories. It hasn't changed that much, but it has moved forwards, not backwards. In 2007 it was lightly vandalised for four days before the damage was undone. Apart from that, every change has sought to improve the article.

The key thing about Wikipedia is that it is enormously popular. If your Web site or book on Kwong Sue Duk is referenced in the Kwong Sue Duk article on Wikipedia, then that means that a lot more people have access to your information. It is a great way to make the world a better place, in a way that will be seen by a lot of people.

Your local encyclopaedia

Samuel Henry Drury on Now & Then Mallala: http://mallala.nowandthen.net.au/index.php?title=Samuel_Henry_Drury

Now & Then

● Now & Then: http://nowandthen.net.au● Now & Then Mallala: http://mallala.nowandthen.net.au● Samuel Henry Drury on Now & Then Mallala:

http://mallala.nowandthen.net.au/index.php?title=Samuel_Henry_Drury

If you are a community museum or your focus is a local area, you can go one better – you can build your own Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia for your local community.

NowandThen.net is a project that allows any Australian community to build their own online encyclopaedia, using the same technology as Wikipedia.

Someone like Samuel Henry Drury, who decided to stay in Mallala in 1875 while his three mates went to the diggings in Queensland, would never be deemed significant enough for an entry in Wikipedia. But in the Mallala community encyclopaedia, there is a space for people like that.

NowandThen.net was built some years ago with Mallala, South Australia as the first example community. Since then, it has just sat there, quietly being added to and maintained by the local museum. It is a great opportunity for a community museum to draw on volunteer, community and education resources to build a great resource about their own place. It will need some work, and some training, and possibly a little grant, but the idea of building your own local encyclopaedia is a pretty exciting one, I think.

If you are interested, talk to me afterwards, or just write to Darren Peacock at justask@sweet.net.au.

Collect data together

Kwong Sue Duk on CHIA, with Zotero open: https://www.zotero.org/groups/kwong_sue_duk

Zotero

● Zotero: http://www.zotero.org● Kwong Sue Duk references on Zotero:

https://www.zotero.org/groups/kwong_sue_duk

I'm a big fan of people working together on these things. It makes the process less lonely and cuts down on the number of people who get territorial about their 'patch'. And generally you can get more stuff done if you work as a group.

Take the task of gathering information from primary and secondary sources. While it has become much easier as more material has become digitised, it can still be a lonely, somewhat thankless task. No matter how hard you look, there is always that sneaking suspicion that there is material that you haven't seen (well, that is how it is for me, anyway).

Zotero is citation tool that works from within your browser. It makes it easy to grab proper citations and metadata for online material. Best of all, you can collaborate with other people to build your citations.

I have created a shared, open library with all of the citation information on Kwong Sue Duk, drawn from the National Library of Australia, the National Archives of Australia, Sophie's Chinese-Australian Historical Images in Australia (CHIA), Chinese-Australia (formally Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation) and the Wikipedia article.

I have created a short video showing how I used Zotero to save these citations. It is at: http://youtu.be/DNSSA2u3bvY.

Harvest Trove newspapers

Kwong Sue Duk articles on Trove: http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q="Kwong+Sue+Duk"+OR+"Kwong+Soo+Tak"+OR+"Sun+Mow+Loong"

Harvesting Trove Newspapers

● Trove newspapers at the National Library of Australia: http://trove.nla.gov.au/● Tim Sherrat, Mining the Treasures of Trove (part 1):

http://discontents.com.au/shed/mining-the-treasures-of-trove-part-1● Tim's script at Github: https://github.com/wragge/Trove-newspapers/downloads

Choose the [Download as zip] button.

Tim Sherrat has written a script that will allow you to harvest newspaper articles from Trove. It is fantastic!

I constructed my search, so that it was only finding the articles that I wanted.http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q="Kwong+Sue+Duk"+OR+"Kwong+Soo+Tak"+OR+"Sun+Mow+Loong"Well, so I thought. Sun Mow Loong was Kwong Sue Duk's trading name, but it also appears that there was an individual using that name as well.

Then I added it to Tim's script, decided if I wanted to grab the full text and a PDF of each article, and then set it to go to work.

It only took a few minutes to download the details of 142 articles. However, if you are on a slow link, it may take some time to download all the PDFs.

It requires Python to run, which may already be on your computer. Also, you need to play with some text files that look suspiciously like code, but it is all very well documented and quite straightforward. The results are absolutely worth the effort.

Build your exhibition

Kwong Sue Duk exhibition hosted by Omeka: http://kwongsueduk.omeka.net/

Omeka

● Omeka: http://www.omeka.net● Kwong Sue Duk on Omeka: http://kwongsueduk.omeka.net● Exporting Zotero to Excel: http://kimmonsdesign.com/node/24● Firefox Profiles: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Profiles● SQLite Manager for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/

Now that I have gathered all this information, I can start to build my online exhibition.

Omeka is a free hosting service designed specifically for online exhibitions. You can upload images of your objects with their metadata. You then combine those elements together into collections and exhibitions.

You can do this one at a time, or you can upload your information in a spreadsheet, saved in comma-separated values (CSV) format. I decided to upload as much material as I could via CSV files.

Tim's trove newspaper harvester provides all the information as CSV files, so that was relatively easy to upload. However, you may not want all the details that Trove supplies, so you might want to tidy up the information beforehand. Also, while it is theoretically possible to import the PDFs at the same time, I could not work out how to do this. I added mine by hand.

At the moment, there is no simple way to export information from Zotero in CSV format. However, I found an excellent tutorial on exporting Excel to Zotero. It requires the addition of a plug-in to Firefox, called SQLite Manager, and then copying and pasting a script.

Once again, it is well documented and very straightforward. As with the newspaper articles, you might want to tidy up your Zotero data in Excel before you import it into Omeka.

Thank you

Jonathan O'DonnellLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jod999E-mail: jod@jod.id.auTwitter: @jod999

And thanks to: ● Every body who has ever contributed to Wikipedia.● Darren Peacock for Now & Then.● Tim Sherratt for everything else.

Credits

Tim Sherratt is the whizz behind the Trove harvester, Zotero plug-ins for Australian cultural organisations, page numbers on National archive results, and other fun stuff.

● Discontents: http://discontents.com.au/● Wragge Labs: http://wraggelabs.com/● LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-sherratt/24/744/313● Twitter: @wragge

This talk is modelled on Tim's talk at Dragon Tales 2011.

● Digital history: new tools and techniques: http://dragontails.com.au/program/45/

Darren Peacock has worked with cultural organisations around Australia for years, advising them on technology, business planning and other matters.

● Sweet Technology: http://www.sweet.net.au/about-us ● LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/darren-peacock/5/710/128● Twitter: @sweetnet

What's on Wikipedia?

Kwong Sue Duk on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwong_Sue_Duk

Your local encyclopaedia

Samuel Henry Drury on Now & Then Mallala: http://mallala.nowandthen.net.au/index.php?title=Samuel_Henry_Drury

Collect data together

Kwong Sue Duk on CHIA, with Zotero open: https://www.zotero.org/groups/kwong_sue_duk

Harvest Trove newspapers

Kwong Sue Duk articles on Trove: http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q="Kwong+Sue+Duk"+OR+"Kwong+Soo+Tak"+OR+"Sun+Mow+Loong"

Build your exhibition

Kwong Sue Duk exhibition hosted by Omeka: http://kwongsueduk.omeka.net/

Thank you

Jonathan O'DonnellLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jod999E-mail: jod@jod.id.auTwitter: @jod999

And thanks to: ● Every body who has ever contributed to Wikipedia.● Darren Peacock for Now & Then.● Tim Sherratt for everything else.