On the celebrated occasion of International Museum Day, Wikimedia Bangladesh organized an International Museum Day Datathon, where volunteers from Bangladesh and India contributed data and enhanced the Wikidata items related to museums in Bangladesh. This event brought together enthusiastic volunteers from Bangladesh and India who shared a common objective: to enrich the Wikidata entries that pertain to various museums in Bangladesh. This collaborative effort spanned the entirety of a single day. It was made possible through the joint support of Wikimedia Bangladesh’s regional community, the Chattogram Wikipedia Community, and the Mymensingh Wikipedia Community. Since “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples”. The rationale behind this initiative was rooted in the recognition that museums play a pivotal role in facilitating cultural exchange, enriching diverse cultures, and cultivating mutual understanding, cooperation, and, ultimately, peace among different peoples. To achieve these noble aspirations, the campaign’s primary aim was to enhance the content within Wikidata related to museums and supplement these entries with relevant images that would provide a more comprehensive and visually engaging perspective.
Preparations
An event page was created on Wikidata with a table containing a list of articles showing whether they exist. This system also allows participants to work on Wikidata items that do not exist. We primarily focus on Bangla Wikipedia, where there are Bengali-speaking contributors. Fortunately, the response was good. Wikipedia Bangladesh has issued all participants e-certificates.
Results
The day-long datathon was held on 18 May 2023, International Museum Day. This year’s theme was “Museums, Sustainability and Well-being”. A total of 26 new items were created in Wikidata, while 66 items were improved, which covers a total list of museums in Bangladesh. The Bengali community has once again shown that the visibility of data related to museums and archives is significant in this area of knowledge. As always, we invite all of you to create items on any topic that should be on Wikidata to reduce the irrelevance of existing information.
Originally published on Diff – Wikimedia community blog on 14 July 2023
