[open-heritage] Wiki Loves Monuments - Italia

[Stefano Costa]

Dear all,
as you might already know, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) is a pan-European 
photographic contest where everybody wins, because all participants make 
their work available under an open license, that is, a license 
compatible with uploading on Wikimedia Commons. You can find more 
information at http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/ and see last year's winner.

For various reasons, to date Italy has not been part of WLM. The main 
obstacle is our cultural heritage legislation, and even more than that 
its interpretation by government bodies at various levels (I hope 
everybody will understand the difference between legislation and 
government). This is not exclusive of Italy, and it has been one of the 
topics under discussion within the Cultural Heritage Working Group of 
COMMUNIA (you can read a report from the last meeting in 2010 at 
http://blog.okfn.org/?p=4336 )

Anyway... good news! This year Wiki Loves Monuments is going to happen 
in Italy. A group of people has started working on it, coordinated by 
some core members of Wikimedia Italia. As a minor contributor to the 
initiative, I would say it's going to be an ingredient for huge change 
in how GLAMs and open knowledge communities interact in our country. We 
will concentrate on the so-called "minor heritage", both because it 
needs and deserves more attention that it usually gets, and because it's 
less likely to be problematic on the grounds of the above mentioned 
issues with government. I am going to publish an interview with the main 
organisers in the next few days on the OKFN blog.

What can you do to help? First of all, spread the word! 
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/ is the main website. Please note that 
it doesn't have (yet) a brief description in [your native language]. We 
might need translators in the next few weeks, to make a short message 
available in as many languages as possible.

If you have been to Italy before, and there are some areas that you are 
in love with for their beautiful churches, temples, museums or 
landscapes, you might be able to help us with the creation and selection 
of lists of these monuments. If you plan on coming to Italy, you will be 
able to participate to the contest.

Looking forward to seeing your pictures of Italy's monuments on 
Wikimedia Commons,
steko