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2015

Wiki Tuesdays at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

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Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) and Wikimedia Canada are collaborating to offer users of the Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal workshops in Wikipedia's French version. Starting on February, the first Tuesday of each month, a workshop is held where experienced Wikipedians guide all those who want to learn more about Wikipedia and how to contribute to the online encyclopedia. Each workshop has a specific theme around which the public is invited to contribute. BAnQ, which has a large collection of books and documents, ancient and modern, as well as rich archives around these themes, provides participants the documentation needed to write well documented Wikipedia articles. Participants find on site experienced contributors, and also librarians and archivists who specialize in the topics covered. The goal of these workshops is to improve Wikipedia's French content, increase the number of Quebec contributors to profit documentaries and professional resources BAnQ and better represent Quebec, New France, French Canada or more broadly, French America.

Art et féminisme Montréal

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Several studies make the observation that the encyclopedia Wikipedia is mainly written by men. It is estimated that only 20% of Wikipedia contributors are women and in order to achieve the objective of a true encyclopedic neutrality, Wikimedia Canada encourages projects and thus reduces the gender gap. Users of the encyclopedia organized a contributory day at Concordia University during the weekend of International Women's Day March 8 as part of the Art And Feminism project in several Canadian cities.

From 2 pm to 4 pm Anne Goldenberg facilitated a workshop on exclusions (especially gendered) on Wikipedia. After presenting themselves and reflecting on the exclusions also reproduced by the event of the day (we were mainly white and anglophone people, having a common feminist sensibility towards participation in Wikipedia), we reported Factors of exclusions in the participation in Wikipedia (among other things: distribution of free time and care activities, introjected technophobia ...) and invisibilization (the reference to statistics for example, gender anonymization practices, Preferred by some women). We also studied the resulting biases (in addition to the lack of pages on women, systemic biases are associated with the fact that epistemologies and legitimations are largely borne by white and male contributors). Undertaking, in terms of inclusiveness. We have also proposed the writing of a collective article based on our reflections, to be published in a Montreal online magazine.

Approximately thirty participants from different genres went through Concordia University's art history rooms and published in Wikipedia in English and French.

See all pictures

UQO - Semaine de la recherche

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On March 25, 2015, within the framework of the research week of the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Wikimedia Canada and Acfas join forces to present the Wikimedia projects and GLAM collaborations with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Benoît Rochon, Project Manager of Wikimedia Canada, Ha-Loan Phan, Acfas Project Manager, Nathalie Casemajor, UQO Professor, Wikimedia Canada Council Member, Rosa Iris Rovira, UQO Student and Wikipedia, That is Wikipedia, GLAM and share their contribution experience in the free encyclopedia.

About fifteen professors from the UQO and a representative from BAnQ Gatineau attended the presentation.

Wikisource: A Resurrected Lost Book & Wikisource Sundays

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Thanks to the GLAM / BAnQ Project, contributors of Wikisource resurrected a Quebec novel that had never been published in books before: Les pirates du golfe St-Laurent (The St-Laurent Gulf pirates), by Wenceslas-Eugène Dick, originally serialized in a Montreal newspaper. In 1906, would probably never have been found and published, first, here on Wikisource, and secondly, in a book that has been legally deposited at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Quebec and Library and Archives Canada.

A meeting with the management of the Québec National Collection made it possible to identify a need that the Bibliothèque et Archives nationale du Québec had: the transcription of digitized books. It was in the plans of the senior management to design a digital platform to involve Quebecers in the transcription of works. The goal was to make digital books free of charge to customers and BAnQ members.

Following the meeting, Wikimedians began workshops transcription of the book of the month from the National Collection of Quebec. During Q4 of 2015, participants have transcribe 47 books for a total 5427 pages. A lots of participants are not only Canadians, but also French for Europe.

Francophone Wikipedia Library

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The Wikipedia Library aims to connect writers with high-quality sources. Photo by JHistory, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

During the month of June, we were happy to launch a new French-language branch of the Wikipedia Library with donations from three new publishers of French and English sources.

The Wikipedia Library aims to connect experienced Wikipedia editors with the quality sources and references that they need to author more content and spread the sum of human knowledge. One strategy for this access is our publisher donation program, which offer free subscriptions to contributors who meet a modest selection criteria. To learn more about the Wikipedia Library, check out our earlier blog posts about it or a 2014 Signpost feature.

As part of the new French-language Wikipedia Library branch, 3 new donor partners join the ranks of dozens of already established partnerships. The new French-language partnerships include:

  • Cairn.info is a site for the publication and dissemination of humanities and social science journals from several publishers. This project offers publications on several subjects: law, economics, geography, history, literature and linguistics, philosophy, psychology, education science, information science, political science, sociology and society and sport. The Wikipedia Library has 100 free accounts for CAIRN.info, French and English.
  • Érudit is a non-profit organization in Quebec whose primary mission is the dissemination and promotion of results of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. The platform also includes some journals in the hard sciences and the environment. The Wikipedia Library offers 50 free accounts.
  • L'Harmattan is a French publishing house founded in 1975. It has 27,000 titles in the social sciences and humanities, rare or out of print books, videos and magazines that are available online via the digital platform. The Wikipedia Library has 100 free accounts for L'Harmattan, in French only.

Through its partnerships, The Wikipedia Library aims that experienced contributors may have access to high-caliber sources to reference and increase the quality of Wikipedia articles. For our partners, the benefits are numerous: due to the high traffic and visibility of Wikipedia, readers learn where to find the best databases and collections.

It is very exciting to see the international team of the Wikipedia Library expand to create partnerships with other providers of newspapers, journals and databases, and in more languages. Our full list of partner journals is located on the English Wikipedia, and editors are invited to list the paywalled resources they need access to on our Meta requests page. We will do our best to make inroads with them.

Additionally, we would like to widen this scope and encourage more Wikimedia communities to consider launching Wikipedia Library branches in their own language. These programs operate as local-language research hubs through various strategies and best practices identified in other language communities. For more information about setting up new branches, check out our new Branch Guide. If you would like to support established Wikipedia Library branches, let us know!

Iconographic projects with Bibliothèque et Archives nationale du Québec

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Read the full story on Wikimedia Foundation's blog

In the summer of 2015, the BAnQ Gatineau team and Wikimedia Canada began a survey of the 135,425 digitized files from the Champlain Marcil archives, and selected and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons some 200 iconographic files that could be interesting for Wikipedia readers and contributors. The first phase involves the uploading of the religious heritage of the province of Quebec, and the team will focus on the images taken on the Ontario side.

In the fall, as part of a pedagogical project at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, the BAnQ Gatineau team invites students to digitize files and place images in Wikipedia articles.

Champlain Marcil

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Photographer for the daily Le Droit from 1947 to 1969, Champlain Marcil's work reflects the political, social, cultural, religious, sporting and social events that made the news in the Outaouais region of Quebec and Ontario, mainly from 1945 to 1980. Rich in 135,425 photographs and divided into six series, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec acquires the archives of Champlain Marcil in 1989.

Félix Barrière

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Félix Barrière, a publicist and publicist, was born in St-Jean d'Iberville on March 1, 1883. After completing his studies in 1900, he embarked on a commercial career and worked for Banque d'Hochelaga, La Presse and from 1904 to the administration of the newspaper Le Canada. He is employed for several years by the organization of the Association of Retail Merchants as organizer and assistant secretary-general. He then moved to the United States where he became managing director of the daily newspaper L'Echo de New Bedford. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, Félix Barrière returned to Montreal and directed Le Prix Courant until 1920, when he acquired various publications, notably: the Secret Directory of Telephones, Handy Phone Index, the Canadian Medical Directory, the Album of the Churches and the Album of the Houses of Education of the Province of Quebec. Félix Barrière died in Montreal on October 31, 1957.

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec retains a collection of photographs gathered by Félix Barrière as part of his work as a publicist, which explains the annotations and retouches in pencil sometimes visible in certain photographs. The collection contains many photographs of churches, shops and grocery stores in Montreal and various cities in Quebec, mainly between the years 1910 and 1930.