When people hear the word Wiki-, they automatically fill out the rest with -pedia. But for many language communities around the world, a Wikipedia of their own, in their own language, will never be a reality. This mainly stems from a lack of resources and launching a Wikipedia is nothing, if not resource-intense. Yet within the Wikimedia projects, there is a wealth of opportunities hiding in plain sight that have nothing to do with Wikipedia, ranging from identifying visual cultural heritage to helping revitalize languages by connecting Wikimedia projects with the language communities’ own projects. In the first part of our session we will discuss the strategies we have identified for working with the Saami communities and their culture in novel ways. We are gradually testing out how we can use the data, concepts, and lexemes stored in Wikidata and the visual cultural heritage in Wikimedia Commons to best benefit the communities. Our identified strategies range from creating activity networks within institutions, Saami communities and Wikimedia practitioners, through decolonising the Commons imagery in visual culture workshops, to investigating the opportunity for Saami language tagging by means of translated Wikidata concepts. In the second part of our session, we invite participants to discuss these and to brainstorm other opportunities together.
Speakers: Kimberli Mäkäräinen Susanna Ånäs