During the years 2013-2016 we contributed to Wikimedia Commons with roughly 46 000 high resolution images of artifacts in the collections of The Royal Armoury, Skokloster Castle and the Hallwyl Museum. Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content. For example, the images you see in Wikipedia articles are stored on Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia Commons is, by far, the most used platform for viewing images and information about the collections held by the National Historical Museums of Sweden. The 46 000 images are shown roughly 5 million times every month.
CC BY Ola Myrin
Now, after a few years of system changes and the development of a new online collection search interface, we have finally reached a good enough digital infrastructure to be able to resume our uploads of new images to Wikimedia Commons.
This time around, we are making use of another method of uploading images to Wikimedia Commons. The project Usable Authorities for Data-driven Cultural Heritage Research – a collaboration between us, Wikimedia Sweden and the Swedish Nationalmuseum – has given us the tools and knowledge to use OpenRefine for working with Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks to this we have now done a first pilot upload of 1200 images from the Swedish History Museum and the Economy Museum. The images depict artifacts currently on display in the exhibition The Viking World at the Swedish History Museum.
