Wikipedian in Residence

 

This is the fifth in a blog series that features a collections object from images that we have donated to Wikipedia. Read the first blog post to learn more about why and how we have donated more than 264 images to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository.

We need your help! Can you think of Wikipedia articles where this image can be added? First, read on to learn more about the object from our Cultural World curator, Tris Perkins. Then, tell us where you think this image belongs in Wikipedia! 

 

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis 

Cricket-shaped hairpin with kingfisher feathers

• Year: 20th century
• Location: China
• Accession Number: 94.98.9

A woman's elegant hairstyle was once ornamented with this beautiful blue cricket. Delicate kingfisher (woodpecker) feathers are glued to the cricket's body to look like enamel. The iridescent quality of the feathers looks much like the shiny covering on real insects.  In China, crickets represent good fortune and luck.

Help us make an impact! So far these images do not appear in any Wikipedia articles. Can you think of any articles that should include them?  Do some browsing and be creative. Leave a comment and we’ll share your suggestions with the Wikipedia community. Then, come back in a week to see where in Wikipedia this image ends up!

Don't forget, you can also suggest articles for the Electric Marx Mobile, Quail Trap, Alaskan Red King Crab and Baculites!

This is the fourth in a blog series that features a collections object from images that we have donated to Wikipedia. Read the first blog post to learn more about why and how we have donated more than 264 images to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository.

 

We need your help! Can you think of Wikipedia articles where this image can be added? First, read on to learn more about the object from our Natural Science curator, Dallas Evans. Then, tell us where you think this image belongs in Wikipedia! 

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis 

 

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis 

Baculites

• Scientific name: Baculites compressus
• Accession Number: 2001.12.1

​The baculites is a cephalopod, belonging to the same class of animals as squid, octopi, and the extinct ammonites.   The animal had a flatly coiled shell when young, but on reaching maturity the shell develops into its typical straight  “walking stick” form. A distinctive feature of these baculites is the complex suture pattern apparent in its fossilized shell.  

Help us make an impact! So far these images do not appear in any Wikipedia articles. Can you think of any articles that should include them?  Do some browsing and be creative. Leave a comment and we’ll share your suggestions with the Wikipedia community. Then, come back in a week to see where in Wikipedia this image ends up!

Don't forget, you can also suggest articles for the Electric Marx Mobile, Quail Trap, and the Alaskan Red King Crab!

 

This is the third in a blog series that features a collections object from images that we have donated to Wikipedia. Read the first blog post to learn more about why and how we have donated more than 264 images to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository.

We need your help! Can you think of Wikipedia articles where this image can be added? First, read on to learn more about the object from our Natural Science curator, Dallas Evans. Then, tell us where you think this image belongs in Wikipedia! 

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis 

 

Alaskan Red King Crab

• Scientific name: Paralithodes camtschaticus
• Accession Number: 2001.20.1

​The Red king crab is one of the larger living crabs in the world and can have a leg span of nearly 5 ft.  Since a red king crab has an exoskeleton (shell) it must molt in order to grow.  The commercial harvesting of these crabs has been highlighted in The Discovery Channel program Deadliest Catch.  The catching of Red king crabs constitutes one of the most valuable fisheries for Alaska.

Help us make an impact! So far this image does not appear in any Wikipedia articles. Can you think of any articles that should include this image?  Do some browsing and be creative. Leave a comment and we’ll share your suggestions with the Wikipedia community. Then, come back in a week to see where in Wikipedia this image ends up!

Don't forget, you can also suggest articles for the Electric Marx Mobile and the Quail Trap!

 

This week the museum is helping celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts of America. In honor of this huge anniversary, we're declaring it "Girl Scout Appreciation Week" at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis! That means all Girl Scouts and their immediate family receive a discount this week (March 12-17, 2012)! Just wear your Girl Scout uniform, t-shirt, sash, or vest when you visit and get in for the group admission rate at the Box Office.

We also want to take a minute to share some of the really cool Girl Scout objects in our collection!

By: Janna Bennett, curator of American Collections

Founded in the United States in 1912, Juliette Gordon Low began the Girl Scouts based upon Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts and Girl Guides program in England.  Today, as a global organization, over 3 million Girl Scouts explore the world around them while developing important life skills. 

Beginning in 1935 any Senior Scout troop could choose to be a Mariner troop.  These troops devoted time to outdoor activities including boating and camping to explore recreational and vocational activities. Instead of wearing the traditional green uniform, Mariners wore this blue uniform worn by Peoria, Illinois scout Colleen Cowan in the 1960s.

Low founded the Girl Scouts with 18 chartered members from her birthplace, Savannah, Georgia. One hundred years later, millions of girls and adult volunteers continue to honor the Girl Scout Law and contribute in the world around them through self-discovery and collaborating with others. This first aid kit and game handbook were used in 1929 one year after the group adopted a green uniform.

Congrats to the Girl Scouts on an amazing 100 years!

This is the second in a blog series that features a collections object from images that we have donated to Wikipedia. Read the first blog post to learn more about why and how we have donated more than 264 images to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository.

We need your help! Can you think of Wikipedia articles where this image can be added? First, read on to learn more about the object from our Cultural World curator, Tris Perkins. Then, tell us where you think this image belongs in Wikipedia! 

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis 

Quail trap (or jebak puyuh)

• Year: Mid-20th century
• Location: Malaysia
• Accession Number: 86.145.3

Although this looks like a regular bird cage, it’s actually a trap for catching quails.  A female quail is placed in the basket or woven container in the back of the cage with netting placed in front.  When the female calls out, it attracts a male.  When he steps onto the trigger in front of the basket, he causes the net to fall on and trap him.  Although wild quails no longer exist in Malaysia, jebak puyuh continue to be created as decorative items.

Help us make an impact! So far this image does not appear in any Wikipedia articles. Can you think of any articles that should include this image?  Do some browsing and be creative. Leave a comment and we’ll share your suggestions with the Wikipedia community. Then, come back in a week to see where in Wikipedia this image ends up!

Wikipedia Image Update! Since last week, our first Wikipedia Image of the Week, the Electric Marx Mobile, was added to the Danish Wikipedia article "Toy car."

Some months ago I shared a little about the special QRpedia codes that we have in exhibits around the museum. When you scan these unique QR codes they go directly to Wikipedia articles about our collections objects. While Wikipedians (volunteers who edit Wikipedia articles) already know a lot about QRpedia codes, many museum visitors do not. I was very excited to teach Claire and Josh (and you!) all about QRpedia in This Week's Wow!

While I have been the Wikipedian in Residence at The Children's Museum for over a year and a half, this is my very first This Week's Wow appearance.  My four year old son is a huge fan of This Week's Wow, so he was amazed to see his very own mom on his favorite show.  His reaction: "Mommy, how did you get in there??" That will have to remain a mystery.

Check out This Week's Wow to learn all about our QRpedia codes, from who wrote the Wikipedia articles to the special feature that helps even more visitors learn about objects like Captain Kidd's cannon...

You might not realize it, but over the past year the Children’s Museum has been hard at work taking pictures of objects from our collection and making them available to the public in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is written and managed by the community that uses it, so the success of Wikipedia largely depends on the quality of the content and images that people contribute. 

Because Wikipedia is such a widely-used free source of information, The Children’s Museum considers it a great place to share images of our objects and information from our experts. With 120,000 artifacts, The Children’s Museum has a wide range of images that we can contribute to a broad range of topics (like “Pie” or specific topics like “Bucky (Tyrannosaurus rex).")  We only get the opportunity to put a small number of objects on display in the museum, so contributing images to Wikipedia is a good way for the public to see objects typically kept in storage.

So far we have donated 264 images to Wikimedia Commons, which is the image repository for Wikipedia. Our contributions have included everything from toys to tribal masks from our American, Cultural World, and Natural Science Collections.

Once our images are in Wikimedia Commons, volunteers from all over the world who edit Wikipedia articles - called Wikipedians - find our images and place them in related Wikipedia articles. Did you know that once an image is in a Wikipedia article written in English, it’s often used in Wikipedia articles of many languages?  Wikipedia includes articles in over 280 languages! Another reason we contribute images to Wikipedia is because it makes it easy to share pictures of our objects with families from all over the world.

But it takes a lot of work for Wikipedians to place these images in articles – and we need your help! This is the first in a blog series that will feature one of our donated images and give you the opportunity to see where this image can end up in Wikipedia. Are you ready?

Wikipedia Image of the Week #1:

Image: cc by-sa 3.0 The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

The Electric Marx Mobile

• Year: 1959
• Accession Number: 2006.8.28
• Maker: Louis Marx Company
• Material: Lithographed Steel

This electric “Marx Mobile” was made for driving fun! From the ignition key in the dashboard to the classic fins at the rear, this car mimicked real vehicles of the 1950s and 1960s. Using an electric motor, this riding toy transported kids from pedal power to the battery powered toys popular today. 

Help us make an impact! So far this image only appears in the Hafner Manufacturing Company article.  Can you think of any other Wikipedia articles that should include this image? How about the detail image of its intricate dashboard? Do some browsing and be creative. Leave a comment and we’ll share your suggestions with the Wikipedia community. Then, come back in two weeks to see where in Wikipedia this image ends up! 

This week we were excited to host Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, at the museum. Many recognize Jimmy as the face of Wikipedia. If you're not in the technology world, you'd likely recognize him from the annual Wikipedia fundraising campaign banners.

Jimmy is a busy guy. Until this week he hadn't had the chance to see in person the kinds of projects carried out by a Wikipedian in Residence. We were happy to be the first to offer him a glimpse into the world of a museum-Wikipedia partnership. We started off with a breakfast with Jimmy and a handful of select staff and board members who are most directly tied with our Wikipedia projects. After sharing some background on our work, we had an incredible discussion about the role of Wikipedia in museums and schools.  What we found to be the most validating was Jimmy's encouragement of the museum as an informal learning center that has the ability to help teachers and parents understand how to best use and contribute to Wikipedia.

We then had the opportunity to show Jimmy the museum. Some of the major themes that came out of our tour included:

• Our use of QRpedia codes to provide deeper levels of information about objects in exhibits, and to provide information in other languages. Jimmy had not yet had the opportunity to try out these unique QR codes that directly link to Wikipedia, and needless to say he was quite the fan.

• Our use of video to tell stories, and noting that oral history can be an important way to add information to Wikipedia. This is an area where museums can especially fill the gap. 

• Our use of real objects to bring broad topics to life and provide unique ways for families to share and learn. In Wikipedia, images of these objects have spread across huge topic areas within the encyclopedia, allowing people from all over the world to experience our artifacts. 

As often happens (especially after seeing Dinosphere and Treasures of the Earth), he came away very impressed. So much so that he mentioned his visit to an audience of thousands at a conference that afternoon! It was great to be able to share with Jimmy how the museum has wholeheartedly gotten behind Wikipedia. We're in it for the long haul.

On Saturday, August 20 the Children's Museum hosted Wikipedians for our second Backstage Pass, which this time included three exciting events:

• The Backstage Pass: A time when local Wikipedians can visit the museum and receive a behind the scenes tour of collections.
• An Edit-a-Thon: An effort between museum curators and Wikipedians to create and improve Wikipedia articles related to one topic.
• A Translate-a-Thon: Collaboration with Wikipedians who meet in another location (or country) and translate articles into other languages.

There have been Wikipedia Backstage Passes, Edit-a-Thons, and Translation efforts all over the world. But this is the first time that all three have been attempted at the same time. Here's how it went down:

Wikipedians traveled from all over the state to take part in the Backstage Pass, which took them behind the scenes into all areas of collections storage. These events are important for Wikipedians because they're able to take photographs of rarely seen objects. These photos are then uploaded into Wikimedia Commons, the image repository, and used in articles throughout Wikipedia. In fact, we were so excited to have one particular photographer attend that the curators prepared objects to be photographed ahead of time. Some of these objects can already be viewed on Commons.

The focus of the day was on the Caplan Collection, a significant portion of the museum's collection that is made up of folk art and toys donated by Frank and Theresa Caplan in 1985. We were lucky to have in attendance Ron Gibson, the former Children's Museum registrar who was in charge of the transportation and acquisition of the Caplan Collection in the 1980s. Mr. Gibson shared amazing stories about his experience, which we now have on video to use as an oral history about the collection.

In the afternoon everyone helped with our Edit-a-Thon, which focused on creating and improving articles about the Caplan Collection. Children's museum curators and archivists worked tirelessly to gather and digitize a large amount of resources relating to Frank and Theresa Caplan, the history of their toy company Creative Playthings, and the Caplan Collection itself. The on-site Wikipedians then used these sources to create three new articles, while other Wikipedians worked online to create yet a fourth article.

At the same time, college students in the Wikipedia Club in Mexico City participated in our Translate-a-Thon. The students checked in over Skype as they translated Children's Museum-related articles into Spanish. (You can see photos of the event on Commons.) By the end of the day, six articles about the museum's most iconic objects were translated into Spanish. Thanks to their help, the QRpedia codes in exhibits are now more accessible to Spanish speaking visitors.

It was an exciting day of sharing the Children's Museum's treasures with Wikipedians from around the state and around the world. With their help, now more families can learn about the Caplan Collection and some of the museum's most beloved objects. Be sure to check out all of their hard work in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis Category in Wikipedia.

Back in April, weshared about all of the museum’s latest mobile fun, including the addition of QR codes in some exhibits. QR codes can be scanned using an app on your smart phone, which then automatically loads more information (a website or a video) about the topic. We now have QR codes for the Carousel and the Reuben Wells that link directly to the objects’ Wikipedia articles.  In the near future, look out for QR codes for Bucky, Captain Kidd’s cannon, Fireworks of Glass, and the water clock.  By using QR codes, the museum is not only sharing information with the world through Wikipedia, but is also helping visitors access the additional information while they’re in the exhibits. As the Wikipedian-in-Residence, I’m pretty excited about that!

…But these aren’t just any Wikipedia articles.  As I shared in this Wikipedian-in-Residence update, five of the Wikipedia articles were created by the museum’s own Museum Apprentice Program students, who worked with curators and other experts around the museum to research the museum’s most iconic objects. After two months of research and learning how to edit in Wikipedia, the articles went live at the end of February.
The Carousel article is special because a Wikipedian helped us to improve it so extensively that it received Featured Article status. It took special trips to visit museum curators, lots of research, and hours of writing and editing in order to achieve this acclaimed status in Wikipedia…and we’re quite proud! Curators have called the article the single most comprehensive history of the carousel that exists. Be sure to check it out by scanning the QR code the next time you’re in the carousel line!

…And these aren’t just any QR codes! They’re QRpedia codes. QRpedia is a website that easily creates QR codes and links to Wikipedia in order to provide information about a topic in the visitor’s own language. Once the QR code is scanned, the QRpedia website detects the phone’s language and loads the mobile-friendly Wikipedia article in that language. QRpedia has already been used in England and Spain; the Children’s Museum is the first in the United States to use it in exhibits.

We’re now working with Wikipedians-in-Residence in other parts of the world to translate our Wikipedia articles into Spanish and French so that we can take advantage of this technology. Recently, Alex, the Wikipedian in Residence at Museu Picasso in Barcelona, translated the museum’s Wikipedia article into Spanish and Catalan as a gift to us. Did you know that the Dracorex Wikipedia article has been translated into sixteen other languages? That means that, by posting a QRpedia code, a lot more people could learn about one of our most famous dinosaurs in their own language.

The next time you’re at the museum, be sure to keep your eye out for QR codes. You’d be surprised what new things you might learn about some of your favorite objects!