The Wikimedia chapter in the Netherlands is organizing the photo scavenger hunt “Wiki Loves Monuments” in September. Take photos of national monuments, share them, and you may win a prize! Our sponsors have offered rewards like an iPad, an Android smartphone, WikiReaders and magazine subscriptions to a cultural heritage magazine.
With over 50,000 national monuments (“rijksmonument“) throughout the Netherlands, there are plenty of photo opportunities. These are buildings or objects of general importance because of their beauty, importance to science, or cultural history – like archeological sites in Drenthe, the canal houses in Amsterdam, and the Royal Palace in The Hague.
The Dutch language Wikipedia has worked hard to prepare for this project by building articles with lists of these monuments organized by municipality. The Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (National services for Cultural Heritage) provided additional data, such as the physical address of all the monuments. The next step is to complete every monument with one or more photos – Wikipedia volunteers already taken photos of over 12,000 monuments.
With this project, we tried to incorporate best practices from Wiki Loves Art/NL 2009 and similar projects in other countries. Uploading images will be possible both through a simplified uploading form on Wikimedia Commons, as well as with a Flickr group. Many cultural heritage organizations were contacted and asked to spread the word.
The contest is in September, and coincides with Open Monument Day on 11 and 12 of September, when many monuments open their doors to visitors which are normally closed. For more information, please visit our website at www.wikilovesmonuments.nl (in Dutch) and subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also join the Flickr group or our Facebook event if you plan to participate.
Lodewijk Gelauff
Board Member, Wikimedia Nederland
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