Celebrating the Outstanding Cultural & Heritage Professionals making Open Access Possible

In 2023, community members came together to create the Outstanding Professional advancing Open Access to Cultural Heritage Award, as a way to both celebrate the tremendous legacy of the beloved Effie Kapsalis and to recognize and promote other professionals that, like she did, are working everyday to improve people’s access to culture, knowledge and heritage, and better connect them with Wikimedia communities.

To shortlist the candidates, we created a small selection committee of people who knew Effie and her work, and that have a trajectory of working with open access at cultural heritage institutions. The committee included Ben Vershbow (Wikimedia Foundation, formerly at New York Public Library), Andrea Wallace (GLAM-E Lab), Simon Tanner (King’s College London), and Sara Snyder (Wikimedia DC, Smithsonian Institution).

In 2024, following the GLAM Wiki Conference that took place in Uruguay, the candidates were selected from Latin America and we awarded Shailili Zamora and Solange Ferraz Lima. The awardees were supported to attend Wikimedia conferences, with Tibisay Zamora representing Shailili at the Wikimedia+Libraries Conference in México City and Solange Lima participating in Wikimania in Katowice, Poland. 

Without dedicated professionals like Effie, Solange, Shailili or Tibisay, Wikimedia’s mission of opening knowledge would be impossible. We’re looking for nominations this year, to celebrate an outstanding cultural & heritage professional to be present at the GLAM Wiki Conference, which will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, October – November 2025. To nominate someone you know, please fill in the form here till July 31. The awardee will be notified by late August at the latest. 

Now, let’s take a moment to learn more about our past awardees’ inspiring work and the connections they see to Wikimedia communities.

Meet the Awardees: Tibisay and Solange

The work of Tibisay and Shailili was nominated by Angie Cervellera from Wikimedia Argentina. Tibisay and Shailili work together at the Indigenous Documentation Center No’lhametwet, as cultural manager and as part of the indigenous Wichí peoples. There, Shailili and Tibisay promote “the dissemination of indigenous cultures and access to knowledge, making sure that the voices and knowledges of our people are visible and accessible for everyone”. To accomplish this work, they are collaborating with Wikimedia Argentina and the Institute of Culture of the Chaco Province in Argentina, in a project called “Cartografías Abiertas Qom, Wichí y Moqoit”. There, they “work in creating open content and documenting our own traditions.”

Solange, on the other hand, works in a public university museum, Museu Paulista (Museu do Ipiranga), and was nominated by João Peschanski from Wikimedia Brasil. According to Solange, “our museum always had a vision for making collections as publicly available as possible, even with all the challenges that this work faces in Brasil.” When the museum had to close for a restoration project in 2017, the importance of having their collections publicly online became even clearer. “That’s when we met the team at Wikimedia Brasil, and there we found a place where people shared our concerns and our vision of opening up collections and promoting free knowledge.”

The committee decided to award Solange “to recognize the significant work that Solange has done to bring decolonial concepts to the digital dissemination of heritage from a very important position in the cultural heritage system, and for being a strong champion for open in Brasil.”

Shailili and Tibisay were awarded “to recognize the important work they are doing with indigenous communities, creating open access in their own terms, in communities that are highly underrepresented and facing significant and often existential threats. We expect that this award and recognition will open up new opportunities for the incredible work she and her community are doing.”

At the conferences

Solange had the opportunity to participate in Wikimania in Katowice, Poland, and Tibisay took part in the Wikimedia+Libraries Convention, in México City. 

Solange describes the experience at Wikimania: “It was incredible. I felt like I was at a UN event. Normally, I participate in academic conferences, but they are all alike. What really stood out to me was the diversity of people, of ages, and so many different countries. It gave me hope. It is possible to collaborate within an incredible diversity, and everyone was happy.” Solange found the case studies, the conversations around Wikimedians in Residence, and the relationship of Wikimedia with universities to be the most enriching for her.

Tibisay, on the other hand, went to workshops about Wikipedia, Wikidata integration with libraries, and how libraries can contribute to Wikimedia projects. “I also found the talks about diversity, gender, inclusion and knowledge gaps to be very interesting for our work. They are core to all the work we do to promote indigenous cultures and open access.” She found the experience to be “enriching and transformative”, and said that it allowed her to connect with professionals from all over the world. She hopes that future conferences can include more participation from indigenous libraries, and more experiences from Wikimedia projects working with indigenous people.

A new light on the Wikimedia movement

Both Tibisay and Solange were agreed in their willingness to keep on collaborating with the Wikimedia movement. When asked what they would tell other professionals about the Wikimedia movement, they took a strong stance. 

Solange said: “No museum will be able to remain closed anymore. The digital networked culture is an irreversible path. In Latin America, people suffer from disinformation, fake news, and the way in which culture and data is extracted from us. I see the wiki as a place to invest because it is a safe and reliable place, and because I can trust the community. It is of tremendous power.”

Tibisay shared: “Wikimedia offers an unique opportunity to be part of a global effort to democratize knowledge. Participating in events like this is inspiring and allows you to see the real impact of these projects on society. It is also an invaluable platform to give visibility and preserve indigenous cultures, by the indigenous peoples themselves, and to make sure that our knowledge is accessible for future generations.”

Opening the space for new professionals

Do you know any cultural heritage professional from your country or region whose contributions deserve to be highlighted and honored? We would love to hear from you and learn more about their work! Please nominate them through this form till July 31 at the latest.