A guest post from the lovely Rachel Kassman, photo archivist & Librarian at the Jewish Museum of Maryland…
Wikimania, Urban Gardening, and You!
Or in this case, me! As part of the Museum’s New Media Team Awesome (and yes, that IS the official title of the group), I try and keep an eye out for opportunities to explore in and expand out to the digital sphere. Imagine my delight upon discovering that this year’s Wikimania Conference (which brings together “wikimedians” from all over the world) would be held in our own backyard – Washington, D.C.! The conference itself was a wonderful, overwhelming, information-rich three day event that left me full to the brim with ideas, questions, and a satisfying sense of exhaustion – definitely my favorite kind of professional development.
While I definitely enjoyed the conference as a whole, one particular session was a standout – the Saturday workshop “QRpedia and You.” (More info on the session can be found here: http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/QRpedia_and_you.) QRpedia uses QR codes to give users access to Wikipedia articles via their mobile devices in the users preferred language. How cool is that? (Check out the QRpedia Wikipedia page for more in-depth info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRpedia.) There are already some extremely cool QRpedia projects out there, like Monmouthpedia – an entire town in Wales where “notable” sites have their own QRpedia codes. (Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonmouthpediA.) Practical and hands-on, the presenters left me fired up to go right home and implement a QRpedia project of my own – and I had just the one in mind: creating QRpedia codes for the plants in Exeter Gardens!
Here are the markers at my desk – a little bit of graphic design (thanks to the Library of Congress for the great, vintage vegetable border!), some colored craft sticks, and a little bit of lamination = cheap, easy, fast, and (at least in MY opinion) fun! I can’t wait to try out some other QRpedia project ideas.
Here you can see a number of our QRpedia codes in place:
Did you know Sweet Woodruff is also known as Galium odoratum?
We really like our peppers – here we have sweet bell peppers, cayenne peppers, and jalapeno peppers!
Did you know that the Eggplant Wikipedia article is available in 102 languages?
Summer squash, sadly, only as an article in 1 language – squash enthusiasts: get translating!
