Reuse of Wikimedia Commons Cultural Heritage Images on the Wider Web

Abstract

Objective -Cultural heritage institutions with digital images on Wikimedia Commons want to know if and how those images are being reused. This study attempts to gauge the impact of digital cultural heritage images from Wikimedia Commons by using Reverse Image Lookup (RIL) to determine the quantity and content of different types of reuse, barriers to using RIL to assess reuse, and whether reused digital cultural heritage images from Wikimedia Commons include licensing information.Methods -171 digital cultural heritage Wikimedia Commons images from 51 cultural heritage institutions were searched using the Google images "Search by image" tool to find instances of reuse. Content analysis of the digital cultural heritage images and the context in which they were reused was conducted to apply broad content categories. Reuse within Wikimedia Foundation projects was also recorded.Results -A total of 1,533 reuse instances found via Google images and Wikimedia Commons' file usage reports were analyzed. Over half of reuse occurred within Wikimedia projects or wiki aggregator and mirror sites. Notable People, people, historic events, and buildings and locations were the most widely reused topics of digital cultural heritage both within Wikimedia projects Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2019, 14.3 29 and beyond, while social, media gallery, news, and education websites were the most likely places to find reuse outside of wiki projects. However, the content of reused images varied slightly depending on the website type on which they were found. Very few instances of reuse included licensing information, and those that did often were incorrect. Reuse of cultural heritage images from Wikimedia Commons was either done without added context or content, as in the case of media galleries, or was done in ways that did not distort or mischaracterize the images being reused.Conclusion -Cultural heritage institutions can use this research to focus digitization and digital content marketing efforts in order to optimize reuse by the types of websites and users that best meet their institution's mission. Institutions that fear reuse without attribution have reason for concern as the practice of reusing both Creative Commons and public domain media without rights statements is widespread. More research needs to be conducted to determine if notability of institution or collection affects likelihood of reuse, as preliminary results show a weak correlation between number of images searched and number of images reused per institution. RIL technology is a reliable method of finding image reuse but is a labour-intensive process that may best be conducted for selected images and specific assessment campaigns. Finally, the reused content and context categories developed here may contribute to a standardized set of codes for assessing digital cultural heritage reuse.

Dura-Europos Stories: Developing interactive storytelling applications using knowledge graphs for cultural heritage exploration

“…7 A summary of the properties used to translate the institutional CSV exports and rationale for specific modeling decisions is available on the Wikiproject IDEA page. 8 The expanded and modified CSV was then used as the basis for a batch upload. Data was written from the CSV into Wikidata using QuickStatements 9 and the DuraEuroposBot.…”

“…The IDEA team uploaded thousands of images of artifacts to Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons is a repository for multimedia content that is used by many projects of the Wikimedia Foundation [8].…”

Toward a definition of digital object reuse

“…Repurposing an image of railway workers on the Union Pacific Railroad to illustrate minimum wage advocacy (Kelly, 2019).…”

“…Examples include instances of users: Placing content from an online lesson plan dedicated to immigration into a Pinterest board focused on denim fashion (Thompson and Reilly, 2019). Repurposing an image of railway workers on the Union Pacific Railroad to illustrate minimum wage advocacy (Kelly, 2019). Remixing digital objects from the United Kingdom’s National Gallery as part of an “update art” initiative (Kirton and Terras, 2013).…”