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GLAM/Newsletter/January 2023/Contents/Sweden report

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Sweden report

Tekniska museet makes 3000 polar images available on Commons

100 000 Bildminnen

The first big upload of the project 100 000 Bildminnen was done in January. Nordiska museet in Stockholm is working together with Wikimedia Sverige to share a collection of previously unpublished archival photographs on Wikimedia Commons. This batch consists of photos by Erik Holmén (1893-1963) that document Nordiska Kompaniet, a traditional department store in Stockholm. Here you can see some of the wares that were on sale, as well as interiors of the store and advertising shots.

The project will continue throughout 2023, with more archival photographs by various prominent creators from different parts of Sweden.

  • A glass bowl.
    A glass bowl.
  • High-heeled shoes.
    High-heeled shoes.
  • Customers.
    Customers.


Arctic images

The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology has made a unique collection with thousands of images available to the general public. The images, around 3 000, comes from some of the first polar expeditions, including the one by Otto Nordenskjöld. All images are now free to use, after being held in the private Goldberg collection.

Fred Goldberg's large collection consists of historical photos and glass plates from the adventurous expeditions in the early 20th century to the Arctic and Antarctica, and after his death in 2017 the collection was donated to the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology. Registering, digitizing and adding metadata to the material was a massive undertaking, and the treasure is now available at Digitalt museum and Wikimedia Commons under free licenses.

As a release to Commons was part of the plan early on, information and metadata was prepared for that from the start. Having the structure of the collection based on notes on binders and on the back of photos, keywords and titles in both English and Swedish were added to connect the images to expeditions, places and people. With good help from Aron Ambrosiani the data was structured and converted to wiki format suitable for Open Refine.

Part of the material shows polar explorer Otto Nordenskjöld – most known for the first Swedish expedition to Antarctica 1901–1903. But we are also allowed to come along to the Arctic in a previously fairly unknown expedition, the Amdrup Expedition. The photos shows places like Spitsbergen, Sisimiut and Sarfannguaq covering both inhabitants and wildlife. Through the images we can experience the barren mountains, mines, seal hunters and wast seas icebergs that met the expeditions 120 years ago. The collections were published at both DigitaltMuseum and Commons in January 2023.

  • Polar bear cubs! On a boat!
    Polar bear cubs! On a boat!
  • A church and a movie theater (!) in the Arctic.
    A church and a movie theater (!) in the Arctic.
  • Two good boys in the snow.
    Two good boys in the snow.


Voluntary Swedish Air Force in the Winter War

During our January "internal edit-a-thon" at the National Archives of Sweden we've uploaded the photo album of Flight Regiment 19 also known as the Voluntary Swedish Air Force in service of Finland during the Winter War. The album pages typically include more than one photograph so we'd be very grateful for any and all help in cropping out the individual photographs as well as adding structured data of what they portray eg. airplanes of different types, individual volunteers or locations depicted!

While we know that it was the volunteers themselves who took the photos we don't know who the photographer was for any specific photo which is why they're "unknown" in the metadata.

  • The title page of the album.
    The title page of the album.
  • Album page uncropped. The plane is a Hawker Hart, a light bomber.
    Album page uncropped. The plane is a Hawker Hart, a light bomber.
  • Same album page cropped.
    Same album page cropped.
  • Album page uncropped. The plane is a Gladiator MkI, a fighter.
    Album page uncropped. The plane is a Gladiator MkI, a fighter.
  • Same album page cropped.
    Same album page cropped.
  • Uncropped page with three photographs.
    Uncropped page with three photographs.
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@Axel Pettersson (WMSE): Really enjoyed photos from Nordiska Kompaniet. Are you going to work on categorisation of the photos as I see there are no categories about subjects depicted? --Anntinomy (talk) 14:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Anntinomy, and sorry for the delay. The images are really great, and we are happy to have them digitized so we can add them to Commons. We are for sure planning activities around them to enrich the metadata, categories and to have the Nordic Museum update their data back in their database also. There is already a ISA campaign for one batch, and we are in touch with both Ultuna, Saab and the others to have their input to what is on the images. /Axel Pettersson (WMSE) (talk) 13:21, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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