WikipediaSanko participation report: From

the perspective of commons editing

11 July 2023by Uraniwa , Japanese Wikimedian. Active in the Japanese version of Wikipedia and
Wikimedia Commons.

The Sanko Library attached to the Sanko Cultural Research Institute is a private library
located in Shibakoen, Minato-ku, Tokyo. I had heard for some time that this library would be
holding an editorathon in February 2023, and thankfully I had been invited, but due to heavy
snowfall it was postponed and the actual event was held on June 9th. For a comprehensive
report on the event , please see the summary compiled by Eugene Ormandy here.

Wikipedia editing event WikipediaSanko held at Sanko Library

About Sankang Library

A staff member introduced us to the old photographs displayed in the lobby. The origin of this
library is the private Ohashi Library, which opened in Kojimachi in 1902, and has a history of
over 120 years. At that time, many libraries still had closed stacks, and people were able to
retrieve books through a counter, but before the war, Ohashi Library adopted an open stack
system, allowing visitors to walk in front of the bookshelves and directly select books. It
seems that it was. Old photographs show staff peeking out from behind the bookshelves.
When a visitor pushed a book on the shelf and signaled, a staff member retrieved the book
from the back of the shelf and processed it.

When you enter the library, you will find attractive old books lined up as you would expect.
The library is divided into several rooms, and thanks to the classification and arrangement,
each room feels unique. One room is filled with magazines, another with banned books, and
another with classic books. It also contained in-train information magazines published by
Seibu Railway. This is probably what should be called gray literature, and what remains is
valuable.

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 A shelf with Seibu Railway booklets and other items.
[[ File:Stacks of Sanko Library 11.jpg ]] Uraniwa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Back in the reading room, it's time to work. I couldn't find any articles to edit, so I decided to
focus on taking photos of out-of-copyright materials and uploading them to Wikimedia
Commons. Classic books on Edo cuisine were lined up on the table. I took four of those
illustrations with my favorite camera and tried to publish them, but there were a lot of choices
involved, and even while I was compiling this article, the format of the metadata went
through many changes. Ta.

The following is a look back at the work that took place over the course of about a month,
starting from the day of the editorathon. Although it includes some content that requires a
certain amount of prior knowledge, I will try to explain it as simply as possible.

Author confirmation and registration

First of all, we need to confirm who the author is. The treatment of the copyright protection
period changes depending on whether the author's name is disclosed or whether the work is
treated as an "unknown work." In the former case, it is calculated from the death of the author,
and in the latter case, it is calculated from the publication (publication) of the work. Although
it is unlikely that the copyright protection period for classic books from the Edo period
continues, it is still better to reveal the artist's name and provide it as metadata.

The artist's name is often written on the endpaper or the door, but if it is not there, you will
have to rely on the seal that accompanies the painting. In one of the cookbooks, ``Ryoritsu'' (I
may have overlooked it), I can't find the artist's name, so when I uploaded the ``Yaozentei''
drawing included in the book, I changed the mark of the drawing to ``Shoshin''. , and because
I saw the same seal and the signature ``Kosai's writing'' on the picture on the previous page, I
registered it as belonging to Masami Kitao, also known as Shoma Kusaikata .

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 Illustration of ``Yaozentei'' by Shoma Kuwagata (Masami Kitao). There is a "Shoshin"
mark on the upper left.
[[ File:Yaozen, 1822.jpg ]] via Wikimedia Commons

If the author is registered as a Wikidata item, you can use the {{Creator}} infobox to enter
file information and link it. For example, Masami Kitao's ID registered in Wikidata is
Q3197564 , so you can easily refer to the author information by entering
{{Creator|Wikidata=Q3197564}} on the file page.

However, this time I took a slightly different approach. Commons has a namespace called
Creator, and if you create a page like [[ Creator:Kitao Masayoshi ]] and paste {{Creator}} and
fill in each item, you can create a page like {{Creator:Kitao Masayoshi ]]. You can load it as a
template by writing }}. This means that each creator can prepare a ready-made infobox.
During the work, I discovered that there was an unexpectedly rich selection of ready-made
works by ukiyo-e artists, and this time I would like to introduce not only {{Creator:Kitao
Masayoshi}}, {{Creator:Keisai Eisen}} , {{Creator:Utagawa} Kunisada (I)}} was used.
When I checked the history, all three were created by a Brooklyn Museum bot (
User:BrooklynMuseumBot ) as early as July 2010. As expected, GLAM's cooperation is very
reassuring.

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 {{Creator:Kitao Masayoshi}} expanded. Version as of July 4, 2023, 02:38.

Granting a license

The pages of the classic books that I photographed this time were curved and swelled, and the
quality was not such that I could call them ``duplicates.'' Commons ' {{PD-Art}} etc. can be
used for ``faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works of art that are in the public domain
using photography,'' and I wonder if this group of images fits this? When I think about it, I
have a lot of doubts. I scoured Commons to see if there were any examples of files that were
simply photographed rather than faithfully reproduced, and I found this file created with the
support of Wikimedia Switzerland.[[File:Leonardo da vinci , La gioconda, 1503-06 circa.jpg
]] was found. Although it is a photo of Mona Lisa that includes a frame, it is not treated as a
mere reproduction of the work Mona Lisa, whose copyright has expired, and a CC license has
been granted by the photographer. In the end, I decided to follow suit and introduce {{Art
Photo}} . With this template, you can specify separate licenses for the photo you took and the
work that is the subject of that photo. For the former, we chose {{CC-zero}} (CC0, Creative
Commons 0) without hesitation and decided to provide it as a public domain (PD).

For the latter, that is, the license for the "Yaozentei" drawing that was the subject of the
photograph, it would be appropriate to include {{PD-Japan}} and {{PD-US-expired}}
together. There are two things to keep in mind when granting a license to a two-dimensional
art work whose copyright has expired.

One is not to choose {{CC-zero}} lightly. This can only be applied when the author has made
the work PD of his or her own will, and would not be appropriate for works that have been
made PD regardless of the author's will due to the expiration of the protection period.
Japanese calligraphy and paintings whose copyright protection period has expired must be
marked with {{PD-Japan}} (photos must be marked with {{PD-Japan-oldphoto}} ).

Second, Commons requires that in addition to the country of origin of the work, it also states
its copyright status in the United States. In my original work, I only had {{PD-Japan}}, and I
later realized that I was missing the latter, so I added {{PD-US-expired}}. {{PD-Japan}}
clearly states that "a United States PD tag must also be affixed." Please be sure to read the
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copyright tag carefully (by the way, for {{PD-Japan-oldphoto}}, the copyright of the file to
 which it applies has automatically expired in the United States, so there is no need to include
it. is).

Specifying bibliographic information

The last step is to enter the original text. I wasn't familiar with the know-how for writing
bibliographic information for classic books, so on the day I just wrote something like ``Sanko
Library's ``Edo Fashion Ryoritsu'' (authored by Yaozen). I was also worried about whether to
use external titles or internal titles for the book title, and I returned home in a state where I
couldn't sort it out, but later, I remembered the existence of the Japanese book database
published by the National Institute of Informatics and pasted it as an external link. I attached
it. This database covers classic books published in Japan, and an ID is assigned for each
location, so if you link this, you can even find an individual named ``Cooking Connoisseur''
held in the Sanko Library. Identification possible. The Kokusho database only went into
operation in March 2023, but it will continue to be widely used both inside and outside the
Wikimedia movement.

This completes the work for now. The uploaded classical book images are [[
File:Funabashiya, 1841.jpg ]] / [[ File:Ikitsuki Geitazaemon.jpg ]] / [[ File:Ikitsuki
Geitazaemon in Osaka.jpg ]] / [[ File:Yaozen, 1822 .jpg ]] 4 points.

in conclusion

It was the first time for me to have the valuable experience of photographing a classic book
by hand and posting it on Commons. Although I have not mastered the basic techniques of
photographing and scanning images and am still immature, I think it was a good exercise in
the techniques of adding metadata. Discovering the template {{Art Photo}} and the richness
of the Creator namespace was a major accomplishment. In the future, I would like to further
research on how to name files in order to make the subject of the file easier to understand and
find.

In addition, during the process, I rediscovered some of the activities of the Brooklyn Museum,
and felt that collaboration with GLAM would greatly contribute to the Wikimedia movement.
The cooperation of everyone at Sanko Library is equally encouraging, and we intend to
support the further development of WikipediaSanko and similar efforts in the future.

No comments Meta

Comments are closed automatically after 21 days. Posted in GLAM , Partnerships & Events

Tagged Japan , Library , Student

Wikipedian Community in Waseda Uni
Tokyo , Wikimedia Commons

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Photo credits
Stacks_of_Sanko_Library_11 Yaozen_1822 Image-2023-07-05-at-
Uraniwa 16.35
CC BY-SA 4.0

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