HR4RS stamp
Xavier Pinilla Bermejo
On April 10, URJC communication faculty professor Florencia Claes was appointed president of the Wikimedia Spain association. Born in Buenos Aires, Florencia has lived in Spain since 2003. She studied Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid and has had a contractual relationship with the URJC since 2017, in which she currently holds the position of assistant professor .
Wikimedia Spain is a non-profit association that promotes free knowledge and Wikimedia projects. The most famous is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia, but Wikimedia Commons, a free audiovisual repository, Wikidata, a structured database, Wikivoyages, Wikinews and several other tools also stand out.
More than 12 years collaborating in Wikimedia
His relationship with Wikipedia dates back to his time at university. In fourth grade, their film history teacher told students that they could get an extra grade point if they completed a Wikipedia article. "I taught myself to edit the articles and I created the article of a German film director named Doris Dörrie and that's how I started 12 years ago."
She also highlights that over more than a decade participating in the project she feels very proud of "establishing relationships with institutions such as the Prado Museum or the National Library and having them join publishing meetings, bearing in mind that they are institutions very entrenched. That all of a sudden we can participate with them, make use of their facilities and that they turn to a new way of sharing knowledge is a very important achievement for Wikimedia Spain”. Finally, she also highlights how proud she is to introduce her students to the world of Wikipedia editing.
Her functions as current president of the entity deal, above all, with defining the strategic lines of work and, in particular, promoting free content. For Florencia, it is very important "that institutions, especially public ones, release their materials, such as the Prado Museum archive or the National Library archive, and that they be accessible to citizens."
One of its main objectives for this year is "to encourage the participation in Wikipedia of the largest number of people and from various parts of the world." This diversity is considered a "transversal axis" of its policy and will help make the encyclopedia articles more complete.
Celebration of its 20th anniversary
Wikimedia Spain also celebrates this May 20 the twentieth anniversary of the launch of Wikipedia in Spanish. For this they have organized a series of virtual events to commemorate this event. To start with, several local Wikimedia chapters and groups of people will launch on the same day a platform in which a series of virtual celebrations will be found.
On the other hand, on May 20 at 19:00 p.m. Wikimedia Spain organizes an online session on Wikipedia in the educational field. This conference will feature the participation of Florencia Claes, president of Wikimedia Spain, and Rubén Ojeda, María Calzada and Carla Fonte Sánchez. A retrospective will be held to commemorate the possibilities of Wikipedia in the classroom and case studies on the use of the free encyclopedia in the educational field will be presented. It will be broadcast live from YouTube Channel of the association.
Finally, the association organizes the Global Editathon on Saturday May 22, a meeting to collectively edit Wikipedia. It will be held online and throughout the day people from different countries will connect to create essential articles that are not yet included in Wikipedia in Spanish. It will start at 17:00 p.m. in Spain and the relay will be passed to several Latin American countries.