Noticias
The Department of Culture and the Wikimedia Foundation signed a collaboration agreement
March 13, 2018The Department of Culture signed a collaboration agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation, based in San Francisco, to promote the dissemination of cultural content through this platform. The agreement is celebrated as part of the Digital Agenda, whose main point Preservation and Promotion of Culture is aimed at increasing the use of digital tools among the Mexican population.
The agreement was signed by Alejandro Salafranca Vázquez, general director of Information and Communication Technologies of the Department of Culture and Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and as witnesses, Gemi José González López, consul general of Mexico in San Francisco, and Iván Martínez, director of the Mexican chapter of Wikimedia.
Wikimedia Foundation is the parent organization of Wikipedia, its most successful project and one of the ten most visited websites in the world. Wikimedia promotes the Mexico program in Wikipedia and includes Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Incubator, Labs and Meta, in Spanish and in native languages about Mexico’s cultural and artistic heritage.
According to Alejandro Salafranca, this agreement is of enormous importance for the agency since "the joint strategies that will result from this signing will bring Mexico's cultural heritage closer to a greater number of Mexicans, as well as to citizens of other countries".
Among the strategic projects that are part of this agreement is the development of the Digital Repository of Mexico's Cultural Heritage, which will integrate the different digital collections of the Department of Culture under standardized schemes of interoperability and free access, including those of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Through the link with the program Mexico in Wikipedia, the work done from Wikimedia will enrich and enhance the contents of the Repository, which will also be available in the free database of Wikimedia, Wikidata and the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, so this alliance promotes access to both platforms and increases knowledge about Mexico’s cultural heritage.
The Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco, Gemi José González, emphasized the enormous work of the Government of the Republic of Mexico in building a National Digital Strategy with programs as important as Mexico Conectado.
Katherine Maher recognized the importance of the Mexico chapter and the historical character of the signing of this agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation, which conceives knowledge as a service and seeks equity of knowledge in the world.
In 2015, the Mexican chapter of Wikipedia and the then National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA) signed a collaboration agreement that considered a first stage of collaboration with different cultural venues such as the Vasconcelos Library, the Cineteca Nacional and the Centro de Cultura Digital, among others.
Mexico,Distrito Federal