Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland Museum/Draft Tools and Resources

Auckland Museum Cultural Permissions Guidelines

Auckland Museum’s collections are open access by default, closed by exception. These exceptions include taonga Māori and Pacific collections. When uploading content to Wikimedia Commons, our staff will work within the guidelines of the Auckland Museum’s cultural permissions policy as outlined in He Korahi Māori: A Māori Dimension. To respect Māori cultural values, images relating to and depicting Māori subjects and content will not be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, regardless of copyright status. This approach also applies to images that depict Pacific subjects and content, in line with the Museum’s Teu Le Va: the Pacific Dimension at Auckland Museum.

These guidelines are underpinned by our role as kaitiaki (guardians) to operate with good faith and respect.

GLAM x WIKI Guidebook

The Glam Wiki guidebook is a beginner’s resource for GLAMs to learn about Wikimedia platforms and how to best utilise these online resources. It covers the basics and guidelines of use of Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, Wikimedia’s role in GLAMs and how to get started.

Wikimedia Commons for GLAMs

Auckland Museum is committed to sharing content that is Open Access and culturally permissable, and part of this effort includes the sharing of our content on image sharing platforms for the benefit of public usage. Alongside Flickr, Flickr Commons, Pinterest, Unsplash and other image sharing sites, Wikimedia Commons is an important digital partnership for our institution to contribute to as part of our digital partnerships strategy. To ensure the sustainability of our contributions we have developed scalable and efficient workflows for metadata management and image uploading in bulk: a process commonly called Batch Uploading.

PIDs, Linked Open Data (LOD), and Data Roundtripping

Auckland Museum’s approach to digital partnerships is grounded in a philosophy of connected, sustainable, and transparent data sharing. Rather than treating each upload or dataset as an isolated contribution, we view every platform (Wikimedia Commons, GBIF, BHL, Pinterest, and others) as part of a wider linked data ecosystem. Each image, record, or dataset is connected through persistent identifiers (PIDs), as well as bi-directional data linking between our source systems and external platforms. Where possible, we integrate identifiers from other digital partnerships that host the same material, ensuring that our contributions reinforce, rather than fragment, the broader web of cultural data.

We do not advocate for data dumping or the dissemination of dissociated information detached from its source context. Our processes emphasise metadata stewardship; ensuring that attribution, provenance, and object relationships are maintained throughout. By reusing cleaned metadata and digitised images across multiple platforms, we operate sustainably and amplify the utility of our data. This interconnected approach to publishing acknowledges that our work contributes to an open, evolving knowledge network, rather than a closed or self-contained system.

Glossary

Linked Open Data

PIDs

Bi-directional Data Linking

Attribution

Metadata

How to set up a Batch Uploading Project

Documentation and Project Pages

Create an institution/project template

Metadata Mapping and Crosswalks for Commons and SDC

Batch Uploading Tools and Workflows

Commons Categorisation for GLAMs

Reporting and Engagement Insight

Our Contributions to Wikimedia Commons 2024-2025

Templates Created

The following custom templates were created or significantly edited to support Auckland Museum uploads:

{{AWMM}} – Institutional attribution template
{{AWMMHumanHistory}} – Template for Human History collections
{{AWMMDocumentaryHeritage}} – Template for Documentary Heritage items
{{AWMMNaturalSciences}} – Template for Natural Science specimens

All templates are documented under: Category:Auckland War Memorial Museum templates

Commons Categories Created

Each upload batch is organized into its own Commons category and linked to its corresponding Wikidata item.

Total Uploads

Current Uploads Total: There are 182,726 files in Images from Auckland Museum, as of November 2025. Following the development of the revised Batch Uploading methodology we have contributed 4,465 files.

These images span across 19th and 20th century photography, object catalogue photography, biodiversity heritage illustrations, and official historic museum documents
All uploads are tagged with source metadata and structured data where possible

Direct Image Extraction for Commons as an Online Repository

In addition to serving as a long-term preservation and access platform, Wikimedia Commons functions as a practical image repository for derivative workflows. Auckland Museum has developed an approach demonstrating how Commons URLs can be repurposed for reuse across other digital platforms, reducing duplication of effort and ensuring a single, openly licensed master file remains at the center of distribution.

By using structured Commons URLs for each file, images can be referenced directly in bulk uploads to other platforms (such as Pinterest) without re-hosting or recompression. This method has been particularly valuable for GLAM organisations that do not yet have an internal API capable of delivering high-resolution images at scale. The process leverages the openness of Commons to streamline cross-platform publishing.

Detailed guidance on this workflow is available here:

OpenRefine Direct Image Extraction - demonstrates how to generate direct file URLs for Commons images suitable for reuse or export workflows.

Roundtrip Workflow: Uploading Auckland Museum Images from Wikimedia Commons to Pinterest - outlines the CSV format, field mapping, and metadata retention approach for reusing Commons images in external environments.

Together these examples highlight Commons’ capacity to act as a sustainable digital infrastructure layer, bridging GLAM repositories, external platforms for ease of distribution and proliferation of contributions to Open Access cultural data no matter what a GLAM's budget, resourcing or existing technical infrastructure might be.