Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia Katerina Zareva , Rositsa Gyurova Educational Department in Sofia Zoo Vassia Atanassova Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group
Sofia Zoo Powered by WikimediaKaterina Zareva , Rositsa Gyurova Educational Department in Sofia ZooVassia AtanassovaWikimedians of Bulgaria User Group
Joint Project with Bulgarian Wikipedia “Sofia Zoo Powered by Wikimedia”
• Funded by Wikimedia Foundation Project start: 1 May 2012 Project end: 30 April 2013
• Main goals Creation of new information plates for the exhibited biological species in Bulgarian and English, containing multilingual QR codes to the full Wikipedia articles with detailed information.Contributions to the Bulgarian version of Wikipedia with the creation and improvement of articles about the exhibited biological species.
Project funding• The whole budget of the project:
BGN 8467.00 EUR 4330.00
• Budget sourcesWikimedia Foundation grantVoluntary co-funding
• Budget allocationMetal constructions for holding the platesPrinting the PVC plates Brochures and promotion
64%
36%
5
57%38%
Voluntary labor• Plates design: Donated by Edouard Loigerot• Plates content: Staff of Educational Dept. of Sofia Zoo• Wikipedia articles: Wikipedian community• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, Zoo Staff and Volunteer
Photographers, Fotolia.com
The new information plates in Sofia Zoo
The new information plates in Sofia ZooAquarium and terrarium plates
The QR codes
• Multilingual QRpedia codes to Wikipedia articlesThe code is generated with the web application http://qrpedia.org/ starting from the Bulgarian article BUT using the species’ Latin name: http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varecia_rubra which redirects to the Cyrillic one.
Red ruffled lemurbg: Червен гривест лемур
lat: Varecia rubra
The generated QR code is linkedsimultaneously to all versions of this articlein different language versions of Wikipedia.
It is opened to the user in the languagetheir mobile device is set on.
The QR codes in action
Project Results• Designed, printed and installed information plates: 260+.• Improved Wikipedia articles: 110+ • New Wikipedia articles: 150+• Ongoing collaboration
Project Impact• Stabilizing the infrastructure in the Sofia Zoo
• Increasing the educational value of the Zoo
• Increasing the involvement of the Wikipedian community with the Zoo
• Improving the quality of Wikipedia (and generally, online) information in Bulgarian related to animal species
• Encouraging innovation by using modern information and communication technologies in the Zoo–visitors interaction
Future plansWhat’s next?
• Arrangement of a free WiFi zone across the Sofia Zoo
• Evaluation of the the impact of the plates• Analysis of visitors’ experience • Analysis of QR code performance• Analysis of Wikipedia readers’ interest in articles for the
exhibited species
Challenges
• No QRpedia statistics, only statistics for articles visits: seasonality, trends, etc. • Raw data: http://github.com/bmanolov/wikimedia/blob/master/wikipedia/stats-
for-zoo-species/view_stats.csv
2010-01 2011-01 2012-01 2013-01 2014-01 2015-010
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Ягуар / Jaguar / Panthera onca
Sharing our experienceIf you want to have similar project or QR codes in your zoo:
• Produce multilingual QR codes to Wikipedia using http://qrpedia.org (only this application maintains the multilingual interwiki links).
• For non-Latin-based languages, use the redirecting Latin names for better QR code raster and easier use.
• For Wikimedia Foundation funding, first contact for support your local Wikipedia community http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG
Further information:
• Project: http://bit.ly/wikizoo• Report: http://bit.ly/wikizoo-report• BG Coordination page: http://bit.ly/bgwpzoo
www.zoosofia.eu