Articles by Marina Milella

Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo contest for monuments, organized by the national chapters of Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia is the movement behind several projects like Wikipedia, the most famous among them, through a global collaboration authored by volunteers. Cultural heritage is an important part of the knowledge Wikipedia collects and disseminates. Everybody can contribute sending images: an image is worth a thousand words, in every language at once and local enthusiasts can (re)discover the cultural, historical, or scientific significance of their neighbourhood. Wiki Loves Monuments Italy could be more than a simple contest. Our country, in fact, although it is so rich in historical heritage that it is called a widespread museum, is suffering from disaffection by the general public, partly because of the shortage of funds that makes it difficult to take advantage of this heritage. To protect and enhance it, you have to flip the perspective with which you face the problem from the bottom up, considering the shortage of funds: WLM Italy may therefore be an opportunity to familiarize the common user with archaeological themes and history in general, becoming the main protagonist, promoter of knowledge and defender of the past.

Open content in archaeology requires careful consideration in our field of studies: knowledge conservation is linked to its spread, and for this purpose the web is one of the most useful and important tools. In this paper two open projects are suggested: DecArch, a wiki site dedicated to Roman architectural decoration, and ArcheoCommons, in which archaeologists can publish their research and mark it with one of the Creative Commons licenses.