Wikipedia:GLAM/British Library/IDP

The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) group at the British Library are working on a program to improve and support Wikipedia articles related to Central Asian history and archaeology in general, as well as on the specific sites and artefacts covered by the IDP.

The IDP hosted a one-day workshop at the University of Nottingham on Friday 8th March. The event was run by Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing), and involved members of the IDP group at the British Library as well as student groups from both Nottingham and Birmingham.

It was hosted in the GIS Graduate Computer Laboratory in the Clive Granger Building, from 11am-5pm. An overview of existing online Silk Road resources available through IDP and other sites were followed by a short introduction to Wikipedia, its community and its background - taking place at 11am, 1pm, 3pm as needed. They were followed by a hands-on session to give experience using the site and working with other editors.

The IDP group at the British Library ran a multi-day, multi-language, editing programme from 23rd to 26th October 2012 focused on the broad theme of Central Asian history and archaeology. As well as contributions from IDP staff and interested Wikipedians, we had participation from several external academics and three groups of students.

During the event, we overhauled and reorganised coverage of archaeological sites in the Taklamakan, building up an overall list of sites, and created/rewrote several articles on individual figures linked to the past expeditions.

New: read our report on the sessions!

The scope of this project covers a wide range of articles, from broad overview topics down to narrow articles on a single site or person.

The project's focus includes the broad topic of the Silk Road as well as, potentially, overview articles such as Archaeology in China or Archaeology in Tibet.

The main article here is the extensive List of archaeological sites of the Taklamakan and Lop Desert, which lists every major site in the Tarim Basin. The main sites are near Khotan and Dunhuang, and include major sites such as the Mogao Caves, the Astana Cemetery, or the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves.

Individual articles created as part of the project include sites such as Farhad-beg-yailaki and Mazar Tagh.

The project is built around the Dunhuang Manuscripts, which include a number of unique artefacts such as the Diamond Sutra (the earliest known printed book), the Dunhuang Go Manual (the earliest book on the game of Go), or the Dunhuang Star Chart (the oldest complete star atlas).

The collection also covers prominent works such as the Old Tibetan Chronicle and the Tibetan Annals.

The collection covers material in a wide range of languages and scripts, ranging from the well-documented Sanskrit and Classical Tibetan to less well-known languages such as Saka (Khotanese) or Tangut.

A full list of online IDP resources is here, and a collection of uploaded files on Commons is here. If you think the group can provide any images from their collections to help with articles, please do ask - contact Andrew Gray for details.