Welcome to iCommons’ iHeritage project. Thanks for stopping by.

As part of the celebrations around Heritage Day in September 2007, iCommons has launched a project called iHeritage. The aim is simple – to build an online repository of South African culture and heritage – as lived in the day-to-day lives of ordinary South Africans, to be added to the growing collection of indigenous content on Wikimedia Commons.

On 23 September iCommons held an iHeritage Day content sprint at Rosebank Mall in Johannesburg. We digitised, captioned, translated and recorded South Africa’s memories for the benefit of a shared heritage, documented by all our country’s people.

The results:
380 images tagged as iHeritage in Flickr;
18 images uploaded to WikiMedia Commons;
Approximately 15 audio memories, soon to be uploaded to
WikiMedia Commons.

We were amazed at how willing South Africans were to share their memories with us. We heard stories about practicing Zulu traditions in the city of Jozi, about the history of a street in 1950 that is now a bustling business centre, and about the adjustments of a Dutch immigrant family in South Africa.

We’d like to thank all those who participated in the event, and would like to extend our very special thanks to the iHeritage volunteers:

The translation divas			The network geeks
Our translation volunteers with Wendy. Tandeka (front) translated content uploaded to WikiMedia Commons into Zulu, Oceania (back) translated content into Sotho, and Vicky (middle) translated content into Xhosa.			Dominic (left) and Adam (far right), helped us out with getting access to the web. Pictured here is the moment of truth when Rebecca and JC realise we are connected - yay!

We would also like to thank photographer, Neil Kirby for taking fantastic pictures of the event.

The iHeritage day sprint brought together a treasure chest of South African memories, that can become fuller and fuller every day. The good news is that if you couldn’t make it to the event you can still contribute your memories to this project. Just keep reading…

How do I get involved?
We want your memories. School photos, old posters, interviews with your granny, holiday snaps, wedding pictures, memories of old Joburg, bus tickets, old band demos – all those bits and pieces that lie around at the bottom of your drawers, that you can’t quite bring yourself to throw away. We’re giving you the chance to put them online, where they will be stored forever on the Internet, the biggest desk-drawer in the world. As long as it can be digitised, and uploaded, we want it.

You can upload your content to either Wikimedia Commons, or, if you want, to Flickr. Either way, you’ll need to categorise or tag your contribution with the following tags: iHeritage and South Africa. That way, people will be able to find your contribution easily. You can use other tags as well (describing the places, people and events in your photo/audio/video) but those two are the most important. For a very helpful how to, have a look at Wikimedia Commons’ “Perfect upload� page or go to the special iCommons iHeritage Start Page on Wikimedia Commons.

Why are you putting the content on Wikimedia Commons?
Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free content images, sound and other media files. It’s a sister-project to Wikipedia, which is fast becoming the first place people go to find out about stuff. We like to think of material on Wikimedia Commons as the illustrations for Wikipedia articles. We like the idea that anyone looking up South Africa on Wikipedia will be able to see and hear and watch the material that will come out of this project.

We also wanted to put the content somewhere free and easy to find, so that learners and teachers will have easy access. And, quite frankly, we couldn’t think of better place to put the wonderful images and sounds of South Africa.

Right, I’ve loaded it up. But I’m no fool. What about the licence?
Can’t get anything past you, can we? You’re right, you need to think about how you want to licence your contribution. if you’re loading it onto Wikimedia Commons, your work will need to be licensed under either: Creative Commons Attribution; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike or a GFDL licence, or it must be in the Public Domain.

If you are loading your content onto Flickr, you will also need to choose from the range of possible licences that Flickr supports.

You guys are amazing!
Thanks. We like you too. If you have any questions or suggestions, drop us an email: iheritage@icommons.org

Sponsors

Special thanks to the following iHeritage day sponsors: