English: Presentation during the conference GLAM-WIKI 2015 - http://www.glamwiki.nl

Welcome by Lily Knibbeler, Acting Director General, Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Text of speech:

Dear Wikimedians, dear Wikipedians, dear participants, On behalf of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek I would like to welcome you all to GLAMwiki 2015. We are very pleased to be one of the hosts for this event and to have you all here for the next two days. I’m very happy – I might even say ‘impressed’ - to see so many people spending their free weekends for this gathering.

As the national library of the Netherlands, the social value of the KB is about bringing people and information together. It is our very core business to provide access to books, newspapers, magazines and other publications for every Dutch citizen, as free and open as possible. During the next few years, the KB will provide a new structure for the term ‘national library’ as, more than ever before, we aim to create a platform where people and information come together. And this ambition is something we can only realize by cooperating with other organizations and people.

This collaboration really should be a two-way thing, I believe there is a lot the KB can learn from actively observing, participating and listening to other organizations and communities. We see that YOU - the people who are working on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia-projects have been doing a more than excellent job for the last 14 years to in fact work on a very similar ambition (as the KB); that is to make information as open & free as possible, and to share it with as many people as possible. And you have been highly successful in this; I think the fact that more than 70% of Dutch people use Wikipedia at least one time per week speaks for itself. In that sense I believe there is a lot the KB can learn from the Wikimedia-community.

But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because the KB started becoming a part of the Dutch Wikimedia-community only two years ago. Back then we were still very new to this Wiki-world, and as you all know, Wikipedia is not always logical for newcomers. But thanks to the openness and support of the community we felt very welcome from the start. We took some small first steps by organizing a “Behind the scenes” tour for Wikipedians on a saturday afternoon, together with our neighbours, the National Archives. This turned out to be a very positive experience, judging from the number of participants and the feedback we received afterwards. This gave us the right push to scale things up: in October 2013 we and the NA became the first organizations in the Netherlands to appoint a Wikipedian-in-Residence (Hay Kranen)

He has taught us not only how this Wiki-universe works and how we can put our rich collections at the service of Wikipedia, but also how we, as more traditional organizations, can work together with the peer-to-peer approach of the Wikimedia-movement. This project has overall been a very positive experience for us, after 1 year of Hay’s residency we can truly say that the KB has gained enough Wiki-wisdom to stand on its own feet. We are now in a very good position for the future, but at the same time realize there is still lots to learn from more experienced Wikipedians.

This year the KB will continue to support and participate in multiple Wikimedia projects. Among others, we will run a project to raise more awareness of Wikipedia in our public libraries; this is important, as over 4 million people in the Netherlands use these libraries every year. Also we will do over 10 image donations to Wikimedia Commons and we will run a project to describe all 1200 Dutch illegal newspapers from World War 2 on Wikipedia (you can hear more about that in the next session in this auditorium). And we will continue to support members of the Wiki-community in their activities and meetings, for instance by being hosts of events like GLAMwiki 2015.

I would like to wrap up. First I would like to thank YOU - all Wikipedia and Wikimedia-volunteers - very much for all the work that you’ve done over the last years in bringing ‘our’ national heritage to millions of people. I don’t merely say that on behalf of my organisation, I think I could also say that on behalf of all Dutch citizens; without you, a lot of people in the Netherlands and across the globe would not have known as much about Dutch history, society and culture as they do now. Secondly, I would like to thank Wikimedia Netherlands, the initiators and organizers of this event, for inviting the KB to host the first 2 days this event, I’m glad we could help.

Many thanks, have a fruitful and productive three days!