Paper short abstract:

This paper shows the increasing importance of websites like Wikimedia Commons for open access to snippets of the African past. Such archival websites also function as a portal, as an aggregator for cooperation and as an open access sharing platform.

Paper long abstract:

Uploading and sharing photographic collections via Wikimedia Commons is a fairly recent but popular development. Wikimedia Commons started in 2004, and now hosts 51 Million "free" images. It is connected to Wikipedia, but also serves as an independent platform. Open access and the possibility of re-usage are key functions.

In this paper, two issues will be addressed: access and copyright & control.

Access: the files in Wikimedia Commons are used across the 300 different language versions of Wikipedia, which amounts to enormous numbers of image views. Many libraries, archives and museums (incl. the Metropolitan Museum and the Dutch National Archives) see their collections used 8 to 100 times more via Wikipedia compared to views on their own websites. The impact on access cannot be underestimated. Including collections about Africa in Commons also helps to fight the under-representation of southern continents in Wikipedia.

Copyright and control: every file in Wikimedia Commons needs to have an open licence (Public Domain or Creative Commons), so that images can be re-used freely, even commercially. In fact, a "donating" person or organization has no control over their "own" images anymore. There is a positive side to this: because anyone can contribute to Commons, the descriptions (metadata) of the images can be improved by anyone.

Some disadvantages of using Wikimedia Commons are also discussed, and some ethical issues will be briefly addressed. Practical examples from donations by the African Studies Centre in Leiden (Sierra Leone 1930s, Guinea Bissau 1970s, Cameroon 2000s) will be shown.