UTA Libraries has contributed over 1,000 images to Wikimedia Commons

The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections.

On November 24, the UTA Libraries officially uploaded its 1,000th image to Wikimedia Commons as part of a cooperation project. The collaboration began in May 2019 with the contribution of individual digitized maps from the UTA Libraries Special Collections. To date, 50 digitized maps have been contributed. Since then, three major collections have also been contributed, with the entirety of their digitized images added to Wikimedia Commons: the UTA Photograph Collection (244 photographs), the UTA News Service Photograph Collection (189 photographs), and the Jenkins Garrett Texas Postcard Collection (470 postcards). A number of smaller collections have also been contributed to Wikimedia Commons in whole or in part. These include, most notably: the Clarence Denman Papers (16 photographs and documents), the Pancho Medrano Papers (15 photographs and documents), and the Emerson Emory Papers (11 photographs).

As of November 30, the 1,011 total Libraries images contributed to Wikimedia Commons have been used in Wikipedia articles a total of 631 times. Furthermore, 242 individual images from those contributed have been used, representing 23.9% of all images uploaded. The plurality of the 631 usages have been in the English Wikipedia, where there have been a total of 299 such usages. The other Wikimedia projects in which the most Libraries images have been used include Wikipedias in Spanish (60 total image usages), German (30), French (29), Japanese (20), Italian (18), Finnish (13), and Portuguese (12), as well as Wikidata (19).

Through October, the last month for which statistics are available, all of these Libraries images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons have been viewed a total of 18.7 million times on the various Wikipedia articles to which they have been added. English Wikipedia typically provides the plurality if not the majority of total views (although sometimes Spanish edges it out), while Spanish, German, and French Wikipedias typically account for the second through fourth most-viewed projects in terms of Libraries images. In total, Libraries-contributed images average a total of 1 to 1.5 million views each month on all Wikimedia projects, although on four occasions they have exceeded 1.5 million views and on one occasion also exceeded 2 million views. In total, through October 2020, there have been 11.1 million views of English Wikipedia articles with Libraries images on them as well as 6.1 million views on Spanish Wikipedia, 738,000 on German Wikipedia, and 217,000 views on French Wikipedia.

Articles of interest in the top languages vary somewhat, with some topics such as manifest destiny and Texas being popular across all languages. Others vary considerably, with biographies on Geraldine Ferraro, Cal Ripken Jr., and Myrtle Corbin being popular in English; articles such as those on Mexican independence, Mexican Texas, and Texas annexation being very popular on Spanish Wikipedia; and articles on Texas cities such as New Braunfels and Fredericksburg being popular on German Wikipedia.

In celebration of reaching 1,000 Libraries images on Wikimedia Commons, here is a selection of some of the most striking images contributed so far, organized by their collection of origin: