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Collaboration with Wikimedia: German Federal Archive makes 100,000 photos freely available

On 4 December 2008, the German Federal Archive and Wikimedia Germany announced plans to collaborate. The Federal Archive, which is under the administrative control of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media is to make 100,000 digitised photos available free of charge under a Creative Commons Licence (CC-by-sa). The images will be uploaded to the freely accessible media database Wikimedia Commons where, for example, the images for all Wikipedia language versions are centrally stored. In this way, the Federal Archive will promote open access to cultural goods, as prescribed in the Federal Archives Act.

The Federal Archive will also benefit from the collaboration because Wikipedia volunteers will enrich the metadata of the images by linking them to the official Name Authority Files (PNDs) of the German National Library and the regional library networks. Wikipedia Germany has been using these PNDs for several years now.