Involving people in this participative process means also to increase the number of real visitors in museums. That idea stimulated the project “Archeowiki”.
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the project involving six museums in Lombardia, Wikimedia Italia and some social and cultural associations (working with disabled people, aged people and students), sponsored by a grant made available from Fondazione Cariplo.
An initial lack of archaeological contents on Wikipedia pages - due to absence of digital-archaeological-experts able to contribute the archaeological sections and difficulties in finding relevant and reliable information on these topics - motivated the realization of this project.
The project favoured the digitization of about a thousand of images and documents belonging to museums involved in Archeowiki.
One of the action of project is the realization of “Wikigite” (WikiTrips). Wikigite consists of a guided tour through the museums’ archaeological collections (http://wlm.wikimedia.it/wiki/WikiGite), followed by a workshop hold by an archaeologist and a Wikipedia editor, with the aim of teaching to edit cultural contents on Wikipedia and, at the same time, to upgrade the free contents previously digitized by museums part of the project. Wikigite are currently ongoing, offering a didactical activity specifically designed for students, blind people and aged people.
Wikipedia expert editors helped in creation of virtuous alphabetization process, by tutoring both teachers and students on how to co-write pages in Wikipedia, in particular on cultural subjects.