Press releases/Kennisnet supports Wikimedia Projects

Kennisnet supports Wikimedia Projects
Zoetermeer 26 May, 2005 – The popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the best-known project of the Wikimedia Foundation, will receive technical support from Kennisnet, thus helping the Foundation to achieve its goal of improving the capacity and responsiveness of Wikipedia. The agreement was reached to promote the shared values and educational objectives of Kennisnet and the Wikimedia Foundation.

To mark this cooperation, Kennisnet will be present with the Wikimedia Foundation at the Holland Open conference in Amsterdam on May 31st, 2005 (www.hollandopen.nl). In his keynote address, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and president of the Wikimedia Foundation, will expand on this new partnership.

Kennisnet has found in the Wikimedia Foundation a reliable partner with regard to open content and freely licensed knowledge. The cooperation extends across several projects, including the “Ultimate Wiktionary”, a project for the integration of lexicological content, and a project celebrating the jubilee of Queen Beatrix (www.25jaarbeatrix.kennisnet.nl).

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001. Maintained entirely by volunteers, it is now the world's fastest-growing, most current, and largest encyclopedia, with 1.5 million articles under active development in over 150 languages. People in the Dutch education system indicated that there is a huge demand for the information offered by Wikipedia and that they would benefit from improved service. At this moment, data contained in the various Wikimedia projects is hosted on servers in Florida (USA) and on cache servers in Paris (France), which serve many European countries.

About Kennisnet
Kennisnet is a public Internet organization dedicated to the primary, secondary education and vocational training. Kennisnet provides educational content and information to teachers, pupils and parents. Kennisnet also stimulates the use of ICT in educational processes by providing technical and practical support for several innovative educational aids.

About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit corporation based in Florida, USA. It was founded in 2003 to maintain and develop free-content projects like Wikipedia, and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation relies on donations to ensure availability of all information on a cross-country and cross-language basis. It has national chapters in Germany and France.

Contacts
Contact Kennisnet:
 * Spokesman Kennisnet: Jeroen Borgsteede,
 * Communication department
 * Phone: +31-79 329 5885
 * Email: j.borgsteede@undefinedkennisnet.org
 * http://www.kennisnet.nl

Contact Wikimedia Foundation:
 * Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
 * Phone: +1-727-231-0101
 * Email: info@undefinedwikimedia.org

Press contact in the Netherlands
 * Phone: +31-36-5302874
 * Email: info-nl@undefinedwikimedia.org