Vysotsky was the author of the first "Serendipity" article in the Signpost in October 2021 and has now written fourteen editions of this column, more than half of them. The first article was about how Mr.Nostalgic had uploaded over 350,000 photographs to Commons including one that became a Serbian postage stamp. Mr.Nostalgic now has well over two million Commons uploads and Vysotsky continues with a much bigger story. – S

Working with Wikipedia sometimes gives you a glimpse into an unknown world. I had never heard of Madeleine Didion, a 19th century millionaire from Nancy, when I found her portrait in Commons. At the age of 15 Madeleine began working as an embroiderer. Whitework embroidery was booming business in Nancy around 1800. Ten years later Madeleine started her own embroidery workshop, to be able to support her disabled brother. She made the embroidery into a huge success: two years before her early death she sold the company (which started with 800 francs) for 250,000 francs. When she died, at the age of 37, she left her fortune (and a washhouse and a mill) to the city of Nancy. The money was used to support the schooling of young orphaned embroiderers.

Another glimpse into the unknown came from a portrait of Takashima Hokkai, a botanist and painter from Japan studying and working in Lyon between 1885 and 1889. On the website The protagonists of the École de Nancy Takashima's influence on French painters as Louis Hestaux and Camille Martin is described. Originally sent to France in 1885 by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Takashima was trained as a botanist and illustrator, but later became a painter.

Images from university collections can sometimes be a valuable addition to Wiki. It is important to not only look at artistic or historical value of a collection, but to keep in mind the added value to Wikipedia. Rare and special collections have added value, as do images of lesser known persons.

Dutch volunteer Mr.Nostalgic added 98,656 images from Leuven University Libraries to Wikimedia Commons in 2025.

Among these images were also 22,000 images of glass slides and 16,000 postcards. The other 60,000 images are mainly portraits, prints and photos of important persons from Belgium and Europe. There were loads of prints of kings, dukes, popes, cardinals and queens – but luckily also many portraits of artists and other interesting people. These 100,000 images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons contain diverse subjects. The images can be found in relevant categories at Commons.

Several of these images are quite rare. There are in fact several dozen images from Leuven that are unique. There were no images of the depicted persons available in Wiki until the Leuven images came along. A dozen examples: images of the Belgian painter François-Antoine Bossuet, English diplomat Jerome Weston, 2nd Earl of Portland, Scottish politician Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning, Belgian writer Jan Ferguut, Belgian painter Jean Baptiste van Eycken, microbiologist Évariste Warlomont, astronomer Ernest Quetelet, liturgist Claude de Vert, French general Hyacinthe Despinoy, French painter Guillaume Boichot, mathematician Guillaume Le Blond, politician Georges Grimard and politician Arthur Meulemans – all unique images. These images are now available in Wikipedia thanks to Leuven Libraries and Mr.Nostalgic.

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  Hyacinthe Despinoy
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  François-Antoine Bossuet
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  Gertrude of Saxony
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  Jan Ferguut
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  Georges Grimard

Usage of this collection is really good. Well over 1,000 images from Leuven are used 3,400 times in all Wikipedia language versions. Some images are used more than 10 times: Eliza Haywood, Louise Van den Plas, Richard Bentley and others. From the collection of glass slides the images of antiquities are popular: Tomb of Tutankhamun and statues of Venus but then also College Hall in Philadelphia, der Breite Weg in Magdeburg, Deir el-Medina and the woolly mammoth. From the postcard collection some images stand out: the Italian Pavillion Pavillon at the World Expo in 1910 and Château d'Elegem, Dilbeek.

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  Charles-Michel de l'Épée (sign language!)
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  Louise Van den Plas
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  Italian Pavillion Brussels
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  Eliza Haywood
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  Tomb of Tutankhamun

During the check of the descriptions and during the categorization of the images I also found a lot of incomplete and even some wrong descriptions ("Venili" instead of "Verdi"!). Remarks and suggestions are always sent to the librarians in Leuven. The descriptions of the original are then improved by staff from Leuven Libraries. As I was a librarian myself, I know how useful suggestions to improve metadata can be.

The following famous Belgians do have an article in the English, German or Chinese Wikipedia, but NOT in the Dutch – or French language Wikipedia. Composer Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul, painters Alfred Duriau & Henri Van Haelen, playwright Jan Frans Cammaert, writer Adolphe Mathieu, librettist Auguste Baron; botanists Martin Martens, Alexandre Louis Simon Lejeune, Richard Courtois, Eugène Coemans, Victor Grégoire; historians Antoine Schayes, Guillaume Arendt; medic Ernest Masoin, Liesbet Geris; entomologist (Luik) Henri-Maurice Gaëde, mathematician Alexis Timmermans, engineer Amaat Dumon, general Guillaume-Adolphe Nerenburger, nun Agnes Baliques and smartest Belgian of all time ("optimus doctissimusque Belgarum") Charles De Langhe. What are we waiting for?

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  Agnes Baliques
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  Jan Frans Cammaert
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  Charles De Langhe ("smartest Belgian of all time")
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  Auguste Baron
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  Amaat Dumon