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GLAM/Newsletter/April 2018/Contents/WMF GLAM report

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WMF GLAM report

Wikipedians in Residence and Travel

Have you negotiated a Wikipedian in Residence position?

In addition to documenting, and sharing the stories of Wikimedia communities around the world, the GLAM team is also providing support for core tactics used by Wikimedia community. Thus far, the GLAM team has developed supporting materials for two of the three most common tactics used for GLAM-Wiki collaborations: edit-a-thons (through developing a Wikipedia edit-a-thon training and teaching materials for Wikidata trainings) and batch uploads to commons (ongoing work as part of Structured Data on Commons, including Workflow mapping and research to identify needs of GLAM participants). The next major tactic to build support materials for is Wikipedian in Residence positions.

Wikipedian in Residence positions vary greatly, in terms of the amount of capacity, resources, time, and activities that both the resident and institutional partners leverage. Moreover, there are an increasing body of different roles beyond WIR positions (such as Wikipedia Visiting Scholars, Wikipedia Interns, or other staff roles). Though we don’t think we can adequately synthesize the best practice for doing residencies, because of the wide variety of circumstances involved in those positions, we do think we can create guidance on the process for establishing WIR positions.

To this end: if you have negotiated a Wikipedian in Residence or similar extended position within a GLAM institution in the last 2 years, Alex would like to talk about to you about experience. In a short 30-60 minute conversation, Alex would like to learn what worked, what didn’t, and what kinds of questions you had when creating those roles. We are looking to interview an additional 5 people about this process. If you are interested, please email him at astinson@wikimedia.org.

If you have thoughts about WIR positions, and aren’t ready to do an interview: that’s okay, there will be a brief followup survey, focus on filling in gaps, resources, and recommendations for creating residency roles.

Wikimedia Conference

The WMF GLAM team participated in the Wikimedia Conference and the preceding Learning Days, with several conversations, workshops and presentations, with a focus on:

  • communicating the typical workflows for uploads to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata in a dedicated workshop during Learning Days.
  • During a two-hour workshop, more than 50 participants gathered and brainstormed about potential GLAM pilot projects for Structured Data on Commons. Sandra and the GLAM team will follow up on this in the upcoming months. If you are planning a GLAM-Wiki project on Wikimedia Commons between Autumn 2018 and Summer 2019, and you would like to use structured data there, get in touch with us via sandraf﹫wikimedia.org!
  • We also participated in several workshops and sessions on partnerships, and supporting technical contributors.

Learning about Creative Commons and LD4 communities

In addition to Wikimedia Conference, Alex attended both Creative Commons Global Summit and a meeting of the Mellon- funded “Linked Data for Libraries” working group (also known as LD4 or LD4L). Both meetings proved to be very insightful into the broader opportunities of our work:

  • At the Creative Commons meeting, there was broad conversation about many of the challenges and opportunities that the Wikimedia community faces: including how do we address the lack of diversity in Global movements. In particular, both the keynotes and various well attended sessions as part of the main conference focused on how to work well with the cultural and social needs of marginalized groups. As for GLAM conversations, there were plenty of conversations about the intersection of the work that the GLAM-Wiki community does with the larger community working on Open practices in GLAMs. Look for more on both of these fronts soon.
  • At the LD4 meeting, participants were from (mostly) North American research institutions and European National Libraries. The meeting energetically discussed the technical practicalities of integrating Linked Open Data into Library systems. Included in the discussion were number of different tools and platforms, but the presence of Wikidata was widespread throughout the meeting both in the deliberate invitation of Dan Scott, Stacey Allison-Cassin, Anna St. Onge and Alex Stinson, but also in projects previously undiscussed in the Wikimedia community.

Both conferences were very effective in terms of creating contacts and opportunities for working on GLAM support throughout the world. Further communications coming from each of the conversations coming soon.

Upcoming Travel

Other news


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