GLAM/Newsletter/January 2015/Contents/UK report
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Armenian Genocide; Diversity in Film; Residency Hat-Trick
Royal Society of Chemistry
Andy Mabbett's residency at the Royal Society of Chemistry is ongoing.
Sixty-one Royal Society of Chemistry staff received training in editing Wikipedia (and in avoiding CoI issues). Feedback was very positive. Thirty-six new articles were created during the training sessions, and a similar number of others were improved.
Andy spoke about ORCID in Wikipedia, at the Jisc-ARMA ORCID Pilot Final Project meeting, wearing two hats - he is also Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID.
The first editors granted free RSC Gold access - including some from non-English Wikipedias - received their log-in details. More slots are still available.
See the project diary and the blog (aimed at non-Wikipedians) for other news.
Thinktank
In addition to his work at the Royal Society of Chemistry and ORCID, Andy Mabbett became the Wikipedian in Residence at Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum, part of Birmingham Museums Trust. See the project page at en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Thinktank. An editathon is planned for 7 March.
BFI
The BFI and Wikimedia UK hosted an editathon on 26 January, and the BFI then blogged it
Targetted photo requests
After receiving a request from an editor who was interested in memorials of the Armenian genocide and wanted a photo of the memorial in London; Chris McKenna took some photos of it:
Scotland
January saw the launch of the second Wikimedian in Residence programme in Scotland, as Sara Thomas (User:lizarelf) officially took up the post with Museums Galleries Scotland on 26 January. The post begins with a four-month secondment to Glasgow Museums, where the post will be used as a kick-start to generate curators' enthusaism and understanding, with a view to developing further work in future. The residency will begin by looking at the collections surrounding the Kelvin Hall project. In addition to working with MGS and Glasgow Museums, the resident will be helping to support the growing ScotWiki community, providing assistance at volunteer-organised events around Scotland like a forthcoming editathon for students and staff at Edinburgh Napier University on 4 March.
The resident would be interested in anyone who might be interested in becoming involved, and invites you to leave a note on the project page.
Wales
On the 19th of January the National Library of Wales and Wikimedia UK were delighted to announce the appointment of Jason Evans (User:Jason.nlw) as the second Wikipedian in Residence in Wales. Jason's first language and most of his work is Welsh; he has worked at the National Museum for nearly 10 years and is a keen genealogist.
The NLW's website announced: 'Today, the National Library of Wales celebrates Wikipedia’s fourteenth birthday by announcing the appointment of a Wikipedian in Residence in partnership with Wikimedia UK. The post will last a year and aims to establish a sustainable relationship between the Library and Wikipedia. The Wikipedian will look at new ways of engaging with users and will organise activities such as ‘editathons’ to assist Library staff and users to contribute to Wikipedia. Jason will also work closely with staff throughout the Library to identify materials from the Library’s collections that can be contributed to the Welsh and English versions of Wikipedia in order to raise awareness of Wales and its people.'
To date the NLW have uploaded nearly 4,600 images on Commons and won the GLAM of the Year Award in 2013. The Welsh language Wicipedia Cymraeg is the most popular Welsh language website, with nearly 3 million hits every month, making it more than ten times as popular as the BBC Wales website.
This post follows the appointment of Marc Haynes, the Wikipedian at the Coleg Cymraeg, (the "National Welsh College", coordinating Welsh-medium teaching at universities). What a wonderful way to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday!
Yorkshire
- Some of the latest uploads from Shandy Hall
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An original 'Literary Map of Yorkshire' by JL Carr -
A panel from Martin Rowson's graphic novel version of Tristram Shandy -
One of John Lawrence's woodcut illustrations from the Folio Society edition of Tristram Shandy -
Writer Jonathan Meades reading on Laurence Sterne's grave
Lots of great progress in Yorkshire: a training session at the University of Northumbria, meetings with Rotherham Museum services, Malton Museum and the Hepworth Wakefield. Plus, a second image donation from the Laurence Sterne Trust and a first from Harrogate Museums and Arts.
The training session with students from Northumbria's departments of English and Heritage Studies was run in conjunction with curators from Shandy Hall and focused on material related to Laurence Sterne. The session led to a second image donation from the Laurence Sterne Trust (Shandy Hall) including copies of specially commissioned recent artworks. This means Commons now has images by cartoonist Martin Rowson, illustrator John Lawrence and JL Carr.
The first donation from Harrogate Museums and Arts highlights their fantastic Egyptology collections and includes their unique Anubis mask, a sarcophagus and other rare items. This was a fantastic victory for a local authority museum that struggles with bureaucracy and opening up its collections online in particular.
- The first upload from Harrogate Museums
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Amenophis III Blue Glazed lion hunt Scarab -
Granite headrest for a mummy -
The Harrogate Anubis Mask -
Wooden cobra figurine -
Sarcophagus of a priest from Thebes
Meetings held with Rotherham Museums Services and Malton Museums will hopefully lead to image donations and training in the near future with their collections covering Romano-British archaeology, the history of the York and Lancaster Regiment and an array of other topics.
Finally, the Hepworth Wakefield will be hosting an event for the Art+Feminism global edit-a-thon on March 8th. I (Pat Hadley) will be running some training on the day and we hope to involve other museums in the region whose collections or expertise cover the topic. Experienced Wikipedians are more than welcome and can find out more here: Wikipedia:Meetup/Wakefield/ArtandFeminism/HepworthWakefield
Cancer Research UK
After a 2 month extension, my term finishes in mid-February, so I've been finishing various things. In particular helping to embed Wiki collaboration into normal working practices at CRUK. For example the latest additions to the highly successful medical diagrams uploaded to Commons were done by the department concerned with me only being told about it later, which is great! Much puzzlement as to how to format animation files for upload to Commons, which we finally cracked on Feb 2, with these (for some browsers anyway). Some of the earlier images have had their legends translated into German & are used on the German Wikipedia.
The Pancreatic cancer FAC finally succeeded, after a very busy nomination process - altogether about 15 editors were involved, as well as internal and external CRUK experts giving me review comments.
I spent a lot of the month doing 30 research interviews, asking members of the public to find out about Pancreatic cancer (our new FA subject) on the internet while I watched and recorded their screen, and then interviewed them afterwards, while the screen recording was replayed. Fascinating, and AFAIK a novel approach to Wiki research, giving very good results I thought. If they didn't look at Wikipedia "naturally" (and most didn't), they were asked to look at it at the end of the session. I hope to be able to present preliminary results at Den Haag in April, and then publish at some point in the future. Dr Henry Potts aka User:Bondegezou has been super-helpful, providing expertise and a neutral location for the interviews at UCL's Farr Institute of Health Informatics.
