GLAM/Newsletter/July 2012/Contents/Wikimania report
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Wikimania gets GLAMorous
This year's Wikimania was the biggest to date. Held at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. it also featured the largest number of GLAM-related sessions to date.
Events
There were almost 30 GLAM-related events over the course of the conference.
Pre-conference
- Two days before the conference began, attendees were offered a tour of Congressional cemetery to see the QRpedia installation. [See previous TMIG coverage] There were also tours of the National Archives.
- During the last day of the pre-conference activities, Gelman library hosted a Wikipedia Loves Libraries workshop. OCLC Wikipedian in Residence Max Klein gave an overview of Wikipedia for librarians and a number of other speakers presented individual case studies of libraries and archives collaborating with the Wikimedia projects.
- The opening reception of Wikimania 2012 was held at Library of Congress to celebrate the launch of the World Digital Library. It was also announced that the WDL will host a Wikipedian in Residence.
Day 1 - Thursday 12th
On Thursday, the first day of the main conference, there were three GLAM-related streams throughout the day there were three GLAM-related streams; the first centred upon legal issues appertaining to GLAM and the second upon GLAM outreach projects around the world. The third was sponsored by the US Department of State and featured 4 presentations on local wikis.
The day ended with Wikimedians visiting the Newseum for the GLAM night out. The consisted of networking with US GLAM employees, the launch of the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium and a panel entitled "The Sponsored Point of View: Financial Conflicts of Interest in Health Care and Science".
Day 2 - Friday 13th
Friday was the day of GLAM panels. The first sessions of the day included the GLAM III: Outreach stream which included a panel of GLAM professionals who, chaired by Dominic McDevitt-Parks (Dominic), told of their own experiences working with Wikimedia. After the break, there was a panel of national GLAM co-ordinators from across the globe. They each summarised how they had come to take up their role and their experiences in it before taking questions.
The afternoon's GLAM sessions centred upon photography events. Organisers of Wiki Loves Monuments projects talked about their experiences and looked forward to this year's competition which will include 33 countries from all across the globe. The final GLAM session was on photo hunt events. Organizers of events spoke of their individual experiences before coming together for a panel.
Day 3 - Saturday 14th
On Saturday, the last day of scheduled events, GLAM talks began with "GLAM VII: Science and Archives". Sara Snyder, Archives of American Art web mistress, gave a presentation entitled "5 Reasons Why Archives are an Untapped Goldmine for Wikimedians", Daniel Mietchen (Daniel Mietchen) presented on Scientific cultural institutions and their place in GLAM-Wiki collaborations with a talk entitled "Science GLAM". The session ended with Dominic McDevitt-Park's presentation "Wikisource and the National Archives".
In the afternoon there were 3 talks in the stream "GLAM VIII: Tools", including an update on the GLAM-Wiki toolset project. In the last session, members of the QRpedia team ran a workshop on QRpedia.
The day ended with a closing plenary from Archivist of the United States David Ferriero. He called himself a "huge fan of Wikipedia", and acknowledged that one large challenge is that most GLAM institutions are still wary of the "radical" notion of Wikipedia. With changing technologies, Ferriero said that the online world is "changing the way [GLAMs] think about archival work." The biggest challenge in this new world is visibility, so he stated that GLAMs need to be "aware of where the people are."
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