GLAM/Newsletter/May 2015/Contents/UK report
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Progress on an image release from the Bodleian; National Library of Scotland residency comes to an end; and Glasgow Museums develop a Wiki Working Group
Royal Society of Chemistry
Andy Mabbett's residency at the Royal Society of Chemistry is ongoing. Although his activities were limited by the leave taken to allow for two overseas speaking engagements (see "Other news", below), he still had time to arrange and announce a 29 July editathon in London. As Andy is also Wikimedian in Residence at ORCID, he is also working with RSC colleagues to develop a plan for increasing the use of ORCID iDs within the organisation.
See the project diary and the blog (aimed at non-Wikipedians) for other news.
Thinktank
Andy Mabbett is also Wikimedian in Residence at Thinktank Museum in Birmingham. An editathon was held at the museum's stores, the Birmingham Museum Collection Centre. Images taken by attendees are mostly still to be uploaded, but for a list of the articles that were created or improved, see the event page. For more details, see the Thinktank project diary.
Oxford
At the Bodleian Libraries, Martin Poulter has secured:
- permission to upload web-resolution (max 1000px) scans of images from the Bodleian's digitised collections, with the option to request higher resolutions for specific files. Files will appear in commons:Category:Uploaded by the Bodleian Libraries' Wikimedian In Residence
- permission to access the rare books collection and take photographs of holdings including early bibles.
He is also building up a programme of events, including workshops for Oxford University staff and an Oxford At War editathon in November. These will be linked from the project page at Wikipedia:GLAM/Bodleian.
A workshop for library staff about Commons, Wikisource, Wikidata and Wikipedia was well-received (slides, links, and evaluation online). Staff of Oxford's museums have requested a similar workshop as a result. Some extracts of the workshops will appear online as short videos.
The Bodleian has been involved in large book-scanning projects, including with Google Books. Martin is exploring getting some of this content onto Wikisource.
Glasgow Museums
Sara Thomas's secondment to Glasgow Museums came to an end at the end of the month. Her final month report, and Summary and Reflections report, can be read at the project page.
The main achievements of the secondment were:
- Scottish Fairground Culture editathon
- This took place on 7 May, bringing together a volunteer community with whom Glasgow Museums have worked closely for a number of years, interested museum curators and members of the Wiki Working Group, and a gap on Wikipedia surrounding Scottish Fairground Culture. It is hoped that the event will be repeated in the future.
- Curator Training
- By the end of May, 22 Curators & other museum staff were trained in the basics of how to edit Wikipedia, representing around 50% of the curatorial staff. With this knowledge, these staff are then in a more informed position to support the project through the Wiki Working Group. A small number of those staff have shown a particular fondness for editing and have gone on to do more editing in their spare time.
- Advocacy around Open Knowledge
- By presenting at various internal staff events, as well as three conferences, the resident was able to raise awareness of the project and develop various links for further work, including kickstarting the process of gaining permissions for an eventual image release from Glasgow Museums' collection.
- Wiki Working Group
- This group is comprised of a number of interested curators and other museum staff, all of whom have undergone the Wiki editing training. Three meetings were held in total, with one member of staff identified as having responsibility for taking it forward, thus ensuring sustainability in the project beyond the . The group will identify gaps on Wiki relating to Glasgow Museums' collections, with the aim of getting the necessary permissions for an image release, as well as organizing wiki events, training of other staff, and facilitating staff contributions to Wikipedia.
The resident will return to Glasgow Museums on 8 June to present to a team of key internal staff about the achievements of the secondment, and the benefits of continuing the work internally.
National Library of Scotland
Ally Crockford's residency at NLS has now concluded. Ally worked tremendously hard during her residency, and the Scottish community will miss her greatly!
Yorkshire
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A WWI Papier Mache decoy head
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A Christmas gift of York Chocolate to WWI soldiers
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A 40MB version of this old master (fire up the BBQ!)
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GLAMwiki's first 3D Flythrough!? A Roman Fort from Rotherham
Some great new media from Yorkshire's GLAMS! This progress has been accompanied by new stats from BAGLAMA2 showing that existing images are seeing great reuse (Summary in last report). There has been more training and more partnerships with Wikipedia editors too. Hopefully this will lead to a fresh surge in the last months of the project.
Other news
In addition to the above, Andy Mabbett also gave a talk, "Authority control in Wikipedia and its sister projects" in Doha, Qatar - see the Arabic region report for details. He travelled from there directly to Barcelona to give a similar talk, on "ORCID in Wikipedia and its sister projects"; see the Catalan areas report.
