GLAM/Newsletter/November 2018/Contents/Wikipedia Library report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VIII, Issue XI, November 2018

Wikipedia Library report

Books & Bytes–Issue 31, October–November 2018

In this issue we highlight OAWiki, global developments and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

OAWiki

For this year's Open Access Week, we again ran a lightweight OAWiki campaign to encourage contributors to add open access citations to Wikipedia. Like 1lib1ref, this effort also had a gamified interface: OABot, which uses Dissemin to find open access versions of existing paywalled citations. According to the new and improved hashtags lookup, 342 pages had free-to-read links added with this tool on English Wikipedia during OA Week alone.

Don't forget to check out 1lib1ref in January!

Wikimedia and Libraries User Group

The Wikimedia and Libraries User Group steering committee met twice, once in both October and November. Discussion in the first meeting was pivoted around devising strategies to reach out to librarians in communities with historically low participation in Wikimedia projects, as part of the group's 2018 strategic plan. The proposed actions include: appointing/developing ambassadors in four to five countries or regions, spotlight stories of librarians, identify four to five conferences the user group can participate, open Google Hangouts to help rectify doubts and answer questions. Apart from that, the committee also discussed role assignments to committee members based on their strengths and time commitments, steering committee election, and committee structure.

In the November meeting, the committee did a wrap-up of the GLAMWiki conference, Tel Aviv, including but not limited to Whither WLUG? meetup. Alex Stinson, GLAM-Wiki Strategist, Wikimedia Foundation, attended the meeting as a guest sharing his expertise on strategies towards and state of affairs in under-represented communities. This ultimately is aimed at helping the committee in executing its strategic plan. Finally, the committee touched the subject of open Google Hangouts where almost anyone can drop in and ask their questions and (or) get help on topics pertaining #1Lib1Ref or WLUG or both.

Global

The Wikipedia Library (TWL) manages more than 20 global branches on various language Wikipedias. To meet the unique needs of these branches and to understand and learn from their dynamic operating patters, TWL hosts a bi-monthly global coordinators meeting on IRC - the latest installment of which was held recently (transcript). Coordinators from the Chinese, Hindi, Italian, and Yoruba branches attended the meeting with updates on their branches for the previous two months and their preparation on 1Lib1Ref. The TWL team was also briefed on the status of TWLCon India - 2019 organised by KCVelaga and two other coordinators from India. The mini-conference would, on its former part, be based on expanding TWL outreach and reassessing its strategy towards Indian communities. And the latter part on library outreach and 1Lib1Ref.