GLAM Boot Camp is a planned 3-day training workshop for Wikipedians interested in gaining the knowledge and skills necessary to assist with GLAM-Wiki projects. GLAM Boot Camps are being planned for the US and Germany for spring 2013. Sessions will be led by Wikipedians experiences in working with cultural institutions on past partnerships. The purpose of GLAM Boot Camp is to enlarge the pool of Wikipedians working on GLAM projects by bringing current Wikipedians who are interested but have not gotten involved yet into the fold.

What is GLAM-Wiki?

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GLAM-Wiki (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) is an effort by members of the Wikimedia community to bring the resources of cultural institutions to Wikimedia. We seek to improve the content of Wikipedia and its sister projects through direct outreach to cultural institutions in order to encourage them to contribute content and expertise. This could be making a first contact with an institution, helping with an image/media upload, or helping to coordinate an event. However, GLAM-Wiki is also a project that takes place on-wiki involving Wikimedians in working in various ways with the contributions of cultural institutions. That might mean writing new Wikipedia content, organizing article collaborations on Wikipedia, categorizing Commons images, transcribing pages on Wikisource, and so on.

The main difference between GLAM-Wiki and other WikiProjects is that it seeks not just to meet the needs of Wikipedia, but to meet the needs of Wikipedia while also sustaining a mutually beneficial relationship with the contributing cultural institution. That does not mean that it is about promoting any particular institution through Wikipedia, and the more experienced community members we can get involved in GLAM-Wiki through projects like this, the less likely that is to happen.

The idea for GLAM Boot Camp was one of the outcomes of GLAMcamp London, where it was discussed that GLAMcamps are for sharing best practices among experienced GLAM Wikipedians, but there was no event devoted to helping established Wikipedians become GLAM Wikipedians. A shortage of manpower is one of the issues facing the GLAM-Wiki initiative, and this event is intended to address it.

Why attend?

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If you are an experienced Wikipedian interested in the GLAM-Wiki concept but have not gotten involved before, this is for you. GLAM Boot Camp will introduce you to the basic concepts, whether you'd like to assist our projects on-wiki or go out and help start a new partnership with a cultural institution. It is intended primarily for absolute GLAM beginners. While we will sometimes be talking about outreach, the aim of GLAM Boot Camp is to increase the diversity (in terms of Wikimedia experiences) of GLAM-Wiki participants. GLAM-Wiki is a project that depends on the support and participation of the broader Wikipedia community in order to make collaborations successful. Much of the past GLAM-Wiki work has been done by volunteers engaging in real-world outreach, but there is now also a major need for on-wiki organizers and content writers to help sustain those partnerships being created through person-to-person contact with cultural institution professionals. So, we would like to have attendees from many different corners of Wikimedia, including those with WikiProject experience, featured or good article writers, bot coders, Wikisourcerors and Commonists, or with other niches.

Example program

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To get an idea of some of the topics that will be discussed, click "show" to expand the table for a proposed program for the event.

Participation

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Interested attendees

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Interested volunteers

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  • Dominic (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC) (organizing)[reply]
  • Janeatcc (talk) 22:43, 12 October 2012 (UTC) If I can make it to one of these things (eg. resources-dependent) then I'd be happy to assist in any training around CC licensing, etc., especially via new courses/challenges that are being developed as part of School of Open. Several volunteers have expressed interest in developing School of Open courses for GLAM institution staff, eg. curators, librarians, on making their collections public.[reply]