Bringing Wikimedians into the Conversation at Libraries/Creating Wikimedians in Your Community
Creating Wikimedians in Your Community
Once you define the Wikimedia activity that you want to pursue, whether it’s an editathon or upload of open access content, or if you want to create a regular editing group to focus on a particular topic, it's important to bring volunteer capacity to the projects.[1]
Wikimedia’s culture of bold volunteerism with a very low barrier to entry, means that Wikimedia volunteers often have a range of motivations, capacities and organizational skills that may or may not meet the needs of more formal institutions. Additionally, Wikimedia volunteers may invest a large amount of energy in projects in which they find a passion or connection with the needs of other communities--but like all projects of passion, that enthusiasm can wane, or you might find that your local Wikimedians don’t want to focus on the topics you are interested in. So what do you do then?
The best approach is to develop new interest in Wikimedia contributions from other volunteer communities in your local context, who can attend local events. Typically these new contributors can come from hobbyists or volunteers already associated with your organization or similar heritage organizations. Local community groups may offer some of the best allies: for example, local history societies (the city of Swansea in South Wales has over 100 active historical societies) and social, charitable and educational groups of all sorts. There is also a growing number of individuals prepared to volunteer at libraries and other cultural institutions. These communities frequently are interested in communicating knowledge in your context, many of whom publish their own journals, newsletters and books. For librarians looking to increase engagement with local communities, Wikipedia offers a ready built platform, in multiple languages, where local communities can work with their local libraries to improve Wikipedia content relating to their interests or expertise.
Case Study: Catalan language Wikipedia has a relatively limited geography where they can expect to find volunteers for the project: in Catalan speaking Spain and France. By collaborating with the Public Library Network in Catalonia, the Catalan community has involved over 200 libraries in their Bibliowikis initiative.[2] The model for the collaboration is a simple one: librarians run programs that involve the local public and those librarians train other librarians on developing that kind of programming in their own context. Program models include basic Wikipedia editing workshops, and a number of activities that promote local history and culture, such as photo-scavenger hunts and local book clubs writing about local authors and regional history. Amical Wikimedia (the Catalan-language Wikimedia Affiliate) provides very little support to get the libraries started in activities: documentation and trying to find a regionally available volunteer for the librarians to collaborate with. Once the activities start at a local library, they typically develop other local volunteers who can help support and provide energy for local projects.
Unlike already-committed Wikimedians, who will frequently show up to events just because it’s Wikimedia-related, we have found that involving a broader volunteer community works best with thematic focuses. These focuses offer simpler communication strategies (i.e., “filling a gap on Wikipedia”) and elicit better public interest than offering “learn about Wikipedia” programs.[3]
These themes can fit closely the institutional objectives of the GLAM hosting the activities:
● Many institutions host what’s called a “backstage pass” where they highlight an important topic in their collection as the theme-- such initiatives allow volunteers and staff to share in the professional activities of the organization and rare parts of their collection;
● These themes might fit into the outreach programming goals of your institution -- the Catalan Public Library network collaboration includes frequent book club or local author editing events, which focus on highlight literary culture that is also subject to public library programming; or,
● The topic might be more political and draw from an activist or knowledge community interested in public understanding of that topic -- for example the Art+Feminism events are hosted by GLAMs around the world, and draw large numbers of women editors into the community because of the broad call for “feminist” participation in the projects.
Picking one of these tactics can excite an existing community and provides a motivating draw for volunteers to be engaged in the project and therefore with the library’s collections. Moreover, thematic or project focused communications provide platforms for highlighting the importance of institutional work in that field to local media.
Online programs for the Wikimedia community can also draw participation and collaboration with contributors outside of the geographical scope of the organization, especially on topics of broader interest than local history and culture. Typically, contribution campaigns focus on a theme or topic that the institutions offers digital collections on, and require a fair amount of online Wikimedia community skills. For example, the National Archive of the Republic of Macedonia runs a multilingual competition for contributing content related to parts of its collections that it has uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; a similar strategy that has also been adopted by the Bulgarian Archives State Agency.[4] Working closely with existing Wikimedia communities or online networks to find the right topics that will excite or engage volunteers, helps ensure that these kinds of projects succeed.
Case study: Wicipop - an initiative funded by the Welsh Government and managed by the Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales used a blend of online and offline activities to achieve the project's goal of creating 500 new Welsh language Wikipedia articles about Welsh pop music in three months. Three themed public editathon events were held, which drew new and experienced editors into the same physical space in order to create new content. Events like these are great for publicity and several of the events attracted interest from the local media. The project also targeted active editors online by establishing a project landing page on Wikipedia itself. This lead to a substantial contribution from experienced Wikipedians that the National Library of Wales hadn’t previously engaged. A social media campaign also lead to local publishers releasing content on an open licence which editors could then reuse on Wikipedia -- contributing to a broader cycle of increased public access to knowledge.[5]
- ↑ For an overview of various models of projects persued by previous GLAM contributors, see https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Model_projects
- ↑ For the program page, see https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquiprojecte:Bibliowikis . A broader case study can be found at: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Catalonia's_Network_of_Public_Libraries
- ↑ Broad illiteracy about how Wikipedia works, leads to a general lack of knowledge about what it means to “learn how to contribute to Wikipedia”. Additionally, these kinds of overbroad calls tend to solicit people who want to use Wikipedia for cross purposes with the general knowledge interest of Wikimedia and libraries, such as folks interested in promoting businesses or who want profiles of friend on Wikipedia, leading to conflicts of interest and challenges with other Wikimedia policies.
- ↑ See the second iteration of this contest at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DARM_Challenge_2 and the documentation of the Bulgarian Challenge at: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/October_2016/Contents/Bulgaria_report.
- ↑ See the Wicipop project final report at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jason.nlw/Wicipop_Project