Bringing Wikimedians into the Conversation at Libraries/Staff champions
Staff champions
The first obvious, and relatively cost effective, way to integrate Wikimedia projects into the strategy of a GLAM is to formalize the role of staff for organizing activities and working on Wikimedia project within the course of their work. Staff can allocate a certain amount of their work hours to work on Wikimedia projects, typically with a broader public access or outreach mission in mind. However, if the addition of Wikimedia is a side project (or just a tactic within someone’s job), there are risks: the main one being, that it’s hard to get broad support across hierarchical organizations without some sort of strategic investment in Wikimedia contribution as an organization.
Two major tactics have been used by GLAMs in identifying the role for existing staff members who contribute to Wikimedia:
● At the US National Archive and Records Administration, the social media and digital innovation offices supported an informal Wikipedia editing guideline that is similar to the other social media use guidelines.[1]
● At the State Library of New South Wales in Australia, a staff committee created a formal policy on staff integrating Wikimedia projects into organizational workflows.[2]
The first tactic, a more informal one, gives permission for staff, whereas the second, which required a longer more formal process, has been very effective at not only giving permission, but providing the rationale for integrating Wikimedia work into the organizational priorities -- and does so with a more inclusive organizational strategic buy-in. Generally, either mechanism, either a team strategically explaining the alignment of the work with broader organizational priorities or a cross-organizational recognition of the strategic priority, allows staff who act as Wikimedia Champions to justify appropriate Wikimedia programming and roles within their jobs.
Within many organizations that don’t formalize the strategic interest in Wikimedia projects, staff end up taking Wikimedia collaborations on as “volunteers” beyond their staff roles. In the face of the undervaluation of cultural heritage work more generally, expecting staff to do this work as an “extra” to their existing jobs leads to uneven focus, and in the long term, contributes to the underrecognition of something that is fundamental to organizational missions: a strategy for broader public access to collections and specialized knowledge. Many heritage organizations are not ready to invest large amounts of staff time to developing a case for or test of Wikimedia contribution tactics as part of a broader public-access strategy. Instead, many organizations will build another role into their staff, with either volunteers or term-based staff.
- ↑ For the NARA guidelines see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/National_Archives_and_Records_Administration/Guidelines
- ↑ For the SLNSW guidelines, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/State_Library_of_New_South_Wales#State_Library_of_New_South_Wales_Staff_guidelines_for_editing_Wikipedia