Bringing Wikimedians into the Conversation at Libraries/Student Interns, Practicum students or University Classes

Student Interns, Practicum students or University Classes

One of the common patterns that emerges among Wikimedians who become Wikipedians in Residence or staff champions: they often do so after being high performing students (usually graduate students) in a field related to the institution's focus, either library science, museum studies, archival studies, or a related writing-focused program, such as art history, history or a social science. Moreover published case studies in the library and archive studies community include a number of projects where university libraries or archives engage student workers to highlight institutional content by contributing new content on Wikimedia projects. Early case studies take the approach of “just adding links” to institutional collections on Wikimedia, a practice perceived as spam by some parts of the Wikimedia community; newer case studies focus on the win-win relationship between quality content on Wikimedia projects and the visibility of not only the contributing institution’s digital assets, but also the broader materials available on that niche subject area.

Employing students to get involved in Wikimedia contributions for the institution, acts as a flip-version of the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project: instead of a low-cost, low risk contribution from a Wikimedian, student employees offer a low cost, low risk introduction where the institutional supervisor and their student learn how to effectively participate within the guidelines put out by the Wikimedia community. Important to this process is creating the expectation that students not only add references to digital institutional resource, but expand content using different kinds of cultural heritage research from beyond the institution. The Wikipedia Library team ran an experiment with several academic and research libraries, to systematize these kinds of internships into cohorts. Outcomes were high with better quality of Wikipedia content than typical documented student work, but the cohort model was intensive to organize.^[1] By building champions out of the students and their supervisors, the institution is able to do low-risk experiments while learning about Wikimedia projects, and testing whether the student can be a good long-term advocate, in the form of a staff champion or Wikipedian in Residence.

There are a number of examples of this kind of project. See the chapter in this book about the Pritzker Library, where they supported a continuous flow of student interns filling topically important gaps like World War I patriotic music.^[2] Other institutions, such as the Smithsonian Freer/Sackler Gallery in cooperation with Smithsonian Libraries, have hosted interns who profiled Asian art topics that are systematically undercovered on Wikimedia projects.^[3] All of these models find a champion either in the students themselves or in their supervisors or institutional instructors, and allow the institution to test broad potential of Wikimedia fit with existing efforts and staff priorities.

Extending beyond individual student contributions into the well documented and supported project model, the Wikipedia Education Program, can be a good way to extend this low-risk experimentation. Wikipedia Education Program assignments allow instructors, typically college-level, to assign students to write full articles which fill topical gaps on Wikipedia. This can be done with a focus on topics relevant to institutional collections, acting as a form of academic outreach and collaboration. Working with a full class of students at local University might be a unusual form of outreach for public or non-university research libraries: however, for local history, public history and GLAM professional programs, direct engagement with collections held by institutions and using Wikipedia as an example environment and platform for public access to heritage, provides ample learning opportunities. Working with classes of students can also introduce a number of complications for libraries who have previously not worked with educational communities, for example, it may be necessary to plan around a semester, provide research skills support, and match projects against learning outcomes. In the United States and Canada, there is a fair amount of assignment design and student support available from the Wiki Education Foundation for curriculum development and online tracking and community engagement support. Affiliates in other parts of the world, also regularly support education assignments, and although they frequently can’t provide the same amount of professional support as the Wiki Education Foundation, they have a fair amount of ability providing curriculum development support and might be able to support broader support (including workshops).

Case study​: While working at Kansas State University, Stinson worked with the Beach Museum of Art to have students in an Art History class write content that exposed particular parts of the institutional collection alongside the best external research for that topic. The Wikipedia article work acted as a first step towards adding bibliographic research to finding aids and catalog materials for the institutions actual collection.^[4] Moreover, students were introduced to the difference between primary-source research and secondary research, and the various venues in which this knowledge can be shared -- among researchers, with the public and into institutional catelogues where the project provides context.

1. ​Though they are not running the program any longer, the curriculum is still a valuable tool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWL/I
2. For example, the recent work by the Pritzker Museum and Library: Theresa A.R. Embrey and Andrew H. Bullen. “Music of World War I: Turning a Static Collection Into a Vibrant Resource.” Information Today 37.4 (May 2017) http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may17/Embrey-Bullen--Music-of-World-War-I-Turning-a-Static-Collection-Into-a-Vibrant-Resource.shtml
3. See the blog post: Eirn Rushing. “Mughal Art for the Masses.” Unbound, Smithsonian Libraries, September 21, 2016. https://blog.library.si.edu/2016/09/mughal-art-masses/
4. See the outcome of their work can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artwork_by_John_Steuart_Curry