Bringing Wikimedians into the Conversation at Libraries/Wikipedia Visiting Scholars

Wikipedia Visiting Scholars

Wikipedian in Residence roles are high risk/high reward roles for institutions: they cost a fair amount of money, in terms of the role itself and supervising the role, but it ensures that someone in the staff has the energy and time to integrate Wikimedia, either through its projects or at the least its values of openness and public access, into the organizational strategy. However, when an organization isn’t ready for that kind of strategic commitment, it’s still worth designating an advocate from outside the organization, to experiment within existing collections or resources. Increasingly, institutions are turning to the concept of a “Wikimedia Visiting Scholar”: someone whose real expertise is on creating Wikimedia content and exposing the institution to the relationship between institutional knowledge and Wikimedia, while not focusing on capacity development.^[1]

Visiting scholars, like Wikipedians in Residence, usually have some experience with Wikimedia projects, but need that experience to be very targeted on developing high quality content. To create such a role, an institution works in partnership with an affiliate or a champion to find a Wikimedian editing in a certain topic area relevant to the collection, and then invites that Wikimedian to fill that “Visiting scholar” position. Modeled off “visiting scholar” positions at academic institutions, the Wikipedian gains some type of unique access arrangement, such as access to materials licenced by a research library or direct support from a handful of the staff, that allows them to more effectively research so that they can contribute around an agreed upon field of knowledge. These Visiting Scholar roles provide an interface with the Wikimedia community: humanizing the activity, introducing staff to the creation of content on Wikimedia projects, and helping staff examine the relationship between organizational knowledge and Wikimedia projects.

Typically, Visiting Scholar roles are initiated for a window of time, usually for six months to a year and often remotely, to contribute a certain amount of content (i.e. 15-30 Quality Wikipedia article, or integration of a dataset into Wikidata), with a presentation or collaboration with staff at the end which highlights the relationship of the Wikimedia content to the organizational goals. Some Wikipedia Visiting Scholars have asked for closer collaboration with their host institutions, creating the stepping stone for a Wikimedian in Residence type position; while in other situations, the temperament or interests of the Wikimedian don’t lend themselves to deeper collaboration, but they sustain contributions to Wikimedia projects in collaboration with the institution.

Case study​: The Wikipedia Visiting Scholar scheme offers more flexibility than the more formal WIR role. It can be adapted to suit the needs of the host institution, but also the skills and interests of the volunteer. In 2015 the National Library of Wales developed and invited applications for a Wikidata Visiting Scholar position. Working to the same principals as the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar position, the successful applicant was guaranteed access otherwise closed access datasets as well as specialist advice from curatorial staff and technical support from the systems team. The successful candidate was able to work remotely, processing library data and combining it with other open data to create a rich linked open data resource on Wikidata. This allowed the library to share its data openly for the first time, and to study the advantages of doing so, with little or no cost, or disruption to core library duties. Whilst the library had clear goals (convert metadata to linked data and release via Wikidata), the Visiting Scholar was given the freedom to choose which data he would develop and how he would visualize and interpret the data later. This flexible approach can make all the difference in keeping key volunteers engaged, motivated and focused.^[2]

1. Documentation for this model of collaboration can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Visiting_Scholars
2. Jason Evans and Simon Cobb. ‘​How the world’s first Wikidata Visiting Scholar created linked open data for five thousand works of art’ ​Wikimedia Blog, November 5th, 2016. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/11/05/wikidata-visiting-scholar-art-dataset/