● 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.[1]
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.
Wiki(p/m)edians in Residence
The most well described and common way of creating this “empowered champion” role in the Wikimedia community is the “Wiki(m/p)edian in Residence” (WIR) . A WIR is tasked with integrating a strategy for Wikimedia projects and broader OpenGLAM into the workflows and practice of a cultural institution. Their role is not to edit Wikipedia on behalf of the institution (a common misconception), but rather to focus on projects that grow the understanding, skills and capacity of the organization to successfully engage with Wikimedia projects and to improve their broader strategy for open, public engagement with institutional content.
This role usually includes a number of sub-activities, such as creating a free-licensing/open access policy for digital heritage assets, training staff in Wikimedia editing or open-licensing, organizing events, editathons or other contribution activities which utilize institutional expertise, or facilitating the donation of media to Wikimedia Commons. Typically these residencies last at least six months, though some have been shorter; most organizations find that they need at least a
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