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.
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- ↑ Though they are not running the program any longer, the curriculum is still a valuable tool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWL/I
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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/
