On Friday 24th June we had our first UK GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) networking day.
The aim was to launch the UK network of Wikimedia e-volunteers (GLAM Ambassadors) and share our experience of institutions and Wikimedians working together. The British Library were our hosts and 24 people took part, including friends from the National Archives, National Gallery, Wellcome Trust, British Library, Open Genealogy Alliance and Open Rights Group.
Topics included;
- QR codes – as multi-language exhibition labels
- Metadata – a workshop through the current issues for batch uploads and categorization on Wikimedia Commons and attempting to improve the metadata fields and standardize vocabulary in our templates
- New developments in archives
- Growing the e-volunteer network – with parallel discussions from the Wikimedian viewpoint and the issues for cultural institutions in introducing outreach programmes
The GLAM taskforce will coordinate follow-up activities. It was generally felt that these larger networking and story sharing meetings would be helpful to repeat on a quarterly basis and it was realistic to aim for a large GLAMWIKI conference with presentations and papers for the middle of next year.
Just as importantly, some of our newer e-volunteers gained the confidence to progress with their ideas for starting relationships with favourite organizations. If you would like to get more involved or find out about the growing GLAM e-volunteer network please contact Fae or email glam(at)wikimedia.org.uk and keep an eye on our events programme.