Fako Berkers and Edward Saperia have been working together on a project called “WikiFeed”. It’s a framework that allows you to create custom algorithmic newsfeeds using data from Wikipedia and Wikidata.
These open algorithms could be used to discover news stories in niche areas, suggest new collaborative approaches to editorial policy, and probably other things its designers haven’t thought of yet!
Saperia told us that he was thinking about how we consume news, and that while the Wikipedia homepage is not generally thought of as news, its In The News section is probably one of the most viewed news platforms online. He said ‘News is in the news right now. Choosing headlines is a political act. I was interested in whether you could approach editorial in an open, collaborative way.’
You can see more information about the project on its Wikipedia project page here. You can see an example of the algorithmic here: Recently Edited Women WikiFeed shows articles about women, ranked by which have had the most recent edits.
It’s still in a very early stage, but for the first time next weekend (11-12 Nov) its developers are inviting people to come round to Newspeak House and play with it. Remote participation is also possible and there will be two sessions, on Saturday and Sunday, from 1-4pm.
1st Prize – Derelict West Pier on Brighton seafront by Matthew Hoser CC BY-SA 4.0
Wiki Loves Monuments is the world’s biggest photographic competition and takes place every September. Participants take photos of historic places, including buildings and archaeological sites.
Wiki Loves Monuments encourages photographers around the world to upload photos of heritage monuments to Commons so that they can be used to illustrate Wikipedia. Images from Wiki Loves Monuments in the UK have been seen nearly 14 million times in October.
This year, over 14,000 photos were submitted to Wiki Loves Monuments in the UK. The prizes are sponsored by Wikimedia UK and Archaeology Scotland, with a top prize of £250. The winning photos’ subjects range from prehistory right through to the 1930s. The overall winner was of Brighton’s derelict West Pier by Matthew Hoser, who said:
“I have been lucky enough to travel quite a lot over the past few years of studying in the UK, and so when I recently heard about the Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition I jumped at the chance to get involved for the first time. This country has such rich and varied history, so taking photos of the amazing sights around Britain is a real pleasure. I am so glad to be able to share my photos with the Wikimedia community, and hopefully to make people eager to get out and see more of the UK for themselves!”
Second prizewinner, Paul Stümke took an atmospheric photo of Glenfinnan Viaduct in Scotland, also winner of the Archaeology Scotland sponsored best photograph from Scotland. He said:
“I have not taken part before in WLM but I have seen last year’s winners. I liked the idea and since me and some friends travelled around Scotland from August to September by bicycle I was able to capture some stunning landscapes, famous monuments and other things that seemed worth photographing. When I edited the photographs back home I saw the advertisement for this year´s contest and thought to myself, why not participate? This is a great way to get some of my pictures out to the world.”
The winners of the Special Prize for Scotland (sponsored by Archaeology Scotland) and Wales depict the Smailholm Tower by Keith Proven and Craig y Mor by Sterim64 respectively.
All photos on Commons are shared on Open Licenses, such as Creative Commons Sharealike 4.0. CC licenses allow others to use the images for free as long as they attribute the author. Wikimedia UK encourages people to publish free content which anyone can use in a classroom, journalistic articles, art, on Wikipedia or for any other purpose without worrying about its copyright restrictions.
I’m Katie Crampton and I’ve started as Wikimedia UK’s Membership, Fundraising and Operations Assistant, and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself.
Wikimedia’s cause of providing free, unbiased information to all is admirable, and definitely something I can get behind. Having worked for a charity tackling socio-economic disadvantage through education, enabling easy access to information factors highly in Wikimedia’s appeal.
I started my career as a Copywriter for a digital marketing agency, and have since worked at a children’s charity as described above. I hope to bring to the role my experience of fundraising, and engage with Wikimedia UK’s supporters and members to ensure a close relationship between the charity and our community.
It’ll be great to hear from Wikipedia’s volunteers, and I look forward to seeing your work in action.
In 2017, the world passed the 50% mark in the number of people in the world who have access to the internet. It’s easy to take for granted the fact that within the Wikimedia movement, most people have easy access to the internet, but this is still not the case for many people.
To address this lack of access to Wikipedia, groups like KiWix have been working on creating offline versions of Wikipedia for some time, and the Human Rights Foundation have been smuggling USB drives with Korean Wikipedia into North Korea for a few years now. Now a new project is addressing the lack of access to medical information.
The Offline Distribution System for Medical Content is a collaboration with Internet-in-a-box. They have created mini raspberry pi-based computers which generate a wifi signal that up to 32 people can connect to at any time. It also functions as an app store where you can download and install offline Wikipedia medical apps.
This initial version contains all of Wikipedia’s healthcare content in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It also contains WikEM, content from Practical Action in English and Spanish, and HealthPhone videos.
The device is being sold for the costs of the hardware plus shipping (£30 / $40).
James Heilman, MD, a special adviser to the project, said in a press release: “We believe this device has a significant potential to benefit the more than 4 billion people globally without reliable Internet access. We are working to develop further versions with other languages and types of content. If you would like to join in this effort or wish to know more please reach out.”
Librarian at the card files in a Minnesota High School (1974) – image by Environmental Protection Agency
Wikipedia’s greatest strength is the sheer number of people who contribute information to it. Every month the collective effort of some 70,000 writers keeps the world’s most popular encyclopedia up-to-date, and make sure that its content is verifiable. That accountability is central to Wikipedia’s reliability and usefulness. At the foot of any article should be details of where the information originally came from.
Wikipedia is a globally important website, and Wikimedia UK are playing an active part in helping people based at research organisations to engage with Wikipedia. In 2016 we took part in #1Lib1Ref for the first time, an initiative to get librarians editing. Next year 1Lib1Ref will be returning bigger than before in the last two weeks of January, this time in partnership with CILIP, the library and information association.
The idea is to encourage every librarian in the world to add one reference to Wikipedia, and make libraries and books even more accessible. Citing books in relevant Wikipedia pages in turn drives more people to do further reading about a subject they are exploring on Wikipedia.
There are around 3,850 public libraries in the UK, and it is more important to support them now than ever as public funding is falling. Our aim is to show that librarians should be using Wikipedia and that it can help to engage new audience to do physical research in libraries as well as online. Libraries don’t have to remain places dedicated to analogue technologies, but can keep their relevance to the needs of contemporary users by hosting events like code clubs and Wikipedia workshops and providing 3D printers and other IT services. Scottish libraries are already making great advances in these areas and the Scottish Libraries and Information Council (SLIC) recently appointed their first Wikimedian in Residence, in partnership with Wikimedia UK.
Sara Thomas ([[user:lirazelf]]) is working with SLIC until February 2019 to advance open knowledge objectives in Scotland’s public libraries. Drawing on Scotland’s rich library collections, the overarching aim is to support Scotland’s public library staff and users to engage with Wikimedia projects. The project itself draws on Sara’s experience working with the museums sector during her residency with Museums Galleries Scotland, and takes inspiration from the work done in Catalonia’s public libraries.
The first editathon of the project took place on Friday 6 October, as a co-production between Dig It! 2017 and SLIC. Part of Scotland’s year of History, Heritage and Archaeology, the Hidden Gems event took as its starting point Scotland’s best loved “hidden gems”, a group of lesser-known history, heritage and archaeology sites across the country. SLIC drew together representatives from different Scottish Library services to provide good quality secondary sources from their local history collections, which were used to improve and create articles, whilst also giving those library services an insight into how their collections could be used within Wikipedia.
Phase one of the project runs until #1Lib1Ref, with initial partners undertaking to nominate staff for training, explore the possibilities for working with Wikimedia in their service, and staging at least one editathon event before the end of January. Phase two will review phase one, and seek to roll out a wider programme across the country.
Wikimedia UK’s work with SLIC is the latest partnership with a group of libraries, and builds on the success of our current partnerships with Bodleian Libraries Oxford, the Wellcome Library, the National Library of Wales and the National Library of Scotland. These partnerships have helped to release a lot of content on Open Licenses and help people across the world find out about the libraries’ collections.
Meanwhile, in the USA, the Wikimedia Foundation has funded the OCLC Webjunction Wikipedia + Libraries course; a free, nine-week online training program for 300 US public library staff to learn to confidently engage with Wikipedia. As a result of the work that Wikimedia has done with libraries around the world, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) has released the Opportunity papers to highlight how libraries are working with Wikipedia to verify information and encourage librarians worldwide to engage more with Wikipedia.
So if you’re a librarian, please let us know if you would like to be involved with 1Lib1Ref by emailing Communications Coordinator John (john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk) and following us on social media for more updates.
By John Lubbock, Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator
There’s been a lot of discussion over the past six months about housing policy in the UK, and the rumblings of discontent about the housing crisis that is particularly affecting London and the South East have been going on for years. I used to work as a community organiser on a former council estate in South London, so in early July I decided to start the Social Housing in the United Kingdom WikiProject. Two weeks later, the Grenfell Tower fire happened.
Wikipedia’s role in these kind of policy questions is to summarise the available information into an easily searchable introduction to the topic. We seek to provide a neutral summary of information which will help people discuss the subject and encourage people to find solutions. The conversation about how to deal with the housing crisis is long overdue, and it is a shame that it took a tragedy like Grenfell to finally put it on the political agenda. All we can hope to do is to give people the resources to have that discussion in the most productive way. This is what we did when we edited pages about the EU before the referendum last year, though sadly the pages received the biggest spike in traffic the day after the vote.
That’s why I began talking to Paul Watt, a lecturer in housing policy at Birkbeck, around a year ago. Paul writes and speaks about the history of housing and has a good collection of photos he has taken himself over the years which we hope to make available on Wikimedia Commons so that they can be used to improve articles. I hope to be able to organise a Housing editathon in 2018 to engage people who are interested in the topic to learn how to edit Wikipedia and improve related pages.
There are a few things you can do if you would like to help this project progress:
Add your name to the list of participants at the bottom of the Wikiproject
Help expand the list of articles needing improvement or creation
Get in touch with us if you need help, advice, or would like to help organise an event
Editing Wikipedia means that your efforts may be read by policymakers and people in the housing sector who may have influence over the future development of social housing in the UK. Your old photos of social housing areas could have historical value and be seen by thousands of people searching for information about them online. We would like to contribute to the development of better policy on housing, but we can’t do it without your help, so let us know if you want to get involved via one of the links below.
Grandjean de Fouchy, who as yet does not have a Wikipedia page. Image CC BY SA via Commons.
By Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedian in Residence, Bodleian Libraries Oxford
A major scholarly database is offering free access to selected Wikipedians, thanks to an arrangement with Oxford University Press.
Housed at the Bodleian Libraries, Electronic Enlightenment (EE) is is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century. It gives access to thousands of short biographies and to 70,000 annotated pieces of correspondence.
EE is already available to many people via subscribing institutions that include universities and public libraries. Still, there are Wikipedians who do not have access but would benefit from it. As a result of the Wikimedian In Residence placement at the University of Oxford, they can now apply for free access through the Wikipedia Library (TWL). TWL is a Wikimedia Foundation program that supports Wikipedia’s volunteer editors by facilitating access donations for paywalled resources from leading publishers.
EE is now included in the Oxford University Press Scholarship accounts which also give free access to eight other online resources, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and American National Biography Online.
Wikipedians, usually with an active account and at least 500 edits, can apply through the Wikipedia Library Card Platform. The accounts last one year, but if you still need to use EE or the other Scholarship resources once the year has elapsed, you can apply again.
In another part of the collaboration, EE has shared a dataset with Wikidata covering more than three thousand individuals. This lets us explore those people’s representation on Wikipedia. Of this set, we have identified 2663 EE people who already have English Wikipedia biographies, 287 with no English Wikipedia article but an article in another language version, and 168 with no representation in Wikipedia at all. The latter two sets are listed on a project page. We welcome help in creating new articles for these people, filling in the story of the Enlightenment.
Through EE, I’ve learned about the early feminist Sarah Chapone, for whom I’ve created a Wikisource profile, and discovered my near-namesake Francois-Martin Poultier. It has confirmed that Clotworthy Rowley and Slingsby Bethell are not made-up names from the Goon Show but real British politicians. Like Wikipedia, it is a web of knowledge calling out to be explored.
Picture taken at a training session in Edinburgh in 2015 – image by Lirazelf
By Sara Thomas, Wikimedian in Residence at SLIC
I’m Sara Thomas, aka [[user:lirazelf]], and I’m delighted to have taken up the role of Wikimedian in Residence with the Scottish Library and Information Council, from now until February 2019. It’s great to be back into the Wikimedia fold once more, following my previous residency with Museums Galleries Scotland, which ran from January 2015 – June 2016. During the course of that residency, I spoke at SLIC’s Digital Champions meeting about Libraries & Wikimedia. Following that, they, along with project proposers Inverclyde Libraries, applied for funding for their own Resident from the Public Library Improvement Fund.
The SLIC residency feels like a very natural progression from that at MGS, as a networked residency working across an entire sector. Here, again, my primary focus will be on advocacy and training. We’re aiming to establish public libraries as quality content creators in the digital sphere, and to provide open access to freely usable content about Scottish culture, derived from our rich library collections. The residency will be supported by a steering group, whose members will be drawn from key partners and stakeholders, including the National Library of Scotland, and Museums Galleries Scotland.
Libraries promoting reading, literacy and learning
Libraries promoting digital inclusion
Libraries promoting economic wellbeing
Libraries promoting social wellbeing
Libraries promoting culture and creativity
Libraries as excellent public services
Nationally, Scottish public libraries already offer code clubs, 3D printing and WiFi access, and we’re excited to explore how open knowledge will add to this landscape. As a lifelong library user, I’m really proud to be playing a part in bringing Scottish public libraries and the Wikimedia movement together.
I’m based at SLIC’s offices in Glasgow, however I’ll likely often be found visiting local libraries and library staff across Scotland. It’s a phased programme, with the first phase scheduled from now until January 2018, during which time we’ll be securing and training our initial partners, engaging in a public library content audit, and staging a small number of editing events.
Jason Evans at the National Library of Wales – image by Llywelyn2000 CC BY-SA 4.0
From 1 August, the National Library of Wales will employ the UK’s first permanent Wikimedian. As National Wikimedian, Jason Evans will make Wikipedia and its sister projects a core aspect of the Library’s activities and services. Building on the successful collaboration between the Library, Wikimedia UK and the Wiki community, he will lead activities associated with the Library’s collections, Wales as a nation and/or the Welsh language.
The National Library of Wales, Wikimedia UK, and the editing community have worked together since 2014 to host a Wikimedian in Residence. Jason Evans was appointed and has helped the Library to explore the use of Wikipedia and its sister project in the fulfilling its aim of giving access to knowledge, especially relating to Wales and the Welsh. In August 2017 the activity becomes a core aspect of the Library’s work. The Library won ‘Partnership of the Year’ in the UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards for their influential work and vision in making the role permanent.
Images from the Library have been used in Wikipedia articles which have been seen more than 250 million times. As well as enabling these collections to be used in this way, the Wikimedian in Residence has held 20 public events and has taught more than 100 people how to edit, and together they have improved thousands of pages. The Library has also played a key role in supporting the Welsh Wicipedia, leading initiatives like WiciPop which resulted in the creation of hundreds of articles and Welsh-language record company Recordiau Sain sharing 8,000 audio files. It also leads the ongoing Wici-Iechyd (Wiki-Health) project which aims to improve health related subjects on the Welsh Wicipedia.
Wikipedia in both Welsh and English is one of the main places people go to for information. The Welsh language Wicipedia has more articles on women than men and is the most popular Welsh website, with an average of around 800,000 pages opened every month and around 130 regular editors.
As Wikimedian in Residence, Jason Evans has helped to organise many different events to encourage people to edit Wikipedia, has attracted significant media coverage, and helped Welsh Wicipedia to become one of the biggest and most advanced Wikipedias in a minority language. You can find out much more about the residency on its homepage here.
Unidentified elderly couple (1850s) – image from the NLW’s collection of early Swansea photographs
Pedr ap Llwyd, Director of Collections and Public Programmes at the National Library of Wales said: “For the benefit of Wales as a nation, it is crucial that Wikipedia contains a wealth of knowledge about its history and culture, and that the range of articles on the Welsh language Wicipedia covers the widest possible range of subjects. The National Library of Wales has a key role to play in providing access to knowledge about Wales and its people, and this post demonstrates our desire to collaborate with individuals and organisations within Wales and beyond in fulfilling this aim.”
Lucy Crompton-Reid, the Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, said “I am delighted that the National Library of Wales have made this residency a permanent post within the library, demonstrating the enormous impact that Wikimedians in Residence can have in opening up cultural heritage institutions and engaging global audiences with their collections through Wikimedia. Our partnership with the National Library of Wales has been characterised by innovation, and we look forward to the continued success of this work with a permanent staff member focused on engaging with Wikimedia and open knowledge.”
Notes for editors
The National Library of Wales (NLW) serves as the nation’s memory. It is a repository of treasures and facts, a disseminator of knowledge, a venue, a destination, a place to keep the past safe and readily available for all to access, use and be inspired by, now and in the future.
Located in Aberystwyth, the Library plays a central role in culture and heritage as one of Wales’s major national institutions. As one of the six Copyright Libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the National Library of Wales’ collections are vast and varied and are free to access. They include 950,000 photographs, 150,000 hours of sound recordings, 250,000 hours of moving image, 25,000 manuscripts, 50,000 works of art, 1,500,000 maps, as well as 6,000,000 books. More than 5,000,000 individual items from these collections have been digitised and made freely available on the internet.
The National Library of Wales engages in a full and continuous programme of public events that include high-quality permanent and temporary exhibitions with associated educational and presentational activities. These are crucial to NLW’s mission of interpreting the collections for, and encouraging participation by, a wide range of audiences whether onsite, at external locations or online.
Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter for the global Wikimedia movement. A registered charity, its mission is to support and advocate for the development of open knowledge, working in partnership with volunteers, the cultural and education sectors and other organisations to make knowledge available, usable and reusable online.
Wikipedia is available in more than 290 languages, and receives about 16 billion pageviews a month. Created in 2001, it has more than 40 million articles across all languages and is the 5th most visited website in the world.
The Wikimedia UK AGM 2017 at Senate House Library – image by Jwslubbock
Every year Wikimedia UK holds the UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards at our Annual General Meeting to recognise the work of the vibrant community that our charity depends on. 2016-17 was an important year for Wikimedia UK, with nearly half a million pages improved on the Wikimedia projects and 20,000 hours contributed by volunteers.
The awards have three categories: ‘UK Wikimedian of the Year’ for individual contributions, ‘Partnership of the Year’ for organisations, and ‘Honourable Mention’ for individuals or groups who have made important contributions to Wikimedia.
UK Wikimedian of the Year
Nominees: Brianboulton, Jason Evans, Kelly Foster, Ewan McAndrew, Fabian Tompsett, Ritchie333, Alice White
This year the award was jointly given to Kelly Foster and Ewan McAndrew. The nominating statements are below:
Kelly Foster – Wikimedia relies on people to edit it, and its aims of enabling people to share knowledge in a neutral way means making sure that all sorts of different people are able to edit it. This makes trainers absolutely key as Wikimedians. As an excellent and effective trainer, Kelly Foster made an enormous contribution in training the members of our Wikipedia project, which is a huge part of why its members are now confident and frequent editors. This is just one of many training sessions she has run for groups and the quality and effectiveness of her contribution deserves this recognition. Nomination by Claire 75.
Ewan McAndrew: Ewan’s work with Edinburgh University is hugely important for normalising the use of Wikipedia in an academic setting. Without being able to point out the great work he has done there i doubt i would have got Aberystwyth University to start taking Wikipedia seriously as a teaching tool. But the main reason for nominating Ewan is the Celtic Knot Conference. Ewan clearly worked incredibly hard on putting this event together, which by all accounts was a great success. From a Welsh perspective, a Wiki conference focused on smaller and minority languages was hugely valuable, as issues on smaller Wikis can be very different to those on en Wiki. Nomination by Jason Evans.
Ewan McAndrew with participants at an Edinburgh Spy Week workshop – image by Mihaela Bodlovic
Partnership of the Year
Nominees: National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Wellcome Library
National Library of Wales
Nominating statement:
I think the National Library of Wales deserves a nomination for their unparalleled commitment to Wikimedia UK and the wider Wikimedia movement. The NLW are now coming to the end of a 36 month full time residency. They have released 15,000 images to Commons and have helped to create 33,000 Wikidata items. They have held 20 Editathons, and users attending NLW events have created 10,000 new articles since January 2015. The Library has been committed to supporting Wikimedia projects and has helped other Welsh content producers share their content on Wikimedia platforms, such as CADW (27,000 Wikidata items) and Sain Records (7,000 sound clips). They have agreed to open their doors to Wiki visiting scholars, and have embedded Wiki based activities into their volunteer programme. They have partnered with the Welsh Government to run projects aimed at improving Welsh language content, and they have now appointed a permanent full time Wikimedian to their staff in order to maintain and develop their partnership with Wikimedia long term. Nomination by Jason Evans.
Jason Evans at the National Library of Wales – image by Llywelyn2000
Honourable Mention
Nominees: User:Andrew Davidson, Dundee Dental School, User:Jesswade88, London Wikimedians, User:Sic19
Simon Cobb
Nominating statement:
User:Sic19 – Simon Cobb (Sic19) has worked incredibly hard this year developing cultural Wikidata. As the Wikidata visiting scholar with National Library of Wales he has created over 10,000 Wikidata items and showcased the benefits of creating open linked data using visualisations, and by writing blogs. He ran a successful session at LODLAM 2017 aimed at developing collaborative Wikidata projects across the sector. In his role at the Leeds University Library he has also run several Wikipedia sessions and has been a strong advocate for Wikimedia within that institution. Nomination by Jason Evans.
Thank you to all the nominees for their outstanding work, the people who proposed them for recognising their value, and the rest of the Wikimedia community in the UK for supporting each other and Wikimedia UK’s work over the past year. We will run the awards again next year, and anyone can make nominations so please take part.
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