Page 36 – WMUK

Spotlight on the residency – Natural History Museum and Science Museum WIR 2013-14

This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Programme Manager

Recently released annual review of Wikimedia UK made me look back at 2013. One of the important projects we supported that year was the Natural History Museum and Science Museum Wikimedian in Residence, a project delivered by John Cummings. The work continued long after the official end of the residency in January 2014, and luckily shortly before full preparations for Wikimania 2014 kicked in, John was able to finalise the case study report from his project.

Why did the residency take place? What happened during the project? What are we thinking of doing now?

Open doors

Over the course of the project many doors were knocked at, and from that wide range of ideas we got some very encouraging wins. Below are some highlights extracted from the case study report.

Partnerships with other organisations. John focused on working with external organisations on open knowledge initiatives, many of which lead to further cooperation with Wikimedia UK. Content improvement. Some examples:
A trial release of Natural History Museum archive content which was then added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource.
The Science Museum has started to open its collection with 50 images of significant objects which around 20,000 people are viewing on Wikipedia each day.
400 photos from the National Media Museum (part of the Science Museum Group) were released to Wikimedia Commons (see here).
Three videos from Science Museum’s Pain Exhibition were released under an open license (e.g. No Pain).
Advocacy work on changing the attitudes and licensing of content towards openness cannot be understated. Much of the project’s time was spent on producing documentation, pilot evidence, and delivering talks advocating open knowledge.

Key reflections

Long duration of the project allowed for many thoughts on future improvements – dig into the later parts of the report (p. 25 onwards) for the whole picture. Some of the highlights are:

Connecting with external organisations has been incredibly powerful throughout the residency. John has worked with a lot of partners thanks to being linked to NHM and SM, and also connected with umbrella organisations such as Collections Trust and DCMS.
John has been a successful advocate of open knowledge throughout the sector, not just focusing on his host institutions – it was one of his key tasks, even though it wasn’t planned as such to start with.
Skills and knowledge transfer between residents was assessed as patchy and often reliant on residents using their free time to volunteer at each other’s events.
It is often difficult to assess how long a project will take to produce positive outcomes.
A valuable insight from the project was that many institutions don’t measure web traffic related to their organisation on other websites. This makes it more difficult to convince them to release content (e.g. they wouldn’t count views on Wikimedia Commons images in their stats). John had ideas of how this could be changed, and we will continue working on it.
Infrastructure development. Looking into the future, John identified many technical developments that would help with the residents’ work.

Any comments and ideas can be directed to John (mrjohncummings-at-gmail.com) or to our GLAM programme (glam-at-wikimedia.org.uk).

Emmanuel Engelhart, Inventor of Kiwix: the Offline Wikipedia Browser

This user profile by Joe Sutherland is part of a series about Offline Wikipedia on the Wikimedia blog where it was first published. As well as having created Kiwix, Emmanuel is a developer for Wikimedia UK.

Wikipedia’s goal is to be the sum of human knowledge, available to anyone at any time, but when billions of people have no internet access at all, how can that goal be realized? The answer according to software developer Emmanuel Engelhart (User:Kelson) is quite simple – take Wikipedia offline.

Together with Renaud Gaudin, he invented Kiwix, an open source software which allows users to download a copy of Wikipedia in its entirety for offline reading.

Kiwix uses all of Wikipedia’s content through the Parsoid wiki parser to package articles into an open source .zim file that can be read by the special Kiwix browser. Since Kiwix was released in 2007, dozens of languages of Wikipedia have been made available as .zim files, as has other free content, such as Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikivoyage.

After becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2004, Engelhart became interested in discussions of offline versions of Wikipedia. At the time, Engelhart was in his mid-20s and living in his small village near the town of Vendôme, a few hundred kilometers south of Paris. Learning that a 2003 proposal by Jimmy Wales to create a CD version of Wikipedia, Version 1.0, never made its initial timescale, inspired Engelhart to take action.

He argues that access to information is a basic right that the whole world should be entitled to. “Water is a common good. You understand why you have to care about water. Wikipedia is the same; it’s a common good. We have to care about Wikipedia.”

“Tools are not neutral. They have a big impact on our society and software is [becoming] always more central.” Engelhart says. “We live in an industrial and technical world…so how we make software, what are the rules around software, is really important.”

Engelhart elaborated his reasons for creating the software in an email: “The contents of Wikipedia should be available for everyone! Even without Internet access. This is why I have launched the Kiwix project. Our users are all over the world: sailors on the oceans, poor students thirsty for knowledge, globetrotters almost living in planes, world’s citizens suffering from censorship or free minded prisoners. For all these people, Kiwix provides a simple and practical solution to ponder about the world.”

Profile by Joe Sutherland, Wikimedia Foundation Communications volunteer

Interview by Victor Grigas, Wikimedia Foundation Storyteller

Do you have a story about your use of Offline Wikipedia that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear it! Email: vgrigas(at)wikimedia.org

Scholarly collaboration, with coffee

This post was written by Roberta Wedge, Gender Gap Project Officer

Not new: a group of scholars gathering to discuss their chosen subject use the opportunity to expand and update the relevant Wikipedia page.

New: a group of scholars gathering to discuss their chosen subject use the opportunity to make contact with Wikimedia UK. Together we set up an editathon to work on the relevant page, hosted in our central London office, and joined by virtual colleagues.

Last Thursday saw the Anna Kavan Symposium, a day of discussion about this twentieth century novelist, organised by the Institute of English Studies (part of the University of London) in association with Liverpool John Moores University Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History and Peter Owen Publishers.

Last Friday saw the Anna Kavan editathon, a morning of editing the Wikipedia page about her. This collaboration was the brainchild of Catherine Lenoble (User:Cathsign), a French writer whose first edit was a year ago at the Ada Lovelace Day event in Brussels. London is an expensive place to stay, so many of the symposium attendees left immediately afterwards, but remote participation in the editathon was made easier by an etherpad.

Wikimedia UK has that precious resource, meeting space in central London. Our office is near Silicon Roundabout, aka Old Street, on numerous bus routes, and at the junction of two cycle paths. We have coffee and wifi, and laptops to loan and expertise on tap. We extend an invitation to other experts coming to London (and we can even travel to you): give us notice, and let’s see if we can help you improve your subject area on Wikipedia.

Padmini Ray Murray steps down from Wikimedia UK Board

Wikimedia UK announces that Padmini Ray Murray is to step down from the charity’s Board of Trustees. She will be taking a new position teaching digital humanities at Shristi School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore.

Padmini joined the board of Wikimedia UK in November 2013 and brought with her an excellent skill set and great enthusiasm and expertise. Her final day as a trustee will be Thursday 18 September. Padmini remains a member of the 2014 EduWiki Conference working group, contributing ideas on themes for this year’s edition of this annual event and actively seeking to bring an appropriate keynote speaker to open the proceedings. Along with Dr Greg Singh, a colleague at the University of Stirling, she is also in the process of ensuring that a number of students from that university are able to attend the conference.

Michael Maggs, Chair of Wikimedia UK, said: “On behalf of the Board I would like to thank Padmini for all of her efforts and support during her time as a trustee of the charity. We all wish her the very best for the future.”

Work is ongoing to appoint a replacement for Padmini which the Board is confident will be completed soon.

Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society of Chemistry

This post was written by Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) and originally published on his blog here

I’m pleased to announce that I have accepted the position of Wikimedian in Residence with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a learned society and professional body whose roots go back to 1841 (see RSC on Wikipedia).

Over the next year, starting 22 September, I will be helping my new RSC colleagues, and the Society’s members, to understand Wikipedia and its sister projects, and to contribute to making knowledge of chemistry, and related subjects, more freely available. The job is titled “WikiMedian”, because as well as WikiPedia, it covers those other projects, which are run by the Wikimedia community.

This follows on from my previous Wikipedia residences with Wildscreen (on their ARKive project), with Staffordshire Archives and Heritage Service, at the New Art Gallery Walsall, and with Lancashire County Council’s Museum Service (at their Queen Street Mill), plus shorter projects with a number of other institutions (including West Midlands Police, The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Black Country Museum, and more). I’ll continue to be Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID. The RSC have already integrated ORCID into their publishing workflow and the two organisations obviously share interests in research and academic publishing.

I’ll be working part time, partly from home, and at the RSC’s Cambridge base one day per week, plus travelling around the UK to various events. I’ll also enjoy spending some days at their palatial London HQ, at Burlington House. My work days will vary to suit the requirements of the post, and my other commitments.

The rest of the time, I’ll still be available, as a freelancer, for other work, not least relating to Wikipedia, and facilitating open space events (for example, I’m MCing GalleryCamp on 23 September). Do drop me a line if you think I can help you with that, or if you have an interest in my RSC work, or if you want to meet socially, after work, in Cambridge.

New images released are quickly put to use

This post was written by John Byrne, Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society and Cancer Research UK

I’ve had two recent uploads of images released by organizations where I am Wikimedian in Residence. Neither of them are huge in quantity compared to some uploads, but I’m really pleased that an unusually large percentage of them are already used in articles. Many thanks to all the editors who put them in articles, especially Keilana for CRUK and Duncan.Hull for the Royal Society images.

The first release was by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), of 390 cancer-related diagrams, including many covering anatomy and cell biology. Many medical editors had said they were keen to have these available, and they have been quickly added to many articles, with 190 already being used, some twice, and mostly on high-traffic medical articles like breast cancer, lung cancer and cervical cancer. A BaGLAMa2 report shows page views in August, traditionally a low-traffic month, of 1.1 million

Wikipedia cancer articles tend to be mostly illustrated with alarming shots of tumours, or purple-stained pathology slides which convey little to non-professional readers. The new images are from the patient information pages on CRUK’s website and explain in simple terms basic aspects of the main cancers – where they arise, how they grow and spread. Some show surgical procedures that are hard to convey in prose.

Many files have generous labelling inside the image. All the files are in svg format, allowing for easy translation of these labels into other languages, which should be especially useful over time. All use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence. All the images of this type that CRUK have are now uploaded, but additional ones should be uploaded as they are created, and other types of image, including infographics, are in the pipeline.

We are also working to change the standard model release forms CRUK uses, so that photos and videos featuring people that are made in future will be easier to release. CRUK also has some very attractive short animations, which in some ways are more culturally neutral and so preferable for use around the world. These avoid model release issues and some should be coming soon.

The other release is by the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy for the Sciences. I’ve now completed my term as Wikipedian in Residence there, but had got their agreement to release the official portrait photos of the new Fellows elected in 2014, with the intention to continue this in future years. Some photos of their building were also released.

By early September, only a month after uploading completed, of the 72 files uploaded 38 (53%) are now used in Wikipedia articles. The portrait of Professor Martin Hairer, who won the Fields Medal this August is used in 18 different language versions of Wikipedia, having fortuitously been uploaded just before it was announced that he had won the Fields Medal, which is often called the mathematician’s equivalent of a Nobel. Most of the biographies were started after this announcement. Other images of Fellows are used in the French, Chinese and Persian Wikipedias, as well as English. There were 96,000 page views in August for these articles.

The availability of high-quality portraits is very likely to encourage the writing of articles on those Fellows who still lack Wikipedia biographies. There are 15 of these, which is already a better (lower) figures than for recent years such as 2012, where 29 still lack biographies.

Back in the Wikimedia UK Office

This post was written by Fabian Tompsett, temporary Volunteer Support Organiser

After a short break I am back in the Wikimedia UK office, now in the role of providing cover for Katie Chan as Volunteer Support Organiser for about four months. One of the first things I’ve noticed is that the place has a different feel: the team is no longer approaching a big event with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. Things are “back to normal”, but actually, not really!

Wikimania 2014 has given Wikimedia UK a big boost at various levels:

Confidence

There’s a sense of “we did it”, we coped with playing a significant role in delivering Wikimania alongside our partners the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimania London team. Many members of staff have taken a bit of a break but are now back at work with renewed enthusiasm. We have been so happy to get back in contact with some Wikimedians who have had little to do with the chapter recently, as well as meeting up with new volunteers, including a number of Wikimedians of long standing who had not previously engaged with Wikimedia UK. So we also have the feeling that Wikimania had the endorsement of the Wikimedia community in the UK in general. Thank you all.

Innovation

But this self-confidence is not accompanied by complacency. Actually people are focussing on how we can use the experience of Wikimania and some of the new ideas we came across to take Wikimedia UK to a new level. One aspect of this is my new colleague, Roberta Wedge, who is already having an impact on staff by raising issues which affect our engagement with women in various ways. Also as we have attracted a number of volunteers very local to our London Office, we have initiated regular Wiki Wednesdays to help deepen their involvement with the Wikimedia movement. More examples will emerge over time.

Volunteering

In my new role I shall be involved in volunteer support, something dear to my heart. I certainly learnt a lot about volunteer support from being involved in Wikimania, and certainly the Wikimania London team contributed to that learning. As this is a temporary position, part of my work is picking up on the activities Katie has been running. But as I got to know many of the new volunteers who signed up for Wikimania a key part of my work during these four months will be to develop our relationship with them.

We are also asking for input from volunteers to help shape how we make the most of the new opportunities which are arising post Wikimania. To help with this we shall be conducting a survey amongst our volunteers to get a better understanding of their views. However, I would welcome any direct contact from new or long standing volunteers to discuss any ideas you may have.

You can reach Fabian by calling the office on 020 7065 0990 or emailing fabian.tompsett@wikimedia.org.uk

“A significant step towards a sustainable partnership”: Ally Crockford and the National Library of Scotland

This post was written by Joe Sutherland.

Ally Crockford has spent a great deal of time researching in the National Library of Scotland – eight years, in fact – so when the opportunity to open its content for a wider audience came along she jumped at it. “What drew me to working here is the love that I have for the library,” she explains. “I’ve worked here for the last eight years as a researcher and I think it’s an amazing organisation.”

“When I saw the call for a Wikimedian I thought it was an amazing opportunity, because I know how much material is here in the library and how few people get to access that material regularly. To be able to provide access to the collections was wonderful.”

A room full of books has essentially become her habitat by this point. Though originally from Canada, Ally received her PhD in English literature from Edinburgh University, and throughout the programme was heavily involved with the library. Since July 2013, Ally has served as Wikimedian in Residence there.

During her tenure, Ally has worked on several projects aiming to extend the reach of the library’s content to a wider, global audience. One of the projects of which she is most proud was the Anybody But Burns editathon, a quest to fill Wikipedia with information about Scottish poets who don’t have the recognition that Robert Burns enjoys.

“I was really, really pleased with how that came together. It was probably the first event where we saw Wikimedians from the community working alongside contributors who had never used Wikimedia before, but were very interested in Scottish poetry,” she says. “We were working with the Scottish Poetry Library, and we held it in the National Library’s reading rooms, which really was a very special opportunity.”

In fact, the Telegraph named the event as one of “the best places in the UK to celebrate Burns Night”, a title of which she admits to being particularly proud.

Her role has also allowed her to address other issues with Wikipedia, through events organised with the library and with other organisations in Edinburgh. In December 2013, the library worked with the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK to host an editathon on women in science. Not only was the goal to improve coverage of female scientists on Wikipedia, a topic area quite under-represented on the site, but also to increase female participation.

“We had more than twenty people who came along,” she says, “and we had fifteen new articles created and five more improved, a lot of them about women in science who had connections to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. We had speakers as well, women who currently have a significant position in the scientific community.”

“Sally Macintyre, for example, was one of the speakers. It was really quite fascinating because we had a participant who created an article about her in the evening and then later on she was there speaking. That was a fantastic connection to make – to be able to say, ‘you now have a place on Wikipedia’, and to show her her place on Wikipedia.”

Working with Wikimedia UK has helped the library develop a new metadata and digital content licensing policy, which Ally thinks will allow the NLS to open up its resources and release them under less restrictive licenses.

“[It] would put all of our low-resolution content that is in the public domain back into the public domain,” she explains, “which means we can upload it to Wikimedia Commons. At the moment we’ve only uploaded about 250 images, but I’m quite happy with the images we’ve uploaded and I’m really impressed with the way that the library has changed its attitude towards its material.

“They’re still a little bit hesitant, but they are increasingly becoming more open, and they’ve already identified a couple of thousand images to release over the coming months which I’m very excited to see happen.”

“It also means that going forward, as the library digitises more material,” she adds, “that material will also be able to go up. So I think it’s a significant step towards developing a sustainable partnership with Wikimedia UK on the library’s behalf.”

For more on The GLAM-Wiki Revolution, visit the project page, or find out more about the National Library of Scotland Wikimedian in Residence project.

Remember a Charity in Your Will Week

This post was written by Wikimedia UK’s fundraising team

This week is “Remember a Charity in Your Will Week“. Wikimedia UK supports this national campaign to encourage this type of giving; Remember a Charity was set up in 2001 to address the fact that while 74% of the UK population support charities, only 6% currently leave a legacy to them when writing a will.

We are very grateful to the people that make our work growing and supporting the Wikimedian movement in the UK possible, and we’d like to offer more options in how you choose to support us by leaving a small amount to us in a will, or letting us know if this is something you have already decided to do.

Donations to Wikimedia UK fund valuable projects such as our Wikimedians in Residence at the Royal Society and Cancer Research UK, promoting digital literacy through Wikimedia and also running regular events such as our upcoming Women in Classicism editathon.

If you are interested in making an arrangement, or telling us that you have arranged this particularly special kind of gift to make our shared vision of free and open knowledge live on, please do get in touch with Katherine, our Fundraising Manager, by emailing Katherine.Bavage@wikimedia.org.uk. If you let us know about a gift in your will we can keep you updated on what we are achieving and the type of work your legacy will support.

Your pictures on one of the busiest websites in the world?

This post was written by Michael Maggs, a volunteer organiser of Wiki Loves Monuments (and Wikimedia UK Chair)

September is your chance to take part in the annual photography competition to improve Wikipedia. The encyclopaedia is visited by 500 million people every month, and is seeking help from RPS members improve its photos.

Wiki Loves Monuments is aimed at improving coverage of the UK’s listed buildings and ancient monuments, and starts on Monday 1st September. The contest is supported by the Royal Photographic Society, English Heritage, and Wikimedia UK (the UK charity that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects).

We’ve got lots of pictures of Tower Bridge and Stonehenge, but there’s so much more of the country’s heritage to celebrate. There are tens of thousands of eligible sites, so check out the UK competition website and see what’s nearby. As well as prizes for the best image, we have a special prize this year for the best image of a listed building on one of the ‘At Risk’ registers.

It doesn’t matter when your photos are taken so long as they are uploaded during September 2014. If you took some stunning pictures back in April, or five years ago, you can still upload them.

In line with the charitable and educational aims of the contest, you’ll need to agree to release your entries under a free licence allowing them to be freely used by anyone for any purpose, including Wikipedia. You retain copyright, and can require anyone using your images to attribute them to you as photographer.

Help us show off your images of your local history!

The competition is open until Tuesday 30 September. You can see full details of how to enter here.