Upload your photographs during June to be in with a chance of winning country and national prizes.
This year, for the second time, Wales is taking part in the international photography competition ‘Wiki Loves Earth’ organised by the Wikimedia movement. Founded 9 years ago as a focus for nature heritage, the competition aims to raise awareness of protected sites. The Welsh campaign is also organised by Wikimedia UK, the National Library of Wales and WiciMon.
Robin Owain who leads the Wikimedia UK projects across Wales said “This year, our key supporters include the Welsh Government, the Ramblers Association and all three National Parks! We are calling on people across Wales to share their photographs of nature: flora, fauna and fungi!”
This is one of the largest photography competitions in the world focusing on National Parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and all protected areas. Robin explained “The biodiversity and geology of Wales is unique, and this competition allows Welsh photographers to share our protected areas on a world stage.
Other organisations who will be supporting this exciting competition include Natural Resources Wales, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons, Ramblers (Cymru), and both Edward Llwyd and Llên Natur nature societies.
Any photographs you have taken in the past can be uploaded during June, with prizes at both country and national level to the winners. Robin added “The competition is open to everyone. We play rugby and football on the world stage, therefore we ask our friends, volunteers and staff to take photographs on that international stage, and at the same time exhibit their photographs of our diverse countryside.”
Read more about Wiki Loves Earth 2022 in Wales here on Wikimedia Commons.
By Esma Gjertsen, Volunteer Coordinator at Wikimedia UK
I am very excited to join the Wikimedia community as a Volunteer Coordinator and look forward to contributing to volunteer engagement and diversity across the community.
I moved to the UK from Turkey where I worked as a freelance translator and civil servant for more than a decade. I studied translation for my undergraduate degree and continued my formal education with masters degrees in human rights and social policy.
I am driven by social justice and equal opportunities. I have been volunteering in the education, environment and family non-profits for almost twenty years, most recently in a UK based charity as a volunteer coordinator. I’m very happy about the career change I’m going through and joining the third sector as a professional to make a meaningful impact with my experience and skills. I am hoping to advance Wikimedia UK’s efforts to reach out and bring in more people from underrepresented communities and support them to share their knowledge and expertise through open and free platforms.
I am currently familiarising myself with our work (reading lots of articles and documents and talking to colleagues) – and am very eager to join in the mission.
I’m very open to new ideas and brainstorming – just reach out and say hello at esma.gjertsen@wikimedia.org.uk.
The Connected Heritage team is offering more public, free events and webinars in 2022 as the project progresses. If you work or volunteer for a heritage or cultural organisation, please do come along.
Webinars
If you want to learn more about the Connected Heritage project, or find out why editing Wikimedia projects is a great way to enhance digital skills while at the same time improving the long term preservation and findability of your collections – come along to a webinar.
In the one-hour webinar Leah Emary and Dr. Lucy Hinnie will introduce the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, and outline the benefits of engaging with these sites. The talk will last for about 45 minutes, with 15 minutes for questions and discussion with the audience.
Wikipedia is read 22 billion times a month, making it one of the most visited websites in the world. It is a crucial way to share knowledge. Wikimedia UK is a registered charity and has received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to help heritage and cultural organisations develop skills, tools and communities of practice for the sustainable digital preservation of heritage.
If you work or volunteer for a heritage or cultural organisation, please do come along.
After this webinar, participants will understand more about open knowledge; know how to follow up if they would like to continue with the project; and have resources and materials to make a case for participation to organisation leaders.
To sign up for a Zoom webinar, please select from the following dates, and register via Eventbrite. You need only attend one webinar. Sessions are free, open and no prior Wiki experience is required.
Wikithons
If you’re already convinced and are ready to start editing, come to an Edit-a-thon.
Our Potluck Wikithons are designed to offer a taster of what a Wikithon would offer for a partner organisation. Participants are encouraged to bring along material that they would like to work with, and we will train them in how to edit Wikipedia and add material to Wikimedia Commons. They are a lot of fun, and a great way to see what it is that we offer.
In this post, Anastasia reflects on the process of editing a Wikipedia article, and the challenges it presented. You can read more about the Mixed Museum internships in our blog, and over at The Mixed Museum website.
The Mixed Museum
March was an extremely beneficial and eventful month. Working alongside such ambitious experts was extremely helpful in furthering my existing knowledge about editing and writing and learning new skills such as using Wikipedia. I am grateful to the Mixed Museum for giving me an exciting opportunity to work with and learn from the Wikimedia team members.
After starting my internship, I became acquainted with the Wikimedia UK team through an insightful Potluck Wikithon. It was fascinating to get to know the inside-outs of Wikipedia, as I could have never imagined that so much work needed to be done to create a single credible article. It was a challenge to adapt to the writing style of Wikipedia at first, as it seemed so different from that of university essays. Wikipedia requires a factual, detached description of events, whereas personal opinion and thorough, logical analysis are the basis of the papers I am so used to. However, the support I was getting from both the Mixed Museum and Wikimedia was highly useful in overcoming the challenges I faced.
When I first began editing my assigned page, Black people in Ireland, I felt that it was far from what we were hoping to end up with. I noticed that some information was shallow, and many sections lacked credible sources. Unfortunately, I was forced to delete some of the claims as I could not prove their reliability, since there were no available sources to back them. I improved the article to show that Black people’s history in Ireland is more profound and complex than considered before.
I believe that education is crucial for the formation of independent-minded and tolerant people, and Wikipedia can help that cause by working on articles concerning minorities’ histories. Being the most accessible resource for young people all over the world, Wikipedia needs to uphold a high standard in showcasing not only the history of oppression but also the lifestyles of those minorities.
Another challenge was one of the main tasks of the internship: searching for and adding pictures to the page I was editing. I found it complicated to understand the copyright and laws concerning the usage of photographs, despite detailed explanations from the team during the introduction section. I was able to retrieve several pictures from the Wikipedia domain after researching the process. However, finding relevant photos with appropriate copyrights was hard, as most are reserved for exclusive use, and the rights to publish these can only be purchased.
Although the work I was doing throughout the internship was mainly independent, I never felt like I was left alone to deal with all the aspects of the job. The team was highly supportive via Slack and email most days. Slack was especially useful, as it felt like a social media website, where one could chat with colleagues via instant messages and get responses quicker. It was also less formal than traditional means of business communication, which helped me feel more comfortable asking questions.
This experience was precious, as I have acquired essential skills, worked with Wikimedia software, and communicated with two professional teams to spread awareness about such a crucial topic. I hope that my contribution made an impact on the Wikipedia audience and helped someone out there learn more about Black Irish history.
Welcome to the Spring/Summer 2022 newsletter! I hope you have had a good start to the year, and a lovely bank holiday weekend over Easter.
This newsletter is full of information, stories and snippets about Wikimedia UK’s work in partnership with volunteers and institutions to open up knowledge, with a particular focus on knowledge equity, information literacy, and climate information. I hope you will find something to inspire, interest or excite you.
On a slightly different note, I have been moved by our community’s response to the terrible situation in Ukraine, and pleased to have played a small role in securing safe refuge, in the homes of Wikimedia UK donors, for two families seeking refuge from the war. Thank you to all those who responded to my emails about this in March.
With very best wishes
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
UK chapter update
Going further with student engagement
Over the last few years, Wikimedia UK and partners have been increasingly involved with or have helped with the hosting of internships or student work placements focused on delivering Wikimedia-related projects. We wanted to bring together some examples of this kind of work, explore how these kinds of placements sit within the ethos of the Wikimedia community, and share what we have learned from these experiences, offering what we have in terms of best practice. The intern case study booklet is aimed at organisations in education or cultural sectors who already work with interns or student placements and want to explore whether Wikimedia-focused internships is a model of collaboration which could be beneficial to them.
Events and projects you can join
Annual General Meeting
The 2022Annual General Meeting will be held online on the morning of Saturday 9th July. This is an important date for your diaries, particularly if you are a member of the charity (which costs just £5 a year). The meeting will include reports from the board and executive, voting on resolutions and of course trustee elections. There will be an opportunity to ask questions about our work in 2021/22 and to find out more about people standing for election to the board.
Celtic Knot conference
Celtic Knot 2022 banner. CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference will return in July 2022 over the 1st and 2nd. The conference aims to bring people together to share their experiences of working on information distribution in minority and minoritized languages on the Wikimedia projects. Our aim is to help people learn how to direct the flow of information across language barriers and support their communities. As in previous years we will have a strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages.
The Celtic Knot is a place where people working on growing and maintaining their communities (on Wikipedia, but also Wikisource or Wikidata) can meet, learn from each other, and support each other on topics like community growth, technical tools, or collaboration with partners. Driven by Wikimedia UK’s vision, together with local partners and fellow Wikimedia chapters, the conference carries the experience of five annual editions, including two online events. In each of the first five years, the conference has spotlighted a language or language family, and the participants can learn more about the cultural context as well as the state of the Wikimedia projects in these languages. For the 2022 edition, Wikimedia UK, with the support of Wikimedia Deutschland, will be adopting a broader approach, with an emphasis on skills development for a diverse group of participants.
Our new climate actitvities
WikiForHumanRights: Right to a Healthy Environment campaign banner. CC BY-SA 2.0.
We are excited to announce that WikiForHumanRights: Right to a Healthy Environment is back for 2022. This year, our aim is to ensure that everyone has access to neutral, unbiased and fact-based information on the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Taking part in the competition fits with the growing number of climate and environment based projects Wikimedia UK is taking on. Open access to climate information and data will play an increasingly important role in our shared ability to understand this crisis and act collectively. Running from April 15th through to June 14th 2022, this campaign aims to encourage our supporters, members and volunteers interested in the campaign to organise activities around the theme of environmental sustainability and climate knowledge.
The WikiForHumanRights campaign falls in line with Wikimedia UK’s new strategic focus on climate. We will be launching projects and programmes that support our editors, communities and partner organisations that relate to climate change and environmental sustainability. A few of our current projects include:
We have been working with Climate Policy Radar, an open data climate startup to improve Wikidata’s ability to support environmental policy work.
In 2021, we ran a 24-hour COP26 editathon with the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. 52 editors took part, creating 363 edits and resulting in over 150 thousand views worldwide.
We are working with our partners, Natural Resources Wales and Llen Natur to feed localised data directly onto Wikipedia based on the threat of climate change to local communities.
Wiki Loves Earth 2022
Brown hare (Lepus europaeus). CC BY.SA 4.0.
Wales will participate in the Wiki Loves Earth 2022 international competition again this year, and the new website was rolled out last week. Wikimedia UK has again partnered with the National Library of Wales and WiciMon, in organising the work: other partners will be announced this week.
Our work in partnership
Women’s History Month
Women’s History Month 2022 interviews banner. CC BY-SA 4.0.
We again did a series of interviews for Women’s History Month, showcasing the people and initiatives that are closing the gender gap on wiki projects. There were four interviews, with Helen Close from WES, Hope Miyoba from the Science Museum Group, Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, along with three students who are involved in the gender gap projects, and finally Monisha Shah, Wikimedia UK’s Chair. We were so proud of the work these initiatives have achieved, and encourage you to watch the full series on our YouTube.
We also ran a number of events throughout March for Women’s History Month with the help of collaborating organisations:
We ran a Wiki Workshop with the British Library’s Eccles Centre and the University of Leeds to make Black women in 20th century theatre more visible on wiki projects. We wanted to expand and amplify knowledge produced by and about Black women, and about gender, feminism and the arts on Wikipedia. At this Wiki editing workshop, participants received training on creating and editing wiki pages in order to communicate the central role played by Black women in British theatre making between 1900 and 1950, women like Una Marson and Pauline Henriques. They were also invited to explore resources that can enable better citation justice for women of colour knowledge producers and greater access to archive collections documenting Black British histories. It’s really crucial for us to continue having an intersectional approach to our gender gap work, with women of colour well represented in the activities.
This is also shown in our collaborations with the David Livingston Museum. The David Livingstone Birthplace is the only independent museum in Scotland that is dedicated to preserving the legacy of David Livingstone and examining his work within the complex and painful realities of slavery, colonialism and Nineteenth Century European attitudes towards African people and community groups. Our Scotland Programme Coordinator was glad to join staff and volunteers at the museum for a hybrid editathon focussing on the women connected to David Livingstone, and continuing work on articles that we’d worked on at our last event. The in-person event was based in the new museum, and our worklist was drawn up by museum staff, using their subject knowledge, as well as resources from the museum and elsewhere. The editathon saw 1.44k words added to Wikipedia, and 14 references added.
As part of the National Lottery funded Digital Skills for Heritage initiative, we run webinars to showcase what Wiki-based platforms and the digital skills gained through contributing to them for the GLAM heritage sector. To round up the second series of these webinars, the Connected Heritage team hosted a potluck for International Women’s Day. Participants learnt Wikipedia basics and made their first edits. In addition, the event allowed them to see how a Wikithon is run, and how it could work for their organisation and how you can best support the growth of open knowledge. Ideally, participants brought an idea of a topic or theme they wanted to work on. As the date is close to International Women’s Day, we encouraged them to bring projects relating to women.
We did a workshop with Protests and Suffragettes and Women’s History Scotland to celebrate International Women’s Day and the theme of #BreakTheBias, adding and improving entries for Scottish Suffragettes on Wikipedia. We’ve collaborated with Protests and Suffragettes for quite some time. They’re a creative project led by a team of artists, activists, and local historians working to recover and re-voice the histories of women activists in Glasgow, and across Scotland. They create ‘artWalks, and public art and creative interventions in the public realm, while conducting archival research and recording oral histories. They work with Wikipedia as knowledge activists. Women’s History Scotland is a new partner for us, they’ve been working with P&S and this is the first in a series of events we’ll be doing with them. The event saw 4.36K Words Added to 16 Wikipedia articles, and 92 References Added.
Connected Heritage
Digital Skills For Heritage banner. CC BY-SA 4.0.
The aim of the Connected Heritage project is to help cultural and heritage organisations share their knowledge through the Wikimedia projects, with a particular focus on underrepresented knowledge. The team have been busy delivering a series of webinars, workshops, and training events. Since the start of the year the project team have been setting up partnerships with really exciting external partners. From our workshops, 52 people have worked together to improve 54 articles which have already been read more than a quarter of a million times.
More than 100 organisations have been represented at our events and our potluck wikithon or International Women’s Day was fully booked well in advance. There is a lot of enthusiasm for Wikipedia and the potential for reaching new audiences. There isn’t space here to mention all the organisations we’ve worked with so far, but one highlight has been the work of interns from the Mixed Museum. They edited articles on South Asian people in Ireland and Black people in Ireland, adding important background information. Incredibly, they extended Wikipedia’s coverage of South Asian people in Ireland back by three centuries. That was quite a gap to fill and shows how important cultural and heritage organisations are for improving Wikipedia.
International Museum Day 2022
The International Museum Day 2022 Wikidata Competition is part of the Wikimedia events around the International Museum Day on 18th May. Its goal is to improve Wikidata content about museums, including related objects, people and events, in all participating countries and regions.
International Museum Day is an event organised by the International Council of Museums since 1977 to raise awareness that “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.” About 20 Wikimedia Chapters worldwide joined their forces to transfer this awareness into free accessible content of Wikipedia and its sister projects. In a joint campaign from 4th-18th May, the national Wikimedia associations and groups invite the community of Wikipedia contributors to edit, update, translate Wikipedia articles in the context or upload pictures. A Wikidata competition completes the offer around the IMD 2022 (see the project page in English).
Since February 2020, the Khalili Collections have hosted a Wikimedian in Residence to share their context with the Wikimedia projects. Martin Poulter has been sharing images, writing articles, and helping Wikimedia and the Khalili Collections learn about Wikipedia’s gaps in the arts. The residency recently passed a remarkable milestone: images from the Collection have been viewed more than 50 million times through Wikipedia and its sister projects. The residency has also connected with the University of Edinburgh, with students adding images from the Collections to Wikipedia.
Film
Robin Owain, our Manager in Wales has been working with the Welsh community on collating data on films from Wikidata, Rotten Tomatoes etc, preparing a semi automated batch of articles on international films from around 50 languages. The articles will again contain automated templates, bringing live ‘feed’ of information into the articles, with text being generated on-the-fly, especially that which changes over time (list of awards etc), thus keeping the information up to date and correct.
Extending the NIHR residency
In our winter newsletter we were very excited to announce that we have been working with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to set up a Wikimedian in Residence project. Adam Harangozó started his residency in early December, and has been working with the organisation to identify where their research can have the most impact on Wikipedia. Initially a six-month project, it has been extended for another three months.
You can follow the work of the project on Wikipedia, and Adam recently had an interview with The Scotsman.
Wikipedia goes to university
Much of students’ focus is on writing text, but illustrations, such as this one shared by one of the Sussex students enhance Wikipedia’s content.
New terms and semesters began at universities across the country earlier this year, with students picking up new modules. Wikimedia UK supports lecturers who want to use Wikipedia in the classroom. There are often conversations with lecturers to help them explore the possibilities, and excitingly this has led to the University of Sussex involving Wikipedia editing in two modules this year. Both run by Nimi Hoffmann, the first for forty first-year undergraduates module ran late last year, and the second module for about a hundred second year undergraduates started this spring. As part of their assessment, the students are writing about education and development. At the University of Derby, we were delighted that Suzanne Nelson decided to again get students editing as part of her MA Journalism course. The module simulates a work placement, and the students are busy writing and due to share their work in May.
The Wikimedian in Residence project at the University of Edinburgh is continuing strongly, and Ewan McAndrew has been supporting students from a variety of backgrounds including Translation Studies MSc, Digital Education MSc, and History of Art.
Join us
We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a member, donate to us online, or volunteer on some of the projects above.
We’re also on social media if you prefer to chat there, we always appreciate new followers and sharers of our news; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also follow our blog, which has more details on some of the activities mentioned in the newsletter.
International Museum Day 2022 / About 20 Wikimedia Chapters around the world join forces
The International Museum Day (IMD) on 18th May is an event organised by the International Council of Museums since 1977 to raise awareness that “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.” About 20 Wikimedia Chapters worldwide joined their forces to transfer this awareness into free accessible content of Wikipedia and its sister project.
In a joint campaign from 4th to 18th May, the national Wikimedia associations and groups invite the community of Wikipedia contributors to edit, update, translate Wikipedia articles in the context or upload pictures. A Wikidata competition completes the offer around the IMD 2022.
The Wikidata competition to improve the data about museums and related people, objects and events is held in the form of localised versions sharing the same basic concept but focusing on the geographical area of the respective. Editors from all over the world can participate in any local edition. A brilliant tool to find out more about the presence of your favourite or all other museums and more on Wikipedia is WMCH Map Service.
The overall project is coordinated by Wikimedia CH (WMCH) in association with Wikimedia Österreich (WMAT) and direct support by Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) and the Volunteer Supporters Network (VSN). “For several years already, this event has been an occasion for us to improve the presence of museums on Wikipedia, Wikidata and further Wikimedia projects”, says Ulrich Lantermann from Wikimedia CH. Wikimedia UK works with many museums in the UK, focusing especially on their underrepresented collections. We believe that participating in this competition adds an opportunity to further highlight and ensure online representation of the heritage held by our museums.
“The way museums interact with their public has drastically changed since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, and digitalisation has become a priority for many”, explains Alexandra Fernandez Coego, Head of Communications and Public Relations at ICOM. “However, smaller and community museums often lack the means to create or maintain an online presence. Our collaboration with Wikimedia aims at supporting them in closing the digital gap”. Last year, more than 37,000 museums participated in the IMD in about 158 countries and territories. The 2022 edition is dedicated to the theme “The Power of Museums”.
One of the key missions of Wikimedia affiliates and groups is to support Wikipedia contributors in their volunteer work and help memory institutions to share their curatorial knowledge, collections, and resources in a digital manner, with a global community through a global platform. Together we advocate for free knowledge in the world. This joint project is an impressive example of this commitment.
We’re pleased to announce the first of our partnerships resulting from our Connected Heritage training. While the webinars are free for anyone working in the cultural heritage sector to attend, our target organisations to form further projects with are those with collections on knowledge that has been underrepresented online, which makes our current partners the ideal collaborators.
The Mixed Museum is a digital museum and archive that is working to spread knowledge about Black and ethnic minority British history through sharing and preserving the social history of racial mixing in Britain.
In March 2022 we welcomed two interns from Queen Mary University London to work with the Mixed Museum on articles relating to Irish history, specifically South Asian people in Ireland and Black people in Ireland. This drew on the rich Mixed Museum collections, and enabled us to add a further 200 years of knowledge to Wikipedia. One of the interns is preparing a blogpost for us to talk further about this important work. We are excited to further develop our partnership with the Mixed Museum in the coming year.
Reimagining Lincolnshire is a public history project which aims to bring to light hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire, specifically those of people of colour, objects of empire and unheard women’s voices.
It seeks to uncover hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire, of those whose contributions to the county, country and internationally have largely been forgotten. It addresses the complexities of empire and slavery, in order to understand key Lincolnshire figures such as Sir Joseph Banks and Sir Isaac Newton in new ways. It offers additional layers of complexity as well, relating to class, gender, sexuality and ableism, for example, that help to reveal the past in a more inclusive, thoughtful and thought-provoking light. We are looking forward to running an Editathon with Reimagining Lincolnshire in October 2022 for Black History Month.
The Almeley Quakers and Rotherwas Together are local history collectives, dealing with social history and forgotten stories of people and places from their local areas, and in the case of Rotherwas, the lives of women at war.
Rotherwas Together was formed in 2018 to help to unite all of the groups and individuals who were interested in finding out more about the Rotherwas Munitions Works, the people who worked there and how it shaped the lives, buildings and social history of Hereford.
ROF Hereford changed the city from the day that land started to be cleared to make way for the site in 1916 through to today. The site and the munitions made there helped the allies to gain victory in both the first and second world war and also changed the lives of thousands of people. For some, it gave opportunities for a career or the chance to work and live elsewhere but, for others, it led to lifelong health problems and infertility. We were delighted to run a hybrid Editathon for Rotherwas on 14th April 2022.
The Almeley Quakers are interested in uploading material to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. We have been working together to support the society with Commons training and a workshop on Wikisource, with input from the University of Edinburgh.
Create Place is a leadership programme for mid-career professionals in culture and creative industries, focussed on place-making in heritage and arts. At the end of March, we ran a two hour Wiki workshop for a group of professionals on how to edit and implement Wikimedia Commons into their cultural heritage work. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with create professionals, and we look forward to supporting Create Place with future events.
The Audience Agency are fellow members of our NLHF cohort. They have been working with a group of cultural organisations to help them share their work online and engage new audiences. We ran a Wikithon for Audience Agency affiliates in early February 2022.
Workers Education Association (WEA) – We are working with the WEA to organise a Wikithon in Newcastle, which will coincide with their Routes of Social Change immersive history walks in the North East. This event will look at elements of social history and will run, in person, in June 2022.
How to get involved with Connected Heritage
In 2021 and 2022 we hosted four webinars and one editathon ‘potluck’ – named as such because the participants brought their own topics which we advised on how to best add to or refine on the Wikimedia projects. We’ve followed the same model in 2022, with four very successful webinars and one potluck. When participants sign up, they receive the Connected Heritage resources. SSome organisations decided the webinar was enough for them to start work in their organisations independently. Others are working directly with Wikimedia UK through activities like Wikithons, advocating for open knowledge in their organisations, and uploading and editing collections’ content onto the Wikimedia projects. We aim to work with as many as 20 organisations in this way, with the hope that some partnerships will evolve into longer term collaborations.
By Dr Sara Thomas, Scotland Programme Coordinator at Wikimedia UK
Over the last 18 months we’ve been working with the Scots Wiki community and Marco Cafolla, running editathons to improve the quality of the Scots wiki. The community has done a huge amount of work, as documented here, including a lot of article deletion in order to address the issues that came to light in August 2019. However, what the Scots wiki needs in the long term is more editors. As we know from our work with Celtic Knot, working on a minority language Wikipedia can feel like a huge task, but many hands make light work!
At the end of last year we surveyed previous editathon participants. In response to what folks said, we’re extending the two day editathon to a week-long writing drive. We’ll also be including two evening sessions for collaborative editing – one on Tuesday 18th, 7-9pm, and one on Thursday 20th, 7-9pm. They’ll be held on Zoom, so please sign up through those Eventbrite links to get the joining info.
For January, we’ll be focussing on articles about languages, and on stub articles. There’s also other tasks for those who are less confident with their written Scots to help out with, such as adding images, or references. And of course, we highly recommend the Scots Language Centre’s collection of resources for anyone wanting to improve their written Scots!
Sign up on the dashboard and then drop by Scots wiki any time over the next week (17th-23rd January)! You can see the on-wiki event page here.
We are working through bugs on the Wikimedia UK wiki site, so are temporarily posting the winter newsletter here. This issue will be published on the usual Friends’ Newsletter wiki page in the new year.
Welcome
Season’s greetings! Welcome to Wikimedia UK’s Winter Newsletter 2021. As we come to the end of another strange and rather difficult year for many, we are very grateful for the continued support of our donors, members and volunteers. You and our partners have made it possible for us to continue delivering creative and inclusive projects and programmes that open up knowledge, and enable more people to benefit from the Wikimedia projects. During a year of mostly remote working, we have welcomed three new members of staff as well as new Wikimedians in Residence at the British Library, National Institute for Health Research and the University of the Arts London. We took part in the Big Give Christmas challenge for the first time, and were delighted to achieve our fundraising target. We developed a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Framework and Action Plan, and have also drafted our new organisational strategy for 2022 – 2025, with input from our community. Thank you for all your support, and I hope you enjoy reading our final newsletter of 2021. The staff team and I are sending you our warmest wishes for a safe festive season.
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
UK chapter focus
Due to take place in early 2022, we’re running another course of Train the Trainer. Volunteer trainers play a key role in the delivery of Wikimedia UK programmes, helping us to achieve our strategic objectives by delivering Wikimedia project training to new and existing editors across the country. Demand for training often outstrips staff capacity to fulfil, and we’re conscious that our existing networks do not always allow us to reach all the communities with whom we’d like to work. In the past, we’ve offered our main Train the Trainer programme as a 3-4 day in-person training course, and it has often focussed on training design and pedagogy. This time however, we’re taking a slightly different approach, which we hope will offer more flexibility to our volunteer trainers, and which we have developed in response to feedback from the community, and from partner organisations. The aim of this round of training will be to equip Volunteer Trainers with the skills, experience and resources to deliver a standard ‘Introduction to Wikipedia’, such that would take place at an online editathon or wiki workshop.
Dr Sara Thomas and Bhav Patel outline the content of the Train the Trainer course in the call for participants.
Wikimedia UK works on a three year strategic planning cycle, and we are now developing our new strategy for 2022 to 2025. We’ve held meetings with the staff, board, and wider community to develop the new strategy. Our schedule is aligned with our application deadline for funding from the Wikimedia Foundation, for which we’ll be applying for multi-year funding for the first time. While our strategy is still being finalised, we’re expecting to continue our work in themes such as knowledge equity and information literacy, while also increasing our focus on data and information on both the climate crisis and environmental conservation.
Events and projects you can join
The Connected Heritage project had an excellent turn out in 2021 and will be continuing into 2022. Over 100 participants took part in the free hour long webinars, tailored specifically to those working in the heritage sector. There was also a follow up session for 12 participants who wanted further training. The webinars covered open knowledge, the digital skills gap, digital preservation and how Wikimedia UK is addressing those issues. Participants were provided with access to resources and materials to take back to their organisations, and the opportunity to follow up with the project and engage in partnership. In 2022 there will be more webinars on the 18th January, 2nd February, 17th February and 4th March, and an International Women’s Day Potluck Wikithon on Friday 11th March.
Connected Heritage flyer – 2022 dates, with Commons images: 1, 2, 3 and 4.
#WikiForHumanRights will return from 15th April through to 14th June 2022. This year’s focus is on the Right to a Healthy Environment. The environmental crisis is getting more complex and humanity needs to make thousands of big and small decisions to address it. As the UN Environmental Program described it, we need to make “Peace with Nature” and protect the human rights of the most vulnerable. Wikipedia and other platforms need to fill the knowledge gaps at the intersection of sustainability and human rights in every context and language. The world needs access to reliable information about the link between environmental sustainability and human rights. We encourage individuals or organisations interested in the campaign to organise activities around the intersecting themes of human rights and the environment.
#1Lib1Ref is back for 2022! Abbreviated from 1 Librarian for 1 Reference, 1Lib1Ref calls on librarians around the world, and anyone who has a passion for free knowledge, to add missing references to articles on Wikipedia. #1Lib1Ref runs every January 15th to February 5th and every May 15th to June 5th.
The #1Lib1Ref campaign video.
Our work in partnership
We’ve helped the National Institute of Health Research recruit a new Wikimedian in Residence. The initial proposal was for a six month placement with the potential to extend. The residents will help the Institute share health information to a larger audience, train staff in editing the Wikimedia projects, and scope out what information the Institute has.
National Institute of Health Research logo, with Commons images: 1, 2 and 3.
We ran an editathon in partnership with the University of Leeds for Black History Month, citing African scholars on Wikipedia. The aim was to increase the representation of African scholars and sources across the Wikimedia projects, with a suite of resources available to the students and staff who attended. 269 citations from African scholars were added to Wikipedia, with 26 articles created, and 116 articles edited.
The Wikimedian in Residence at the British Library, Dr Lucy Hinnie, who is also a project lead for Connected Heritage, has been running Wikimedia workshops for library volunteers. Lucy’s been working on a number of fascinating projects such as the Agents of Enslavement data project which was covered by The Guardian; the Canadian Copyright collection – a significant collection of Canadian photographs that were received between the years 1895 and 1923; the India Office Records project; a Bengali Wikisource collaboration, and the relabelling of historic materials in line with modern thought and vocabulary.
A 1780 engraving of an Englishman selling his mistress into slavery in Barbados. Photograph: The Granger Collection/Alamy in the British Library.
Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedian in Residence at the Khalili Collections, and Dr Sara Thomas, Scotland Programme Coordinator here at Wikimedia UK, hosted a series of online Wikidata workshops. There was a workshop for beginners, a more advanced workshop, a workshop for the Education sector, and one for the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) sector. Wikidata is much easier to understand and has more interesting and varied content than most databases, so it is a good place to start when considering how knowledge can be represented by computers. It can create interactive educational visualisations on all sorts of topics and adding to Wikidata is already used as a platform for educational assignments. It can give a new lease of life to research outputs by joining them up with other information sources in a connected web.
We led a session for the School Library Association (SLA) to give school librarians a deeper understanding of Wikipedia’s mechanisms and how it strives to improve, so that they can give informed advice to students on how to approach Wikipedia.
To quote Wikipedia on the subject, The Red Book of Hergest is a large vellum manuscript written shortly after 1382, which ranks as one of the most important mediaeval manuscripts written in the Welsh language. It preserves a collection of Welsh prose and poetry, notably the tales of the Mabinogion and Gogynfeirdd poetry. We’ve been working with Jesus College Oxford to upload a substantial number of photographs of the manuscript to Wikimedia Commons. You can see the Commons category here.
Images of the 14-15th c. Welsh language manuscript photographed in 1997 for the project ‘Early Manuscripts at Oxford University’. 1.
Our Wikimedian in Residence at the Science Museum Group, has also had their residency extended. They continue to collaborate with the Wellcome Collection to get the Science Museum’s vast collection of high quality images on Wikimedia Commons. The resident is utilising and training the museum’s volunteer network.
The Devil’s Porridge Museum ran the Miracle Worker Research Project, working with remote volunteers to uncover the untold histories of munitions workers at HM Factory Gretna during WW1. They’ve since been making efforts to get the research on Wikipedia, with edithathons in September, October, and November, and the project is set to develop in the New Year.
Further and Higher Education
Our Scotland Programme Coordinator, Dr Sara Thomas, has been working with Edinburgh College on their first ever Wikipedia in the Classroom project. A cohort of around 40 students from the Art & Ethics course worked to create Wikipedia articles on underrepresented artists, learning about open licensing, underrepresentation in the canon, and how this applies to their own practice and reflection.
The Decolonising Wikipedia Network is relaunching, supporting students and staff at University of the Arts London (UAL) to edit Wikipedia through the lenses of anti-racism and decolonisation. This includes (but is not limited to) increasing the visibility and credibility of under-represented and marginalised figures and topics connected to our subject disciplines on Wikipedia. We’ve helped expand the network from the comms department to the arts department. We hope to see the network continue to grow, and add to their incredible successes such as the over 7000 words they have added to Wikipedia articles.
The University of Sussex has a module for students to take part in, called the ‘Education for Development: Aid, Policy and the Global Agenda’ module. The students have been working with articles such as education in Indonesia, and will hopefully be taking their text live in the new year.
Occasionally our staff give guest lectures at universities. Dr Sara Thomas returned to The University of Glasgow to lecture on Wikipedia and Information Management, to undergrad students in Digital media and information studies, and another lecture for the postgrad students in Information management and preservation.
The University of Edinburgh’s Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew, continues to do fantastic work. Over the residency Ewan has recruited a number of interns from the student body, most recently the intent at the Library and University Collections, Joshua Jackson. Together they wrote a report of the library and university’s engagement with Wikimedia, which can be found on Commons and offers excellent insight into the value of Wikimedia in higher education. Ewan also liaises with the professors at the university to introduce Wikimedia components into their courses, such as the Reproductive Biomedicine BSc sixth year students workshop, and on the Digital Education MSc course.
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH – Wikimedia and the Library & University Collections Report (2021) 1.
Blog highlights
Our projects and collaborations are many, so while there’s not a post for every activity, the ‘Our news’ page is the perfect home for a more in-depth look at the great Wiki initiatives happening in the UK.
Connected Heritage
The launch of our Connected Heritage project and the three month achievements of the project are live on our blog, with information on how heritage professionals can take part in the 2022 webinars.
Our Chief Executive, Lucy Crompton-Reid, lays out our new way of hybrid working. For the time being we are restricting the number of people in the office at any one time to a maximum of six. Alongside this, we are consulting with all staff individually to determine what their working pattern might look like within this hybrid model. For anyone trying to reach us, email is probably still the best route. Since writing this blog post, the risk of the Omicron variant has further restricted our staff from travelling into the office.
On the 12th October, an international 24 hour editing marathon started in New Zealand to improve the coverage of women in Wikipedia. The relay of volunteering editing reached the UK at 2pm, with an event hosted at the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester as both an in-person and an online event. This blog detailed the editathon for anyone interested in getting involved.
Wikiproject Palestine-Wales was a month-long editathon, which took place in August 2021, between Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia Levant. The event generated a total of 242 new articles. Robin Owain, Wales Programme Manager, details the event.
UK based Punjabi writer and photographer, Amarjit Chandan opened up images from his archive. As of 19th June 2021, a total of 471 images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and at least 54 distinct images (11 % of the total images) are being used across languages and projects with the maximum images being used on Punjabi Wikipedia followed by English Wikipedia and Wikidata. More photos followed.
We had the pleasure of facilitating a meeting for our community to help shape the future direction of Wikimedia UK. We work on a 3 year strategic planning cycle, and we’re now developing our new strategy for 2022-25. Our Chief Executive gives an overview.
As referenced above, we invited expressions of interest in our next round of Train the Trainer, due to take place in early 2022. We are delighted to say that we’ll once again be partnering with Trainer Bhav Patel.
As referenced above, The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has recruited a new Wikimedian in Residence for a six month post is part of a pilot to help the evaluate the opportunities for using Wikimedia to support dissemination of NIHR funded research. We spoke to Adam Harangozo about his role.
Join us
We’re very grateful to and proud of the network we’ve built around our chapter. You can support the governance of the charity by becoming a member, donate to us online, or volunteer on some of the projects above.
We’re also on social media if you prefer to chat there, we always appreciate new followers and sharers of our news; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
The new Wikimedian in Residence six month post is part of a pilot to help the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) evaluate the opportunities for using Wikimedia to support dissemination of NIHR funded research.
Adam Harangozo, who started in post on Monday 6th December, has been editing Wikimedia projects for more than 10 years and includes in his experience a residency at the Blinken Open Society Archives and various projects across cultural and community settings.
Of the role and opportunity with the National Institute for Health Research, Adam said “I’m very excited about my new role as Wikimedian in residence not only because of my firm belief in the values represented by Wikimedia but because it is really important that large institutions like NIHR recognise Wikipedia and contribute with their research and knowledge. I think scientific institutions need to reflect on what they have to do differently, how to make research more visible and accessible. Opening up to Wikipedia, working together on shared platforms with non-professionals definitely has to be part of this process. I’m more than inspired that I can help guide NIHR in this and I hope that we can make contributions that really matter and bring systematic benefits to both the Wikimedia community and the institution itself. Please do feel free to contact me with any ideas, suggestions, and questions during my residency.”
A study between 2021 and 2017 into the impact of Wikimedians in Residence showed how new audiences were reached and partner organisations were “better able to share their knowledge” through having a Wikimedian in Residence. This initial 6 month pilot will focus on the work through NIHR’s Centre for Engagement and Dissemination launched in early 2020 to “make health and care research representative, relevant and ready for use.”
Wikimedia UK’s Director of Programmes and Evaluation Daria Cybulska highlighted why this pilot and the partnership are critical to how we access health information “A lot of people visit Wikipedia as their first port of call for health information, so it’s important that this content is available, up to date, and written in an accessible way. This residency, through access to the extensive expertise of NIHR’s staff and researchers, will improve the content of Wikimedia pages in the area of health and wellbeing. As a pilot project, we will also explore further opportunities for collaboration.”
Over the next few weeks we will share updates and opportunities to get involved with Adam’s work.
