User:Jason.nlw/National Wikimedian/2017 - 18 Annual Report

Background to the project
The National Library of Wales (NLW) first collaborated with Wikimedia UK in 2012/13 when a number of NLW photographs were shared via Commons in support of the MonmouthpediA project. The National Library was named GLAM of the year 2013. During 2014 the Library was approached by Robin Owain, the Wikimedia Wales Manager who proposed installing a jointly funded Wikipedian in Residence. Following negotiations and internal interviews, a Wikipedian in Residence was appointed from the Library Staff on a 12 month contract. The Wikipedian took up the position on January 19th 2015 and was contracted until January 30th 2016. The project was subsequently extended periodically until July 31st 2017. At that time the Library appointed a National Wikimedian as a fully funded permanent member of staff. On August 1st 2017 The National Library was named GLAM Partner of the Year for a second time.

National Wikimedian
The role of National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales is to support the long term strategy of the Library through Wikimedia based activities. This includes holding regular outreach events, aimed at improving the quality and quantity of Wikipedia content about Wales and its people in Welsh, English and other languages. Sharing digital content openly via Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata are also core activities. The National Wikimedian also seeks to develop partnerships with other cultural and educational institutions in Wales and beyond, and acts as an open access advocate within the library and in Wales more generally. The post holder is also encouraged to seek external funding for specific projects and events, and continues to work closely with the Welsh government to deliver projects aimed at improving the quality of the Welsh language Wikipedia.

2017 - 2018 Key aims

 * Deliver the Welsh Government funded Wici-Iechyd (Wiki-Health) project
 * Host the 2018 Celtic Knot, Wikipedia languages conference
 * Host at least 4 edit-a-thon events
 * Continue to share the library's digital content on Wikimedia Commons
 * Continue to share open data via Wikidata and support the library's Wikidata visiting scholar

Strategic Goal 1
Increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently underrepresented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects

Editing Events

 * 10 Wikipedia Edit-a-thons held
 * 4 Training events and workshops held

Sharing Digital Content
Sharing Digital content with Wikimedia projects was a key goal for the project from the beginning. Page view statistics for articles containing NLW images are a key measurement of the impact and reach of our collections on Wikimedia Commons.

Increasingly Wikidata is being used to release, share, explore and visualize Library data.

Images
The most significant upload of the year was the Welsh Portrait Collection, containing nearly 5000 mixed media portraits of mainly British 19th Century interest. In addition to this, a number of smaller collections and individual images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Image statistics

Wikidata
Contribution to Wikidata has been of growing interest to the National Library of Wales as a means of sharing data openly in a user friendly accessible way. A large number of edits were made to Wikidata items in order to add Welsh language labels. Wikidata items were also created by the National Wikimedian and Simon Cobb, the Library's Wikidata Visiting Scholar, for Welsh portraits and other artworks on Commons, Welsh journals, and publishers and printers associated with the Welsh printing trade. The library has actively shared Metadata in order to make this possible. Statistics

Working with Volunteers
The National Library offers all volunteers joining its in-house volunteer program the opportunity to work on Wikimedia projects. Many volunteers join the team for a short space of time. Many are students who only volunteer for a few weeks each year. We also have a core of local volunteers who work on various projects to improve or create Wikipedia articles. Translating English articles into Welsh using the content translation tool is increasingly popular among Welsh speakers who join our program. National Library of Wales volunteers working on Wikimedia based projects recorded 1021 hours of volunteer time during the last 12 months, creating over 100 new articles.

The National Wikimedian is also working with a team of volunteers who are creating additional data for the Aberystwyth Shipping records collection which is already in Wikidata. They are using original sources to create biographical data about ships' masters and this data will be added to Wikidata as the work progresses.

Volunteer project outcomes

Wici-Iechyd project
The National Wikimedian secured £40,000 of Welsh Government funding in order to run the Wici-Iechyd (Wiki Health) project, which was designed to significantly improve the amount of important health related articles on the Welsh language Wikipedia. The project ran from August 2017 until March 31st 2018.

A full report of the outcomes of the project can be found here. Below is a summary of the project outcomes. Outcomes

Total coverage improvement
Below are the figures for the total amount of content released/created on Wikimedia projects during the year, including coverage improvements made as part of secondary projects and events managed by the National Wikimedian.

Wikipedia Wikimedia Commons Wikidata

Strategic Goal 2
Support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level

Advocacy
Advocacy is seen as an important element of the National Wikimedian's role. And exposure through the media, public speaking, and networking, has led to the creation of important partnerships and collaborations, such as the Library's close involvement with several Europeana projects. It has also helped to raise the profile of the National Library of Wales as a forward thinking, innovative institution (reputational value). The National Wikimedian has contributed a case study to a publication entitled ‘Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage’ edited by Gill Hamilton and Fred Saunderson as well as co-authoring a chapter on engaging volunteers in libraries with Alex Stinson of the Wikimedia Foundation, for 'Leveraging Wikipedia' edited by Merrilee Proffitt.

Advocacy and media coverage statistics

Engagement with Library partners
The library's collaboration with Wikimedia has attracted interest in our work from a number of institutions and has presented many opportunities for collaboration.

Welsh Government

Following the success of the Wici-pop project in 2016-17 the National Library again collaborated with the Welsh government for the Wici-Iechyd project, and is currently discussing how the Government can support future projects to improve Welsh language coverage on Wikipedia. During the year the Welsh language department have also awarded grants to Wici-Caerdydd in order for them to extend their activities and has supported the Wici-Môn education outreach programme headed by Aaron Morris. A Welsh government representative also attended the WMUK AGM in July 2018.

Europeana

This year the Library's head of Digital Access, Dr Dafydd Tudur, was invited to help develop the Europeana Impact Play Book the aim of which is to develop a framework for demonstrating the impacts of cultural heritage projects. The National Library of Wales was also selected as one of 5 institutions to test the first stages of the playbook and it was agreed to use the library's Wikimedia activities as the basis of the case study. This work is currently underway and will be completed in 2018-2019. The National Wikimedian was also invited to present at the Europeana Tech Conference in Rotterdam, where he spoke about the library's work with Wikidata and cultural data.

The National Library of Wales is also taking part in the Europeana Migration project and has agreed to run a migration related Wiki event later in the year.

Menter Iaith 

Menter Iaith is a community-based organisation which works to raise the profile of the Welsh language in a specific area. For example Menter Môn (Anglesey) fund and support a Aaron Morris as a Wikipedian in Residence focusing on Welsh in education. During the year the National Wikimedian has had several high level discussions with Menter Iaith management about training local staff on Wikipedia editing, and holding regular Edit-a-thon meetups. Talsk have been positive and many local Menter groups are now planning, or at least considering, hosting Wikipedia events. The National Wikimedian presented an introduction to Wikipedia at the Menter Iaith annual conference in Newtown and worked with Menter Iaith in Carmarthen on a Wici-Iechyd edit-a-thon. He also delivered an editing workshop to a group of Menter Iaith staff and volunteers in Welshpool. It is hoped that the relationship with Menter Iaith can grow, along with collaboration, as Wikimedia, the Library and Menter Iaith all have shared goals around the development of the Welsh language.

WJEC

WJEC is the largest Examining body in Wales and produces a range of Welsh language learning materials. The National Wikimedian collaborated with WJEC in the Wici-Iechyd project and secured the release of a number of digital learning resources on an open licence. Following several meetings it was agreed that this would be seen as a trial for potentially releasing a larger amount of content in the future, working on the principal that more open educational content would lead to the improvement of Welsh Wicipedia content in areas directly relevant to school syllabus, enabling more children to study, complete homework, etc, using online Welsh language resources.

GW4 Group Universities

This alliance of 4 Universities, namely Cardiff, Bristol, Exeter, and Bath, held four edit-a-thons in 2018. These were supported by the National Wikimedian. A number of other Edit-a-thons at Cardiff and Swansea Universities were also supported. The GW4 are now in direct contact with WMUK about forming a closer collaboration on future events.

CILIP 

During the year, the National Wikimedian met with the head of CILIP in Wales and this lead to a collaborative project to share data about every library in Wales as open data via Wikidata. The project was completed in May 2018 and launched at the CILIP Wales annual conference in Aberystwyth. Every attendee received a post card with details of the project and instructions on how to edit Wikidata items. More information, and links to the data can be found on the CILIP Wales website. It is hoped that this project will lead to more individual libraries engaging with Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects, and that other Branches of CILIP will follow our lead and share their data openly too.

Celtic Knot conference
Following the success of the first Celtic Knot Wikipedia language conference last year in Edinburgh, the National Library agreed to host the conference in 2018. The event was managed by the National Wikimedian. The conference ran smoothly with many participants giving positive feedback. There were many valuable and inspiring discussions about Wikipedia's place in education, in libraries and in the community. A range of approaches to growing small Wikipedia's were highlighted and a number of technical workshops helped people learn more about the infrastructure of Wikipedia and how Wikidata can be used to improve content such as infoboxes. And throughout the conference the value of improving small and minority language Wikipedia was clearly evident.

Highlights include:


 * 55 attendees
 * £3200 scholarship fund secured from WMF
 * 12 partial scholarships awarded
 * Conference was opened by The Welsh Minister for the Welsh language and lifelong learning
 * Conference was closed by Linda Tomos, National Librarian
 * 35 presentations/workshops
 * Attendees from 11 countries

The conference received positive feedback from attendees. The following statistics were taken from 19 respondents to the feedback form.

Strategic Goal 3
To support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK

Visiting Scholar Scheme
The National Library's Wikidata Visiting Scholar, Simon Cobb continues to work closely with the library to share its data on an open license. Simon made 20,000 edits to Wikidata during the reporting period and has also been busy experimenting with Geo-shapes. As a result, the National Library of Wales became the first National Library with a geo-shape.

Following on from Simon's work on the Welsh Landscape collection, Simon began to build on the data around the Welsh print and book trade. Much of his work this year has focused on this theme. During the year the National Library has supplied Simon with relevant Metadata, Openly licensed images of Journals, and promotional images of the National Library of Wales.

Simon's work during the year includes:


 * Creating data for every Welsh library, incorporating CILIP data.
 * Created 630 Wikidata items relating to the Welsh Book Trade
 * Created 470 Wikidata items for Welsh Journals
 * Created 90 Wikidata items for Welsh newspapers

Sum of all Welsh literature

Building on the work of the visiting scholar, the National Wikimedian has negotiated the release of all library metadata for Welsh literature (written material of Welsh interest, published in Wales) which amount to around 350,000 data items. This data has been shared with the visiting scholar and will provide the focus for Simon's work, and for the National Wikimedian during the coming year. The ultimate aim will be to create Wikidata items for each of the data items, providing open access to the data and supporting Wiki Cite initiatives to utilize bibliographic data from Wikidata. Wikidata Visiting Scholar output

Higher Education
Collaboration with Welsh universities continues to flourish. Two events were supported at Swansea University, two in Cardiff, and one in Bath. There has been increasing interest in running more long term Wikipedia activities as part of specific courses at Cardiff and Swansea, although no commitment has been made yet.

Work continued with the Welsh Professional Translation studies course at Aberystwyth University. A talk was given to all students on the course and 4 students received 1 on 1 support to use the content translation tool to translate articles as part of an assignment. Discussions are underway about holding translation events with all students during the coming year. It is hoped that this will encourage more students to take up the option of a Wikipedia assignment, and may convince course leaders to integrate Wikipedia more deeply into the design of the course. Events held at/with Universities

Reflections
2017-18 has been a busy year, beginning with the Wici-Iechyd project and ending with the Celtic Knot Conference. The library has been incredibly supportive of Wikimedia activities, sharing more digital content on an open license this year than any other year during the collaboration. The National Wikimedian has also hosted 10 Edit-a-thon events - more than any other year. However it is clear that the library's activities around outreach, community engagement, open access and linked data are getting recognition from Welsh Government and other cultural institutions, and it is now seen by many as a trail blazer thanks to its commitment to collaboration with Wikimedia.

The Library was proud to host Celtic Knot, and hosting the event has helped to demonstrate to the world the commitment of the National Library of Wales to improving Wikipedia and more generally to working with the government to improve access to knowledge through the medium of Welsh.

WMUK has been supportive of all Wikimedia activities at the National Library and continues to be a valuable partner in the National Library - Wikimedia collaboration.

Plans for next year
Over the coming year the National Wikimedian will build further in the areas where the most success has been seen, by sharing more library data as linked data, providing open access to more of its collections, and continuing with community outreach work. It is hoped that further funding can be secured from the Welsh Government for Welsh language focused projects, and there will be an increased focus on demonstrating the impact of past and future projects and initiatives, with the help of the Europeana impact playbook. The 'Sum of all Welsh literature project' will be a focus, as will outreach events such as edit-a-thons and Hackathons focused on improving content relating to collections recently shared with Wikimedia. The National Wikimedian is also committed to further developing open data for the Dictionary of Welsh Biography and subsequent integration of Wikidata into the Dictionary of Welsh Biography website.