Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland Museum/2023SummerStudents



From November 2023 to February 2024, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira hosted four summer Wikipedia interns, who focused on writing local history content. See their progress on the summer interns dashboard here.

Students focused on developing articles based on what they felt passionate about, including queer history, Te Ao Māori, South Auckland and migrant communities, as well as some natural history, church and park pages. Project highlights include Phomen Singh, the first article to be featured as a Did You Know item on the main page, which received 9,858 views in a single day, List of parks in Papatoetoe (the largest article published by the students), Leilani Tominiko, the most organically popular article (1,822 views in one month) and Maraetai Mission Station, the first article in the project to receive a B-class rating.

By the end of the ten week programme, the four students had developed 33 articles (primarily new articles), added 72,500 words to Wikipedia and 861 new references. In total, pages the students had edited were viewed over 249,000 times by the end date of the project (16 February). The students also planned and lead their own edit-a-thon, which was held in January at Auckland Museum. The students also wrote pieces for the Wikimedia Diff blog:


 * 10 Weeks of Wiki at Auckland Museum by Winnieswikiworld
 * Protecting Mātauranga Māori within an open knowledge platform by Worldsgreatestmum
 * Bridging the Knowledge Gap: A new editor’s perspective by Summ23

Week 1


Our students began their week with a mihi whakatau, welcoming them to the museum space. Over the first week, they worked their way through two training programmes: Wiki Education's Student Training Modules and the Wiki-GLAMR Training Program developed by Mike Dickison for Wikimedia Australia. Together, the cohort discussed issues surrounding Wikipedia, including notability and copyright, and the students made their first edits to pages.


 * Workshops and tours: Collection Care and Conservation Workshop


 * Milestones:
 * Set up accounts ✅
 * Make first edits ✅
 * Upload a photo ✅
 * First new article ✅

Week 2
Students continued developing ideas for their projects while working on new articles. By the end of week two, seven new articles had been created. The students held their first planning meeting for the student-led edit-a-thon, currently planned for early 2024.


 * Workshops and tours:
 * Tāmaki Herenga Waka gallery tour. Toured Tāmaki Herenga Waka Stories of Auckland, the new gallery space dedicated to local stories. Discussed factors that go into planning exhibitions, including considering audience engagement.
 * Teu le Vā. A talk by Olivia Taouma discussing the Pacific dimension of the museum, and the importance of Pasifika stories and perspectives in Tāmaki Makaurau
 * Guest speakers:
 * Dr. Mark Sheehan, history education specialist, curriculum developer and senior lecturer at the School of Education at Victoria University of Wellington. Mark worked together with Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira on the Wikipedia, Auckland Museum and the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum report, which investigated secondary school teachers' attitudes on using Wikipedia as a resource for teaching the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories (ANZH) curriculum. Mark discussed his background developing the history curriculum, and his thoughts on the benefits of Wikipedia as a teaching resource for history students. Students felt that this brought a lot of context to why editing local history pages is important.


 * Milestones:
 * Total of seven new articles ✅
 * First planning session for edit-a-thon ✅

Week 3



 * Workshops and tours: reading room research workshop, Documentary Heritage tour
 * Guest speakers:
 * Sophia Coghini‎, who first trained as a Wikipedia editor as a part of Pasifika Arts Aotearoa 2022. Sophia recently attended Wikimania 2023, and is currently developing projects to work on improving Pasifika coverage and representation on Wikimedia.
 * Dr. Lucy Mackintosh, senior research fellow at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Lucy has worked as the history curator for the museum, and in 2021 published Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, which focused on three important historic sites in Tāmaki Makaurau.


 * Milestones:
 * Total of 13 new or improved articles ✅

Week 4

 * Workshops and tours: Human History tour
 * Guest speakers:
 * Lucy Moore, UK Wikimedian of the Year 2022; advocate for WikiProject Women in Red and project curator at Leeds Museums & Galleries


 * Milestones:
 * First project goal met: 300 references added ✅
 * Second project goal met: 40 articles edited and improved ✅

Week 5 and 6


Students had a break between 18 December and 7 January. Discuss Did You Know articles and getting content to the main page, potential for themed Wikipedia books based on articles. Students spoke with 2023 Wikimedia Laureate Siobhan Leachman, and met Susan Tolich, who in 2017 became New Zealand's first Wikimedian in Residence.

Weeks 7 and 8
Students spoke with Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand president Victoria Leachman, organiser of the NZ Thesis Project, Tamsin Braisher and held their first edit-a-thon on 27 January. Trailblazers of Tāmaki Makaurau (Commons) was an event focused on helping new editors learn how to edit Wikipedia, focusing on figures from Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland and beyond. 21 people attended the event at the Auckland Museum Library Te Pātaka Mātāpuna, which was entirely organised and led by the four summer students. In total seven articles were updated, and three new draft articles were created by the participants.

Weeks 9 and 10
Students spoke with Lucy Schrader, Digital Channels Outreach Manager at Te Papa, who works on Wikimedia-focused projects for Te Papa, and Heidi Meudt, Botanist for Te Papa, who focuses on developing pages on native forget-me-not species. Students presented their project to the museum staff, and spent time developing blog posts for the museum website and Wikimedia platforms.

Natural history

 * Almorah Rock Forest
 * Takapuna Fossil Forest

Queer history

 * Ron Brownson
 * Ca d'Oro Coffee Lounge
 * Frank Sargeson House
 * Raukura Hetet
 * KG Club
 * Dana de Milo
 * Harold Robinson
 * Leilani Tominiko

Te Ao Māori

 * Sarah Dutt
 * Peter Gossage
 * How Māui Found His Father and the Magic Jawbone
 * How Māui Slowed the Sun
 * In the Beginning (Peter Gossage book)
 * Īhaka Takaanini
 * Maraetai Mission Station
 * Ēpiha Pūtini
 * Tara Te Irirangi
 * Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art

Churches and temples

 * Bharatiya Mandir Hindu Temple
 * Our Lady of the Assumption, Auckland
 * St Barnabas Anglican Church, Auckland
 * St James Anglican Church, Māngere Bridge
 * St Peter's Anglican Church, Onehunga

Parks

 * Monte Cecilia Park
 * List of parks in Papatoetoe

Migrant figures in Tāmaki Makaurau

 * Ulu Aiono
 * Ghazaleh Golbakhsh
 * Samoa House

South Asian communities and figures in Tāmaki Makaurau

 * Kshetra Collective
 * Mandrika Rupa
 * Phomen Singh
 * Arrun Soma
 * Suveen Sanis Walgampola