Wikipedia:GLAM/SLIC/12 month report

Overview
This report marks both the one year anniversary of the SLIC residency and the transition period between Sara Thomas (now Scotland Programme Coordinator for WMUK) and Delphine Dallison holding the post.

This is the first time that a residency has changed hands half way through its agreed duration and we are happy to report that the transition went well. The new resident Delphine Dallison had previously been a volunteer for Wikimedia UK for 5 years and had undergone Wikimedia UK's Train the Trainer programme. Thanks to her prior knowledge of Wikipedia editing and the Wikimedia community, Delphine was able to familiarise herself with the project over the first two weeks in post then fully engage with the programme of training sessions for librarians scheduled throughout the month of May. Sara Thomas led those training sessions in partnership with Delphine Dallison, which allowed her to complete a thorough handover and to signpost Delphine towards some of the tools and strategies she had been using when engaging with an audience of librarians. By the time all five sessions had been delivered, Delphine felt confident in her post and was able to start focusing on new ideas and directions in which she wanted to direct the residency. Despite the success of the handover, we must note that the change in wikimedian in residence may have affected the development of a couple of projects where the results might have been mitigated with a better understanding of broader context of the projects. These incidents are further expanded upon in the Strategic Goal One section of the report.

Reflecting on the first year of the residency, the overall results are overwhelmingly positive. Through the advocacy efforts led by Sara Thomas and subsequently Delphine Dallison, the interest in the project is evident. From a pilot project led with public libraries across 4 local authorities, in the past three months, there has been an additional 43 librarians trained across 18 out of 32 local authorities in Scotland, bringing the total number of local authorities with public libraries engaged in the SLIC residency to 21. These training sessions took place across 5 locations in Scotland, moving the training opportunities out of the Central Belt of Scotland and into its rural, harder to reach areas. This strategy is directly credited with the growth in numbers and geographic spread of the project, which now reaches all the way from the Scottish Borders to the Shetland Islands.

Since these training sessions have taken place, 7 libraries have initiated planning for their own Wikipedia projects with the wikimedian in residence, so we estimate that by the next quarter report 11 different local authority libraries will be engaged in long-term Wikipedia projects, independently from any Wiki Loves campaign activities. The variety of geographic locations, institutional setup and staffing resources has led to the development of a diversity of approaches to Wikipedia projects including editathons, surfacing local histories, intergenerational approaches and archive specific approaches.

To guide libraries through their first steps in engaging with Wikipedia, the wikimedian in residence now has a strong model in place which builds up staff's Wikipedia skills before engaging with a volunteer group and using that group for their first Wikipedia event. Libraries are responding well to this model and we currently have 3 successful libraries which have followed through the model to completion including Inverclyde Libraries, SLIC WiR project partner, and the North Lanarkshire libraries, whose Digital and Support Services manager also sits on the SLIC WiR steering. The wikimedian in residence will be working with these two libraries over the next quarter to develop a train the trainer programme aimed at librarians in Scotland in order to ensure the long-term sustainable future of the project.

The work of the wikimedian in residence over the past year has also extended beyond the scope of public libraries with a mixture of outreach events and advocacy sessions taking place across the library sector with HE and FE libraries as well as specialist libraries. In the past couple of months, there has also been some interest expressed from school libraries with the view to developing some Wikipedia information literacy resources to deliver with school groups. The residency has also attracted interest from organisations that work in close partnership with libraries such as the Scottish Book Trust and the Carnegie UK Trust.

On the 26th of June, the SLIC WiR strategic committee held their second meeting hosted by Wikimedian in Residence Delphine Dallison at the SLIC office and with the new addition of Sara Thomas in her role as Scotland Programme Coordinator. The steering committee is composed of proactive Wikimedia UK partners from across the GLAM and Education landscape of Scotland and they are committed to support the SLIC residency. Content upload has been pushed to the top of the agenda for the coming 6 months as historically these can be the longest projects to yield results within a residency. The feeling is that a case study demonstrating the benefits of content uploads to Wikimedia Commons could act as a positive trigger to encourage other libraries to follow suite. Inverclyde Libraries and NLS are both currently pursuing options to achieve this goal. Another focus for the next three months will be activating libraries participation through the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign and a small pilot revival of the Wiki Loves Libraries campaign in order to crowdsource images and content to create new Wikipedia pages or improve existing pages on libraries across Scotland.

As the residency reaches its one year anniversary, a yearly review will be carried out with SLIC and Inverclyde libraries. The review has currently been postponed until September due to changes in the SLIC project management team and to allow the new Head of Programme to settle into post. The results of the review will be conveyed in the October quarterly report.

Progress narrative



 * The SLIC residency entered its second phase at the beginning of May, taking the pilot project to a more national scale. To begin this process, the wikimedian in residence used SLIC's contacts to advertise 5 full day Intro to Wikipedia training sessions for librarians. The sessions took place throughout the month of May in distributed areas of Scotland to ensure maximum coverage. The planning and advertising of the sessions was organised by Sara Thomas while she was still in post at SLIC, in collaboration with the SLIC events coordinator Lorna Watt. The sessions were then delivered in partnership between Delphine Dallison as she started in post at SLIC and Sara Thomas in her new role as Scotland Programme Coordinator for Wikimedia UK and this period formed the basis of their handover period.
 * Delphine and Sara delivered the sessions in Inverness, Dundee and Glasgow together. Sara delivered the session in Stirling in order to free Delphine up to run an advocacy session at the Scottish public libraries Digital Champions meeting in Perth on the same day. Sara also delivered the training session in Galashiels as the date clashed with annual leave that Delphine had booked prior to starting in post. Delphine followed up with participants from the sessions she wasn't able to attend to ensure continuity. In total, 43 librarians from 18 (out of 32) local authorities in Scotland were trained during these sessions. 83.5% of the new editors trained during these sessions were female, 17 new articles were created as part of the practical editing sessions and 11 of those were biographies of women.


 * Since delivering these training sessions, a new landscape has started to emerge for the SLIC residency. Multiple libraries now have staff trained in editing Wikipedia and are planning or a already engaged in Wikipedia activities. The activities and their various stages have been mapped across Scotland (see map on the right) and break down as follows:
 * 1) Wiki-enabled libraries: These libraries have completed an Intro to Wikipedia training session for their staff, identified a group of volunteers to work with, completed an Intro to Wikipedia training session with their volunteers and delivered their first editathon. Two of the Wiki-enabled libraries (Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire) are part of the original pilot project led by Sara Thomas in phase 1 of the residency, whereas the Dunfermline project was a direct result of the training sessions delivered in May. The next step for these libraries is to take part in a train the trainer program currently in development, which will enable library staff with some experience of editing to develop skills at running Wikipedia events (planning and delivering events, engaging with the Wikimedia community, recording metrics, etc...) as well as delivering Wikipedia editing training to other library staff and library users. This train the trainer programme will be piloted with Inverclyde Library (project partner) before being rolled out to North Lanarkshire and Dunfermline in the next quarter.
 * 2) Preparing for first editathon: These libraries (North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire) were part of the original pilot project run by Sara Thomas. They have completed their first editathon and are currently in the process of identifying a volunteers group and preparing to run their first editathon. These libraries have been experiencing some changes in their senior management team and this may have affected their progress with their Wikipedia projects. The change of wikimedian in residence also means that it has taken a while for the new resident to understand how these changes in staffing have affected the project. The nature of the remit of the SLIC residency means that you have to develop relationships with teams of librarians that you might meet once or twice and the rest of the project development takes place remotely. The change in wikimedian in residence combined with the change of senior staffing has meant that these relationships have had to be redeveloped from the ground up, without the benefit of meeting in person. This only became apparent when Girvan Library tried to organise their first editathon, which had to be cancelled as they hadn't secured the support of a suitable volunteers group. Sara Thomas, being more familiar with the library team may have been able to preempt some of the planning issues and steered a better course. The current plan for these libraries is to wait until the new management team is in place then encourage them to set up a Wikipedia project steering group amongst their staff team, which the wikimedian in residence will meet with and help plan their first Wikipedia events.
 * 3) Planning first Wikipedia activities: Seven additional libraries and archives are currently in the process of developing Wikipedia projects with a view at running activities throughout the next quarter. Four of those libraries (Perth and Kinross, Hawick, Edinburgh and Falkirk) contacted the wikimedian in residence as a direct result of having one or more of their staff attend the training sessions in May. Two libraries (Dundee and Orkney) were inspired to take part after attending the talk delivered by Alana Ward, Sara Thomas and Delphine Dallison (Citation Needed: Wiki-enabling Scotland’s public libraries) at the CILIPS conference in June. Finally, the project on Skye was first initiated by Atlas Art, the primary arts and culture organisation in that area, who were working on a project with the Skye and Lochalsh Archives centre on tracing the history of suffragettes from the West coast of Scotland. In order to ensure that this project wouldn't be a one time occurrence, Atlas Art were asked to tie in with the Skye Library as well as the archives centre and introduce them to the wikimedian in residence so they may familiarise themselves with the wider context of the residency. As a result, the local library and archives staff will now be attending an Intro to Wikipedia training session ahead of the planned editathon, so they can use those skills to continue planning future Wikipedia events and add to the growing network of wiki-enabled librarians in Scotland.
 * 4) Attended 1 day Wikipedia for Librarians training: Out of the 18 local authorities who sent staff to attend a one day training session in May, 10 are yet to follow up with further Wikipedia projects and currently stand as possible leads to follow up in the next quarter as well as targets for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Libraries activities. Additional target areas for next quarter are Aberdeenshire and Dumfries and Galloway. Both local authorities are some of the largest in Scotland, yet failed to send staff to attend the training sessions on offer. The wikimedian in residence will be working on targeted methods to bring both regions on board with SLIC residency over the coming months.


 * This growth in the number of libraries involved in the project has also led to a diversification in the type of project they want to run in response to their local communities needs. North Lanarkshire ran their first editathon at the Wishaw library with the Shotts history group. In their first session, they created a new article on the Shotts Iron Works and the plan is to host regular sessions with support from a librarian so they can work on expanding the artcle with their wealth of research. This is a model that they believe is replicable with other local history groups in their area. The Hawick Archives Centre are interested in developing an archive specific approach to their project and the wikimedian in residence is currently arranging to visit in order to do a survey of their collections and formulate an appropriate response. Dundee libraries wish to run an intergenerational project bringing digitally savvy young people together with older generations which have a wealth of experience. Perth and Kinross and Inverclyde are also interested in working with schools and have asked the Wikimedian in residence to help them develop some resources for teaching information literacy in school libraries.


 * As the project continues to develop, some challenges have been identified:
 * - Event planning: Event planning has been identified in previous Wikimedian in Residence posts as being a big drain on time and resources, especially when working at sector wide level. To preempt this issue in the SLIC residency, it was agreed that the onus for planning and delivering Wikipedia events would be on the library staff, with the wikimedian in residence providing support during the event itself, either in person or remotely. This approach has been mostly successful, however in the same way as the role of the librarian is very diverse, the range of skills can vary from library to library and in some cases, the librarians organising and planning events may lack the skills or experience for planning successful events. Two editathons had to be cancelled in the past three months due to lack of sign-ups and in both cases, event planning issues were identified to have been contributing factors. Having to cancel events is always a last resort, as it can be demoralising for the organisers and cause projects to stall. To mitigate that issue, two approaches are currently in development. First, it was identified that the Wikipedia working group formed at Inverclyde library, which is composed of library staff, museum staff and heritage officers, has been successful in creating a cohesive approach to the Wikipedia project, with diverse points of view and a range of skills for planning and delivering events. Other libraries are being encouraged to set up similar working groups to help share the workload of planning events. Secondly, the wikimedian in residence is currently putting together a resource specific to planning Wikipedia events with a focus on identifying the audience for your event and how to reach out and activate your audience to take part. The resource will be drawing from examples of previous editathons organised by both libraries and wikimedians in residence and in each case identifying components of what made the event a success from an event planning perspective. Once finished, the resource will be made available to librarians involved in the SLIC residency as well as the larger Wikimedia community.
 * - Account creation: At the North Lanarkshire editathon in June, an issue was identified related to digital literacy skills and account creation, which is likely to reoccur in future as libraries start to run their own events. The participants from the Shotts history group had not set up their Wikipedia accounts ahead of the editathon and the IP block at Wishaw library prevented them from creating accounts on arrival. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been an issue as the wikimedian in residence has Event coordinator rights, however the participants were from an older generation with digital literacy needs and did not have access to their email account, so couldn't be sent an account password via email. The wikimedian in residence was not aware that they also had the option of creating the passw0rd without sending it via email, so as an alternative the edits were made from the wikimedian in residence's account. This situation has since been discussed with admin Stwalkerster at the Scotwiki meetup on the 11th July. Stwalkerster monitors new account creations and is working with the wikimedian in residence to come up with a solution to this issue for future occurrences.


 * As part of their work throughout the public library sector, the wikimedian in residence has also been fostering new relationships with library allies and partners:
 * - On the 19 May, the wikimedian in residence assisted at the Brave:Edit editathon at the Glasgow Women's Library. The event was organised by Sara Thomas and Amnesty International Scotland, who have expressed an interest in holding another editathon at their annual human rights activists' conference.
 * - On the 27 June, the wikimedian in residence attended a meeting with the Scottish Book Trust to discuss the possibility of taking part as a contributor at their Scottish Book Trust digital Festival in November. The Scottish Book Trust are also interested in running some editathons with their up and coming writers. They are also currently redeveloping their directory of contemporary Scottish Authors with the view of opening the license on some of its content so it can be uploaded to Wikidata.
 * - In preparation for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Libraries, the wikimedian in residence is in the process of arranging a meeting with the Carnegie Trust UK to enlist their help with the project of creating/improving the content for Carnegie libraries in Scotland.


 * With the support of Wikimedia UK, the wikimendian in residence was able to attend the Celtic Knot 2018 conference on the 5th and 6th July in Aberytswyth. The conference was an opportunity for the wikimedian in residence to build new contacts with active participants of the minority language Wikipedia and get a grasp on the engagement work necessary in those under represented areas. At their return, the wikimedian in residence wrote a blog post on the SLIC blog outlining the rational for public libraries to get involved in preserving minority languages and the different strategies they could engage in. The wikimedian in residence will be following up on some work with the Scots wikipedia as apart of a partnership with Peter Reid from RGU, who has recently received funding from SLIC to create a portal for Doric literature. The project will be sharing its digital outputs on Wikipedia and Peter Reid will be meeting soon with the wikipedian in residence to agree on a strategy for uploading the content and improving Wikipedia entries both in the Scots Wikipedia and the English.

Data and/or description of Other Projects under SG1
There has been no large media upload or data uploads to date as part of the residency, however this is a top priority on the agenda for the coming 6 months and the wikimedian in residence has been developing partnerships with a number of libraries and partner organisations for this purpose as outlined below.

Wikimedia Commons

 * Inverclyde Libraries: Inverclyde are currently working on reviewing the license on some of their digitized collections in order to upload them to Wikimedia Commons. The contents are currently under a CC-BY-NC license and would need to be updated to a CC-BY-SA license to conform to Wikimedia Common's standards.
 * National Library of Scotland: The National Library of Scotland are currently preparing to release the digitized copies of their collections that are in the Public Domain under a CC0 license in the Autumn. Once the digitized content becomes available under the new license, they plan on uploading the images using the Pattypan tool.
 * Dunfermline Carnegie Library: Dunfermline Carnegie Library have been digitizing a large number of photos from their rich collections and are currently in discussion over which license to release these new digital assets. The wikimedian in residence will work with the library's archivist to identify suitable photos from their collection of images of the Dunfermline High Street in order to upload them on Wikimedia Commons under a CC-BY-SA license in order to make the case for the use of that license wherever copyright circumstances allow.

Wikisource

 * Glasgow School of Art Library: The GSA library have a number of books currently digitised and hosted on the Internet Archive under a CC-BY-NC license. The wikimedian in residence is currently working with them to update the license to a CC-BY-SA license and upload the books to Wikisource using the Internet Archive Upload Tool.
 * National Library of Scotland: The NLS library have a number of books currently digitised and hosted on the Internet Archive which are due to have their license updated to a CC0 license in the autumn. The wikimedian in residence is currently advising them on how to update upload the books to Wikisource using the Internet Archive Upload Tool.

Wikidata

 * Scottish Book Trust: The Scottish Book Trust are currently reconfiguring their database of contemporary Scottish authors and hope to release parts of the dataset under a Wikidata compatible license. The wikimedian in residence is advising them on the process and will help with the upload of data to Wikidata when available.
 * Public Libraries in Scotland: The wikimedian in residence is currently preparing a dataset of public libraries in scotland, starting from an open dataset published by the Collections Trust under an open government license. The plan is to continue building on this dataset with added data about specialist, HE, FE and school libraries in Scotland.

Other Projects
The wikimedian in residence has been volunteering on a number of smaller projects outwith the WiR residence role to upload images and content on other under-represented areas of Scottish culture.
 * The Vanguard Centre: The Vanguard Center is a Historical European Martial Arts centre in Glasgow which has recently been fundraising to digitize a copy of Seal of Cause and Bye-Laws and Regulations of the Incorporation of Fleshers of Glasgow. The wikimedian in residence will work with them in a voluntary capacity to upload a copy of the book to Wikisource and use it as part of creating an article on the Trades House of Glasgow.
 * Pride Glasgow: The wikimedian in residence obtained a photographer's pass to attend Pride Glasgow as a Wikimedia UK volunteer and take photos for Wikimedia Commons. A total of 178 photos were uploading to Commons under the category Glasgow Pride 2018. A number of these photos will be used over the coming months to enrich relevant articles and to improve the Pride Glasgow page on Wikipedia.
 * Mugstock Festival: The wikimedian in residence obtained a photographer's pass to attend the Mugstock Festival as a volunteer and cover the festival and notable bands that were performing. These photos are due to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and will be used to create or improve articles on Wikipedia.

Progress narrative
The wikimedian in residence has been involved in a number of advocacy sessions introducing librarians and the wider library sector to Wikipedia and the benefits of open knowledge.
 * On the 18 May, in collaboration with Sara Thomas, the wikimedian in residence took part in a virtual women's history tour of the Merchant City in Glasgow. The tour was recorded on Periscope and was featured as part of the Glasgow Women's Library Open the Door digital festival. During the tour, elements of Glasgow's women's history were highlighted and enriched with information gleaned from Wikipedia, as well as used to uncover gaps in the encyclopedia, pointing out new articles to be created. The wikishootme tool was also used throughout the tour to add photos missing of Glasgow's listed monuments. This model led to three new biographies and articles related to women being created and could be reproduced for other digital festivals or during Wiki Loves Monuments. The Periscope feed had 343 Live Views and 989 Video Replays. Following this event, the chair of SCURL (Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries) invited the wikimedian in residence to talk at their upcoming AGM.
 * On the 23 May, the wikimedian in residence introduced themselves at the Digital Champions quarterly meeting, an event organised by SLIC to help public libraries share best practise around digital strategies. The Scottish Book Trust were also attending this meeting and as a direct result, approached the wikimedian in residence about a number of possible collaborations for Scottish Book Week and with their directory of Contemporary Scottish authors.
 * On the 5 June, the wikimedian in residence presented a talk at the CILIPS conference entitled "Citations needed: Wiki-enabling Scotland's Public Libraries" in collaboration with Alana Ward from Inverclyde Libraries (project partner) and Sara Thomas from Wikimedia UK. The talk was well received and was mentioned in the CILIPS blog covering the conference. Two libraries (Orkney and Dundee) approached the wikimedian in residence after the talk to begin discussions about starting their own Wikipedia projects.
 * The wikimedian in residence presented three talks addressed at HE and FE libraries at the SCURL AGM, the ALT Scotland Annual Catch-up and at One City with the City of Glasgow College staff. The talks were well received. Following the SCURL AGM, Glasgow School of Art library agreed to open up the license on the digitised books they have hosted on the Internet Archive. Staff from both the Glasgow Caledonian University and City of Glasgow College have expressed an interest in developing future partnerships with Wikimedia UK. City of Glasgow College followed up on this interest by inviting the Wikimedian in residence to talk at their yearly One City event aimed at staff and lecturers.

Social media
Libraries have been encouraged to use the hashtag #SLICWikimedia to tweet about the residency. The wikimedian in residence has been investigating different solution to capture those tweets and will be setting up a TAGS twitter archive for that purpose from the 1st August.

Progress narrative

 * 43 librarians from 18 (out of 32) local authorities in Scotland were trained during these sessions. 83.5% of the new editors trained during these sessions were female. A new train the trainer programme is in development to give librarians the necessary skills and confidence to run their own Wikipedia events. Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire and Dunfermline are currently setting dates to undergo this training.
 * Open linked data and Wikidata have been identified as a possible new area of development for librarians and the wikimedian in residence will be developing new strategies to address this need in the coming months.
 * School libraries have expressed an interest in offering information literacy workshops to their student groups using Wikipedia. The Wikimedian in residence will be working with them to develop some resources.
 * City of Glasgow College's librarian are members of SLIC and have expressed an interest in receiving some Wikipedia training with a view to potentially host a Wikimedian in residence in the future. The wikimedian in residence has delivered a talk at One City, the annual event held by Glasgow City College for their staff and lecturers and is now working on setting dates for a training session for the library team.

Press/Media about the residency

 * 13 June 2018 - New Wikimedian in Residence at SLIC SLIC blog
 * 13 June 2018 - “Abundant examples of successful collaborations” CILIPS blog
 * 13 July 2018 - Celtic Knot 2018: Preserving endangered languages with Wikipedia SLIC Blog