Friends' Newsletter/2019/Issue 03
Welcome to the Autumn newsletter!
Time to put the jumpers on and find a cosy spot to read about all the hard work the team have been doing since the end of Summer!
Wiki Loves Monuments 2019
We're delighted to share the winning images from the UK section of the international photographic competition Wiki Loves Monuments, which are on our blog here. These extraordinary photographs have all been shared to Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, and illustrate a wide range of listed buildings and scheduled monuments across the UK; from Newport’s transporter bridge to the lighthouse on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Over 10,000 images of UK monuments were entered for Wiki Love Monuments this year, with the top nine images selected by our expert judging panel now going forward to the international competition.
Wikimedia UK partners with the Khalili Collections
Wikimedia UK has begun a partnership with the world's biggest private collection of Islamic art.
Gender Gap video published
Wikimedia UK has been producing a video about the work of our community over the past few years to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia...
Bodleian Libraries residency comes to an end
Dr Martin Poulter's residency at the University of Oxford has recently finished and he has published a final report detailing all his achievements.
Art UK work
Something about our work with Art UK? Stuart or Sara to advise on this.
Scotland
A joint editathon was held with Art UK, under the Art + Feminism banner, in Scotland in October.
Scotland
Dr Sara Thomas held a Wikipedia editathon with the British Geological Survey at the 46th IAH Congress 2019 to transfer information from the Africa Groundwater Atlas to Wikipedia "making hydrogeology information for Africa more visible and accessible to a wider audience". This followed the successful licensing of select text and images from the Africa Groundwater Atlas to a wiki-compatible license. There are still articles left to be translated, and any assistance would be gratefully received.
In August, Dr Thomas worked with Code the City to hold an editathon on the subject of the 'Silver Screen in the Silver City', looking at the history of cinema in Aberdeen. Work was carried out on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons, and is a precursor to more work being done in the North of Scotland in the future.
Dr Thomas and Dr tara Beall (Dumfries Historic Buildings Trust) have continued to collaborate on the Dumfries Stonecarving Project, working with a number of local photography and other volunteer groups to create openly licensed images of Dumfries' rich stonecarving heritage, and use the archival work produced by the project to create and improve articles such as Dumfries and Dumfries Academy. A number of articles were created in draft, and with ongoing engagement with volunteers, will be moved to mainspace soon. A Facebook live broadcast of the editathon training on 29th & 30th July have received over 1700 as of November 2019.
Work continues with the National Library and National Museum of Scotland to engage with the Wikimedia Projects, in particular, a "Culture to Commons" training session was held in October with a follow up at the National Library of Scotland in November. This work represents a continuation, and expansion of the established partnership between Wikimedia UK and the National Library of Scotland, which saw the latter host two Wikimedians in Residence, including Scotland's first ever Resident, back in 2013. Images uploaded during the first event include some of the Lewis Chessmen.
An editathon was held with the David Livingstone Birthplace Project in October as part of Black History Month, which focussed on the hidden histories of the African individuals who accompanied, guided, and supported David Livingstone in his travels through Southern Africa in the 19th century. Articles updated during the event included that for James Chuma and Abdulla Susi, who accompanied Livingstone. During the editathon, participants were delighted to find images from the openly-licensed Wellcome Collection which could be added to articles on the worklist, including one of Jacob Wainwright sitting next to Livingstone's coffin.
A new cohort of Wikimedia UK volunteers will head to Glasgow at the end of November for our next iteration of training for trainers. This cohort will mainly work to support the increasing demand for work in Scotland, but we will also be joined by some participants from elsewhere internationally.
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland residency
Dr Rocks-Mcqueen has continued his work in this residency, building on the Society's enthusiasm for open, and aimed at effecting a new Society-wide policy on open knowledge.
Doug has also been working with our Scottish Programme Coordinator Sara to appoint a Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities intern, who will work over the next year or so to improve the quality and quantity of images available on Wikimedia Commons pertaining to Archaeology.
University of Edinburgh Residency
The residency has now passed the four year mark, with a current running total of 192 training sessions and 83 editathons delivered; 1027 students, 474 staff and 315 members of the public trained; 612 articles created, and 2349 improved. During 2019 the residency became permanent, Women in Red editathons have continued to be a regular feature, and the Residency has become a fixture in University life, working with numerous departments across campus.
Ewan has created a number of resources which benefit the wider open education community, including videos, case studies and lesson plans, which can be found on the University's on-wiki project page.
Data visualisation & the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
The data visualisation internship at the University of Edinburgh drew to a close, with the creation of a new website hosting the information held in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, as transferred to Wikidata, and including the geolocation work done by intern Emma Carroll. The works has attracted a huge amount of national and international press coverage, including pieces in the Scotsman and the New York Times, and has shown how powerful
Ewan placed an interview with the "Witchfinder General" student intern Emma Carroll onto Media Hopper, which you can see here.
It's now part of a four video playlist on the internship with the seminar presentation, her ALT conference lightning talk and the OpenRefine beginners tutorial she recorded.
The internship has provided an excellent model for future work, and indeed, the University is already advertising for a new intern to work on Women in Red events.
Wales
In September, Wikimedia UK hosted a Youth Strategy Salon in Anglesey funded by the Wikimedia Foundation with students who took part in the Wici Môn programme to reflect on their experiences of learning to edit Wikipedia, and discuss the future of open knowledge. You can see the video about the event here.
It's been a busy few months at the National Library of Wales. Jason attended took part in the Celtic Knot conferences in Cornwall and was at Wikimania in Sweden. At the Hackathon he worked on adding thousands of Welsh language labels to Wikidata and spoke during the main conference about plans to share thousands of the library's bibliographic records to Wikidata. Jason also attended a 'Wikidata for National Libraries' summit organised by Liam Wyatt at Europeana, which was held in Stockholm following Wikimania.
Several Grant applications were approved over the summer and work is now beginning on the WiciLlén project. The project is lead by the National Library of Wales in partnership with Menter Iaith Món with the broad aim of improving access to information about Welsh literature through the medium of Welsh. Simon Cobb has been commissioned to assist with the release of 50,000 bibliographic records from the Library as bilingual Wikidata and Aaron Morris will lead a series of classroom workshops with different age groups, whilst Jason will hold a series of Edit-a-thons and a Hackathon. At least 500 new articles will be created using data, translation and volunteer contributions.
The first event of the project was a successful translate-a-thon. The event was hosted by the Library and attended by Welsh professional translation studies students from Aberystwyth University. Jason has also help the course leader develop a core assignment for the Translation course which will see students translating English Wikipedia articles into Welsh.
Work on the Dictionary of Welsh Biography timeline is nearly complete. The timeline will be a hugely powerful search and discovery tool for the new Dictionary of Welsh Biography website and will clearly demonstrate the value of sharing and round-tripping Wikidata. The latest test version of the timeline will be demonstrated by Jason at the Museums and Tech conference at the British Library and in more depth at WikidataCon 2019.
The National Library has also just received confirmation that its proposed Wikipedia education pilot project has received all the requested funding from the Welsh Governments Welsh language education unit. This will be a really exciting project, looking at how we can identify the content most relevant to to the Welsh curriculum and develop a clear template for presenting that information on Welsh Wicipedia. In partnership with Aaron Morris the project will also see the creation of a series of short educational videos to enrich articles and number of test events with School children to develop a lesson plan for A-level students to help create content suitable for primary school pupils.
As usual the National Library continues to share digital images to Commons. Most recent uploads include examples of newly digitised medieval manuscripts from the Peniarth Collection.
Jason:
- Attended Wikimania Hackathon and worked on improving Welsh labels in Wikidata.
- Agreed funding for Simon Cobb to develop Welsh Literature data as part of WikiLlen prosiect.
- Presentation of Wikidata for bibliographic data at Wikimania 2019.
- Presentation on the use of Wikidata at NLW for ‘Wikidata in Libraries’ meeting in Stockholm.
- Jason released an Annual Report for his residency.
- 7531 Wikidata edits to improve data for artworks from WIR-NLW.
- WiciLlen project approved with a grant from the Welsh Government - starts in September.
- Work continues with Histropedia on a timeline for Dictionary of Welsh Biography.
- Submitted a grant application to the Welsh Government outlining a plan for an Education Pilot Project in Wales, aimed at improving resources for school children on Welsh Wikipedia.
- Another batch of images from digitised Peniarth Manuscripts uploaded to Commons.
Welsh Language Commissioner Aled Roberts has started to change the licence to CCBYSA on many of the YouTube videos. (which videos? @Robin to advise)
Residencies at Universities
Andy Mabbett at the Coventry University Disruptive Media Learning Lab...
Martin Poulter at the University of Oxford
Education, education, education
The academic year started in September, with universities across the country welcoming more than 2 million new and returning students. Working with the higher education sector has long been an important part of Wikimedia UK's activities and it gives students the confidence to use Wikipedia as a source of information and contribute to its ever growing pages. We have a host of partners across the UK, and one of the great using Wikimedia in the classroom is that it can be adapted to almost any topic, from competition law to translation studies.
We have Wikimedians in Residence at the Universities of Edinburgh and Coventry. They work to integrate Wikipedia into courses, and help students with research and information skills through the use of Wikipedia. At Edinburgh, Ewan McAndrew has been assisting courses on 'Translation Studies', 'Reproductive Biology', 'Global Health', 'Data Science', Korean Studies', and 'Global Health Challenges'. As with a lot of our work in education, there was a mix of established and new courses, which shows just how important Wikipedia is to sharing information.
At Middlesex University, Stefan Lutschinger has been getting undergraduate students to explore digital cultures and share that through Wikipedia. The University of Stirling and University College London are both getting students to prepare a WikiBooks – a collaboratively written open-access text book. Stirling's students are writing about Ethical Debates in Connected Culture while UCL's students are writing about
Wikibooks: Stirling University College London
Medieval: Sheffield
We have also welcomed a new course at the University of Kent, led by Dr. Ed Roberts. His students have been updating Wikipedia articles about the Carolingian Empire and reflecting on the process of editing. This was partly inspired by
Other Stuff
Any other project news
Threatened Heritage in Libya
A professor at KCL wants to use Wikimedia Commons as an image repository for photos of threatened heritage sites in Libya. Data import is ongoing and is at the Mix n' Match stage.
Banner Repeater
Something about BR?