Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland Museum/2024SummerStudents

Wikipedia Summer Students Project Page 2024

From November 2024 to February 2025, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Aucland Museum are hosting a cohort of five Wikipedia summer students as part of the Museum's wider Summer Scholar programme.

The Wikipedia students will be joining the Auckland Museum Collection Information & Access team for ten weeks to contribute to the existing Wikiproject. They will produce content on Wikipedia and provide resources for the new Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum, which has a focus on local histories.

This programme encourages students to follow their own research interests to write and enrich Tāmaki Makaurau related content on Wikimedia.

This project page will host weekly reporting and content updates on the activity of Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum's 2024 Wikipedia Summer Students. This dashboard will track their progress. A Wikidata item and Wikimedia Commons catergory has been created for the 2024 Auckland War Memorial Museum Wikipedia summer student internship.

By the end of the Wikipedia summer student programme the students will have:

Created 4-5 new articles
Organised and hosted a community edit-a-thon at Auckland Museum
Written and submitted a blogpost for Diff
Submitted a report
Presented their projects at the Auckland Museum Summer Student Symposium

Week 1

Day 1

Our cohort of five students were among the group of Auckland Museum Summer Scholars welcomed to Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland Museum with a mihi whakatau on Monday morning.

This year's cohort of Wikipedia summer students come from a diverse range of tertiary backgrounds such as Law, Art History, Economics, Politics, International Relations, Anthropology, Global Studies and Sociology.

Students were introduced to the Auckland Museum Collections Information & Access team by Online Collections & Partnerships Manager James Taylor. The students learnt about the genesis of the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland local histories project and the Museum's early involvement with Wikimedia platforms. The scope of the project was discussed and students shared their research interests. These topics spanned a variety of topics such as Pasifika history, Te ao Māori, feminist history, New Zealand women artists, Māori deep history, economic history, history of immigration and local suburb history.

As all of our students are brand new to Wikipedia editing, they set up their Wikipedia accounts and started to think about potential research topics.

Day 2

Students started Wikipedia training, with an introduction to the origins of Wikipedia and the five pillars of Wikipedia. Wikimedia platforms such as Wikicommons, Wikidata, Wikisource and Wikivoyage were introduced. As well as identifying the geographical and gender bias that exists on the platforms. Socially engaged Wikiprojects on Wikimedia were shared with the students such as #visiblewikiwomen and Women in Red.

The next training session centred around the technical skills and layout of Wikipedia. This overview included explanation of the basics of Wikipedia editing such as talk pages, edit history, visual editor vs source and viewing page statistics. At times, students followed along on their laptops and famailarised themselves with tools and editing functions. By the end of this session Students had successfully created Wikipedia user pages and even tried source editing for the first time!

Our students user pages:

In the afternoon, Students joined the wider summer student cohort in the Auckland Museum Research Library. During this session, students learnt from our librarians about accessing research materials, record structure and the reading room collections.

Students have started to think about possible articles both from our list and their own ideas. We talked about the need for secondary sources and how this might limit or change their lines of research.

These potential topics are:

Day 3

Students joined the Auckland Museum Collections and Research Hui to learn more about the projects and work being done across various teams.

The training session this day covered the topic 'Leveraging Wikipedia'. We discussed Wikipedia's reach, conflicts of interest, developing Wikimedia stratergies, sharing open images, copyright and creative commons licences.

We then looked into ways museums can create content that can contribute to and support the Wikimedia movement. Such as produce blog posts which are authorative and original secondary sources. Making their photos, publications or research available for citation and scanning out-of-copyright publications for Wikisource. This contribution could also be through Wikipedia campaigns such as #1lib1ref where articles can be improved by institutions resources and publications by Librarians and Information Professionals. There is also opportunity for museums to support their local Wikipedians in hosting meet-ups and edit-a-thons which invite community engagement.

In the afternoon, students spoke to Collections Information & Access manager Zoe Richardson and Online Cenotaph and Enquiry Service manager Victoria Passau about the Collections Information & Access department and their teams, Online Cenotaph & Enquiry Services, Imaging and Permissions, Collections Online Partnerships and Research teams do.

The students have all started researching for their projects and are familiarising themselves with layout and editing tools in their sandboxes.

Summer students exploring the Decorative Arts galleries at Auckland Museum

Day 4

Students started the day with a cohort Conservation workshop with Auckland Museum conservators. They learnt how to handle a range of museum objects correctly as well as how the museum cares for our collections.

In the afternoon students visited Auckland Museum's Tāmaki Herenga Waka Stories of Auckland galleries to see how Museum exhibitions engage, exhibit and synthesize Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland histories. This visit helped the students with ideas for article content as well as understanding alternative interactions with local histories. Students then visited the Decorative Arts and Arts of Asia Galleries.

To finish the first week of the Wikipedia summer student programme, students watched a keynote from the 2019 National Digitial Forum by Adele Vrana & Anasuya Sengupta from Whose Knowledge? to get them thinking about knowledge equity and amplifying marginalised voices and stories.

Week 2

Cultural permissions korero

Students were joined by Head of Collections Information & Access and Image Permissions manager Zoe Richardson to discuss copyright and cultural permissions. With its relevance to Wikimedia Commons in mind, the students learnt about Auckland Museum's copyright framework and cultural permissions policies. Students were introduced to orphaned works, creative commons licences, crown works & NZGOAL and public domain.

The students were also encouraged to consider cultural permissions surrounding Māori and Pacific Taonga and understand the importance of these licenses and policies in safeguarding the mana of the Taonga and the respect and integrity of the cultures and people depicted.

Weekly update

Students are continuing to research for their first articles:

Researching Museum Collections

Students met with Victoria Passau, Online Cenotaph and Enquiry Services manager, to discuss the breadth of resources available to aid them in their research projects. These included Vernon, Collections Online, Online Cenotaph, Digital NZ, Alexander Turnbull, Auckland Libraries- Kura, Index New Zealand, Te Puna Search, Ancestry, Archives NZ, PapersPast, Trove, The British Newspaper Archive and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. She also shared the internal, museum specific resources available such as our Museum Archives, Departmental Libraires and Documentary Heritage Collections.

Guest Speaker: Mark Sheehan

Dr. Mark Sheehan is a history education specialist and curriculum developer. Mark has worked with Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland Museum on the Wikipedia, Auckland Museum and 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 shared insightful context about the shift in the Aotearoa New Zealand history curriculum and the importance of memory and personal perspectives when sharing history. He helped the students gain direction around their articles and what topics and approaches may be helpful.

Learning from our Librarians

Students had the opportunity to sit down with the Auckland Museum librarians to discuss their research interests. Utilising the resources available to them in the reading room will help them find reliable published sources for their articles.

Students also explored the Museum Memorial Discovery Centre, Pou Maumahara which houses a breadth of resources on New Zealand's involvement in war and conflict over history.

The first article was posted this week, Statue of George Grey, Auckland!

Week 3

New articles published:

Students had their first meeting to discuss the edit-a-thon they are organising and hosting on Saturday 25th January 2025.

Guest Speaker:Lucy Moore

Students were joined by UK based Wikimedian, Numismatist, Historian and Curator, Lucy Moore for a chat about her journey with Wikimedia. Lucy joined Wikipedia in 2019, learning to edit at a Wikipedia Workshop hosted by West Yorkshire Queer Stories.

Contributing a variety of knowledge to Wikimedia since 2019, Lucy spoke to the students about her contributions to Women in Red (in which she has written over 500 biographies!), her PhD with the University of York, her Wikimedian Residencies at the National Trust and Leeds 2023 and an exciting Wikidata project, 'WikiProject Smell'.

Lucy acknowledges her priviledge and positionality when addressing the gender bias in Wikipedia. Focusing on ideas of visibility and intersectional allyship.

"Building gender equity on Wikipedia is feminism in action. I edit to lift up others and make the achievements of extraordinary women from the global majority better know." - Lucy Moore

This week, the wider student cohort had the opportunity to have a behind-the-scenes tour through the Auckland Museum's Natural Sciences department. They got to see an array of specimens and pick the brains of our Natural Sciences head of department, Tom Trnski.

Lucy Mackintosh and the Wikipedia summer students sharing cake and chatting about local history

Guest Speaker: Lucy Mackintosh

Students met with curator and historian, Lucy Mackintosh to talk about the importance of local histories. Students learnt from the, Shifting Grounds: History, Memory and Materiality in Auckland Landscapes c.1350–2018, author and her motivation to move away from national and transnational histories and focus on local history and places as living archives. Students enjoyed chatting with Lucy about her mahi over cake, students sharing their experiences of reading her book as part of their anthropology and history classes at university.

Week 4

New articles published:

Improved articles:

Guest Speaker: Susan Tolich

Susan Tolich joined the students to present on her experiences as a Wikipedia editor and expert edit-a-thon planner. Susan was the first ever Wikipedian in Residence in New Zealand in 2017 when she worked with Auckland Museum on a five week placement. Susan's focus was women artists, supporting the Women in Red movement which aims to target the gender bias present on Wikipedia. Susan now works at MOTAT as the Curator Transport, her editing interests naturally pivoting toward transport history related content.

Susan shared some valuable insight into organising and hosting an edit-a-thon as the students prepare to plan and run their own in January 2025.

Week 4 marks the end of the first half of the studentship. The programme will recommence after the Christmas and New Year break in January.

Check out the student led event coming up in January: Stub It Out: Developing Tāmaki's Wiki Stub Articles Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon