Wikipedia:GLAM/Bodleian/10th month report
| Institution | Resident's Name | Period Covered | Date of Report |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford | User:MartinPoulter | 1 January-3 February 2016 | 10 February 2016 |
Content
[edit]Summary objective: To make content from the Bodleian available for use on the Wikimedia projects.
After a couple of delays due to Wikimedia servers being unavailable, the first bulk upload has taken place. There were meant to be 1036 uploads, all from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, but due to a software error, some files were given the same filename, meaning that they were interpreted as different versions of the same files. Thus, about 800 distinct files have made it onto Commons, and a separate upload in early February will add the rest.
Community
[edit]Summary objective: to expand, diversify and train the contributor community
I led the training at a public editathon hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) for Wikipedia's 15th birthday. The OII have released a very positive write-up of the day. Eleven new accounts were involved in the editathon, and two volunteers (User:Leutha and User:Olingo24, who had been trained in my previous workshops) took a supporting role. See wmuk:Oxford Internet Institute editathon for Wikipedia 15 for outcomes, coverage and participant evaluation.
The publicity around this event led to interviews on Sky News' "Digital View", BBC Radio Five Live, local ITV (broadcast in several different regions), and for Oxford's student newspaper Cherwell. It also led to speaking invitations from the Voltaire Foundation (part of the University of Oxford) and Public Health England (which I will fulfil as a volunteer).
January also saw the first workshop of the Open Knowledge Ambassador course, which attracted seven attendees. Participants created five new accounts on Wikipedia. Participant evaluation, plus worksheets based on the slides I used, are at wmuk:Open Knowledge Ambassador training Oxford University.
I spoke at HistoryLab, a seminar for History postgraduates in London, urging them to look at WikiProject History's 7,000 stubs as an opportunity to improve public understanding of their subject and to develop writing skills. The audience of 13 postgraduates included 7 women and 6 men.
I gave a five minute talk at Oxford Geek Night, to an audience of about 50, about Wikipedia's biases and the need for geeks to make participation easier for non-geeks, either by creating tools or sharing skills.
Coming up in February: the Tudor Music editathon, a lunchtime workshop open to all university members, two Open Knowledge Ambassador workshops, plus customised workshops for the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Voltaire Foundation.
Policy
[edit]Summary objective: Shape and implement policies and workflows for licensing and releasing digital media and reporting their use and impact.
I presented at a day conference on "DIY Digitisation": this expression describes when libraries encourage readers to take photographs of historic books and post those online. I urged that images created in this way should be shared under free licences and am pleased to report that most of the other speakers were broadly pro-free licences as well. This event will feed into a new policy for the Bodleian's DIY Digitisation project. The conference was held under Chatham House rules so there is no public record.
The university's Open Access blog hosted a guest blog post from me on Wikipedia's birthday, urging researchers to see Wikipedia as part of the ecology of open access research publication.
I had a meeting with Prof Eric Meyer of the Oxford Internet Institute. Prof Meyer has published extensively on evaluating the impact of digital collections. I took from him some tips on making the case for free and open licencing, and introduced him to a couple of the tools used for evaluation in Wikimedia (BaGLAMa and LinkSearch).
My feature article for CILIP Update has been published on Commons, with the approval of the newsletter's editor. I believe this is a first for CILIP Update.