Wikipedia:GLAM/Bodleian/4th month report
| Institution | Resident's Name | Period Covered | Date of Report |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford | User:MartinPoulter | 1st July-31st July 2015 | 4 August 2015 |
100 files uploaded, three events delivered, twelve women and three men took part in in-depth workshops; many more events planned for the rest of the year.
Content
[edit]Summary objective: To make content from the Bodleian available for use on the Wikimedia projects.
100 files were uploaded in July and 53 more uses were found for images in Wikipedia articles (bringing the totals to 264 and 231 respectively). The new themes include the Bible, Hindu gods, Japanese and Indian folk tales, the palace of Knossos at Crete, the Baharistan, early maps of the world and nautical charts. In July the files so far uploaded had 864,000 views.
A gallery on Commons shows the great variety of themes in the Bodleian content. My guest post on the Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts blog publicises the uploads, and was picked up by the Library Stuff blog.
The Bodleian has launched a new site, Digital Bodleian, to host all its digitised images, and new material is being added to it rapidly, from which I'll be able to share in future.
Community
[edit]Summary objective: to expand, diversify and train the contributor community
- Events delivered
- A workshop for museum staff about working with Wikimedia. Eight attendees including six women. This has connected me to the Museum of the History of Science, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Natural History Museum and Ashmolean Museum. There have been some requests for follow-up including a possible editathon, potential sharing of selected images from collections, and further advice on how to engage the public with exhibits in a museum.
- A workshop about the Wikimedia projects for libraries, including some Wikipedia training, for staff from the Vatican Library and Bodleian Libraries. Seven attendees included six women, five of whom created accounts.
- A half-hour presentation at the Oxford Libraries staff conference, which explained how improving open knowledge can be a rewarding hobby and which advertised the October women-in-science editathons. I did not get an exact count but 33 people registered for the session and the vast majority were women.
- Events planned
With IT services I have discussed running a course for staff which we will call "Open Knowledge Ambassador". This will be early in 2016 and take up four half-days, two dealing with the "why" of working with Wikimedia and two with the "how" of running editathons and other events.
I met Kathryn Eccles, the university's Digital Humanities champion, affiliated to the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and to The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). She's invited me to speak on a panel in early 2016 and we are discussing further events. An evening event for students and the public is planned for this summer, but depends on the availability of one of Kathryn's colleagues.
I visited the Radcliffe Science Library (which is one of the Bodleian Libraries). They don't have image collections to share but they do have a community of scientists and public who attend events and have hosted editathons in the past. They have offered to host one of the Women in Science editathons in October, and to promote possible events to their librarians. This could possibly lead to a workshop about Wikimedia and research impact.
With the Radcliffe hosting one editathon and IT Services agreeing to host four events, this means there will be five events in October related to women in science.
This month, staff in the Music faculty agreed to help run an editathon about medieval music in February 2016. A World War I editathon is already scheduled for November, bringing the total of scheduled editathon events to 7, with more yet to be confirmed with museum contacts.
- Volunteers
I met with one volunteer who approached Wikimedia UK and who is very good with social media but not yet a Wikipedian. I've shared some documentation and inspiration with her and invited her to the October editathons. As a result of the conference presentation, two people have come forward to express an interest in contributing to the editathons, and we expect more to come forward when we do proper publicity for the events.
Institutional policy
[edit]Summary objective: Shape and implement policies and workflows for licensing and releasing digital media and reporting their use and impact.
As a result of the museums workshop, participants from the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers museums will look at image collections and whether they can share a small selection of images for me to upload. This requires the approval of committee meetings in those institutions, so it's not a given that they will approve free licences.
I was interviewed by a consultant as part of a Resource Discovery project which is reviewing the Bodleian's online presence. I suggested some changes that would treat users as remixers rather than recipients, for example to make reuse rights as visible as the images themselves. The consultant was familiar with Wikimedia Commons, which I used repeatedly as an example of usability principles I advocated. I'm told some of my recommendations will make it into the report.