Wikipedia:GLAM/Bodleian/6th 7th month report
| Institution | Resident's Name | Period Covered | Date of Report |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford | User:MartinPoulter | 1st September-31st October 2015 | 5 November 2015 |
This report covers two months because the start of October was taken up with preparation for a week of events.
Content
[edit]Summary objective: To make content from the Bodleian available for use on the Wikimedia projects.
277 images were uploaded. 270 of these came from the Bodleian and the rest from other sources explained below. Total uses of files have increased from 265 to 288.
The files from the Bodleian are mainly from Indian, Armenian, Aztec, Mixtec, Persian and Byzantine cultures. Views of content I've uploaded reached above 1,180,000 per month in September.
As part of the developing relationship with the Oxford Museum of the History of Science, the museum has allowed me to upload three of their photographs of armillary spheres, two of which are now used to illustrate the article. This is the first time they have released material under a Wikipedia-compatible licence.
Somerville College shared two images related to Ada Lovelace that had not been available in digital form before. I have also taken some photographs from Somerville archive material held by the Bodleian (relating to Lovelace's tutor, Mary Somerville) and will get permission to upload some to Commons.
Two images of women scientists have emerged from private collections and been uploaded to Commons as a result of my call for images.
Community
[edit]Summary objective: to expand, diversify and train the contributor community
Summary: More than 30 workshop participants (some taking part in more than 1 event); 22 new accounts (not including Lucy Crompton-Reid who was going to get one anyway); overwhelmingly female participation in workshops; 1 (male) leading volunteer; 24 experts in presentation audience
Events for Ada Lovelace week
[edit]We delivered four three-hour workshops for the Lovelace bicentenary.
- Wikisource Transcribe-a-thon
- 11 trainees in the room (9 women, 1 man); 7 new accounts; 25 pages of text proofread
- Edit-a-thon
- 14 trainees in the room (12 women, 2 men) plus one assistant trainer (Andy Mabbett); 10 new accounts; 8 articles created; 10 other articles edited
- Improve-a-thon
- 8 trainees in the room (7 women, 1 man); 3 new accounts; 23 articles edited (some of these were created the previous day)
- Image-a-thon
- 7 trainees in the room (6 women, 1 man); 3 new accounts (one of them Lucy C-R); 18 articles edited
Participant evaluation surveys are available through the links above. All ratings of the teaching were "Excellent" or "Good" (4 or 5 out of 5) and many comments indicate great enthusiasm for further editing.
Oxford Internet Institute lunchtime seminar
[edit]"Some attempts to address bias on Wikipedia" was a one-hour talk. raised awareness of the Research portal, Wikidata, Wikisource, the visual editor, and educational assignments. I suggested some possible research projects that could be done with Wikipedia's freely available data.
Attendees: 24 researchers and postgraduate students. With some people arriving late, I didn't get exact numbers for gender but it was approximately equal.
Outcome: More staff in the OII are interested in building a relationship with Wikipedia: the next step is an editathon event, provisionally scheduled for 15 January.
Anybook conference follow-up
[edit]My July conference presentation, urging Oxford's librarians to contribute to Wikisource and Wikipedia, was written up by an audience member for the post-conference handbook which was distributed in October to all attendees. The text is reproduced with permission on the Wikimedia UK wiki.
Event planning
[edit]I met an academic contact at the Faculty of Music to plan a Tudor Music editathon for early February. I also met with the Free Speech Debate project at St Antony's College to plan a Wikipedia training event for 30 of their multilingual students, provisionally scheduled for December. Free Speech Debate requested that I write up my OII talk as an article for their site, which I will do in November.
Forthcoming events in November
[edit]- 4 November: "Under the bonnet of Wikipedia": 1 hour lunchtime workshop for Oxford University staff
- 10 November: "Oxford in World War I" editathon
- 19 November: "Working with the Open Culture movement" Workshop for Bodleian library staff
- 25 November: Presentation for social media staff across the University
Policy
[edit]Summary objective: Shape and implement policies and workflows for licensing and releasing digital media and reporting their use and impact.
Somerville College and The Oxford Museum of the History of Science have for the first time released files (for me to upload) under a Wikipedia-compatible free licence: see above. I intend to report on the impact of these and related files and use this information to shape future policy.
Liz McCarthy & I met with a member of staff on the DIY Digitisation project which is encouraging the readers to share photographs of Bodleian holding on Flickr. Presently the licence of the photographs is "All rights reserved", but this will be liberalised. I put the case for having a Wikipedia-compatible licence at least as an option. There will be a decision on this later in the year.
- Forthcoming
I have written up a blog post about what was achieved in the Ada Lovelace events, for publication by Oxford IT Services and by WMUK.
In early November, my two-page article will appear in CILIP Update, the print magazine of the information professional society CILIP, urging libraries to contribute to Wikisource and Wikipedia to drive interest in their collections.