LADA/Wikimedia UK Live Art and Feminism Edit-a-thon, photograph by Edwardx How to work successfully with Wikipedia A guide for galleries, libraries, archives and museums What is Wikipedia Wikimedia and how does it work? websites have 500m viewers per month Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment. » Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, freely available on the internet. Wikipedia is the best known project of the Wikimedia movement, which also includes a family of open knowledge projects such as Wikisource which holds source documents, Wikidata which holds publicly available datasets, and the media library Wikimedia Commons. Battle of Clontarf, oil on » The Wikimedia movement aims to make the canvas painting by Hugh sum of human knowledge freely available to all Frazer, 1826, used to humanity. illustrate the Wikipedia article Battle of Clontarf, » Wikipedia, like all Wikimedia projects, is part courtesy of the Isaacs Art of the open content movement, so it only Center contains information that is openly licensed so that others are free to use it. Readership of the Wikipedia article Battle of Clontarf on and » The Wikimedia sites are visited by around around the thousandth anniversary of the battle. Wikimedia 500m people a month, many more people also Ireland brought together a group of historians and Wikipedians access them through mirror sites and offline at the Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin to improve copies. The Wikimedia movement supports that article and related ones in advance of the thousandth a number of schemes that seek to open up anniversary of the battle. Every Wikipedia article has a “view access for harder to reach groups. history” tab which leads to an overview of who edited the » For example Wikipedia Zero where mobile article. You also can get the statistics of any Wikipedia article by operators in several developing countries going to http://stats.grok.se include surfing Wikipedia for free rather than including it in download allowances, and off the web initiatives that load copies of Wikipedia to around laptops. 9 21 » Wikimedia promotes the use and improvement million of Wikipedia and other open knowledge billion edits every projects. We help cultural organisations work page views month successfully with Wikipedia, by working with us: per month more than • you engage the whole Wikipedia over community; and 35 million Wikipedia has articles in • in a measurable, reportable way so 21m you can show the impact files on 4.5m 285 Wikimedia articles in other languages Commons English 2 HOW TO WORK SUCCESSFULLY WITH WIKIPEDIA British Museum – “I looked at how many Rosetta Stone page views there were at Wikipedia. Wikimedian in Residence Five times as many people go to the Wikipedia article as to ours.” Location: London Matthew Cock, Type of organisation: museum The British Museum Description The British Museum was the first organisation of its kind to host a Wikimedian in Residence. Liam Wyatt, a Wikipedia volunteer, spent five weeks working with staff to improve Wikipedia content related to objects in the museum. He also helped build lasting, mutually beneficial links between curators there and the wider Wikipedia community. The museum estimated that several thousand of the eight million objects in their collection would deserve their own Wikipedia articles, but didn’t yet have one. Both organisations have a mission to educate the public. The British Museum has the artefacts and the expertise, Wikipedia has the online audience. The outcomes and benefits » Helped the British Museum fulfil part of its outreach mission to engage the public. » Improved Wikipedia content on items in the museum’s collections. » Used the museum’s specialist expertise, deeper resources and links to its research material from Wikipedia. » Established relations between museum staff and the Wikipedia community to continue improving Wikipedia content. » Generated positive media coverage including in the New York Times. The Royal Gold Cup, photograph by Babelstone. The Royal Gold Cup has an article in several language versions of Wikipedia including English. HOW TO WORK SUCCESSFULLY WITH WIKIPEDIA 3 Ways of working We know you’ll have specific goals in Residence, an edit-a-thon (an Working with you need to reach – whether that event where Wikipedians, experts Wikipedia is flexible might be around outreach, multi- and volunteers collaborate to edit lingual content, opening your Wikipedia), a photo scavenger hunt, There are lots of different ways you collection to a wider audience or releasing imagery or something can work with Wikipedia. We’ve providing a way to back up your completely different. If you’d like us to, already formed partnerships with a digitised imagery. we can even organise events to train whole range of cultural organisations, your volunteers to become Wikipedia We’re always looking to improve and large and small. It’s all about finding editors. enrich the coverage of Wikipedia’s the right partnership that works for articles and to expand the range of you. resources available on Wikimedia At Wikimedia our job is to help Commons. you find the best way to work with In return we’ll help you tap into the Wikipedia. We can talk to you about combined enthusiasm and digital the different options and we’ll share knowledge of the Wikimedia our experience of what makes a volunteer community. Your successful partnership. That way we To talk to us about partnership might include can shape something that suits your hosting a Wikimedian how a partnership with organisation, and resources. Wikipedia might work for Blackgang chine on the Isle of Wight, a nineteenth century photochrome print of a landscape feature that has since been washed away, courtesy of the Library of your organisation, get Congress in touch by e-mail (see back of booklet) 4 HOW TO WORK SUCCESSFULLY WITH WIKIPEDIA Herbert Art Gallery and Museum – Wikipedia takes Coventry Location: Coventry Type of organisation: art gallery and museum Description Wikipedia takes Coventry was a photo scavenger hunt that helped create a lasting, freely-accessible photographic record of Coventry’s landmarks and history to use on Wikipedia all over the world. This was one of a series of events that the Herbert has held with Wikimedia UK. Participants registered at the Herbert and granted permission for their photographs to be made freely available under a Creative Commons licence. The photographers ranged across Coventry. At the end of the event participants returned to the museum and uploaded and tagged their photographs on Wikimedia Commons. Those searchable images are now freely available for anyone to use on Our Lady of Coventry, photograph by Andy Mabbett Wikipedia and for any Gargoyle on Old Blue Coat School, other purpose. photograph by SashaTaylor The outcomes and benefits » 51 photographers took part and uploaded their photos at the Herbert. » Over 2,000 photographs of Coventry’s landmarks were created. » The number of articles on Wikipedia about objects in the Herbert’s collections doubled. » Articles included ones in French, German and Catalan. » Local and social media coverage of the event. Caludon castle, Coventry, photograph by Mum’s taxi HOW TO WORK SUCCESSFULLY WITH WIKIPEDIA 5 Wikimedian in Residence To find out more about how a Wikimedian in Residence could benefit What’s a The residencies are very your organisation, get in flexible in terms of length touch with us by e-mail Wikimedian in and format, and can be paid (see back of booklet) or voluntary roles. Some paid Residence? roles have been short and fixed- term to scope out future work. A Wikimedian in Residence is a Many last for six months or longer Wikimedia editor who accepts a to allow for some solid relationships role with an organisation to build and understanding to be built on both close working relationships between sides. Some posts are voluntary or are the Wikimedia movement and an internship, others are paid part- or the institution through a range of even full-time. Wikimedia has wholly internal and public activities. They or partially grant-funded several posts can work on improving content for where there is potential for significant Wikimedia projects, but even more benefit to Wikimedia projects. Those importantly act as an ambassador have included large scale image for open knowledge within the host releases to Wikimedia Commons and organisation. internal policy changes in favour of Any organisation that wants to open knowledge. progress work on open knowledge The Wikimedian in Residence can through Wikimedia could consider train editors and image uploaders, doing it by hosting a Wikimedian in co-ordinate events, raise the profile Residence. of Wikipedia within your organisation Their activities can include: and help your staff to engage more effectively with Wikipedia and its » Organising outreach work to community. encourage understanding and development of Wikimedia Successful Wikimedian in Residence projects internally and externally programmes have already been run in the UK with the British Library, » Exploring sharing the organisation’s ARKive, Royal Society, York Museums digital resources on Wikimedia Trust, National Library of Scotland, Commons British Museum, Derby Museum » Organising events to create or and Art Gallery, Coleg Cymraeg expand existing articles about Cenedlaethol, Science Museum notable items or subjects of and Natural History Museum. In specific relevance to the collection other countries there have been and the organisation’s expertise Wikimedians in Residence at Houghton Library (USA), Swiss » Working with staff to explain how National Library, Catalan Network of Wikipedia and related projects Public Libraries (Spain), Royal Ontario operate and how they can Museum (Canada), State Library contribute, for example through of New South Wales (Australia), events, workshops, case studies Smithsonian Institution Archives and documentation (USA), Africa Centre (South Africa), » Developing other projects that and Royal Library & National Archives support open knowledge (Netherlands).