Wikipedia:GLAM/MGS/Secondment Summary and Reflections Report

Glasgow Museums Secondment Wikimedian in Residence Summary & Reflections report
Glasgow Museums partnered with Museums Galleries Scotland and Wikimedia UK to kickstart a GLAM-Wiki partnership with a Wikimedian in Residence. The residency will last for 12 months, and the first four were spent at Glasgow Museums.

Background

A Wikimedian in Residence is a Wikimedia editor based with an organisation or group of organisations, usually a GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive or Museum) with the aim of increasing the quality and volume of content on the encyclopedia and associated Wikiprojects concerning the organisation(s) collection.

As a networked residency, working across multiple museums, the Glasgow Museums project was a four month secondment which took place at the beginning of the year-long residency with Museums Galleries Scotland. The Resident, Sara Thomas was embedded with the Kelvin Hall team at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum for 2.5 days per week during the period 26 January 2015 - 30 May 2015.

Glasgow Museums is comprised of 9 museums plus the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, with the entire collection cared for by Glasgow Museums holding Recognised Collection status.. The post was overseen by Glasgow Museums' Digital and New Media Manager John Ferry.

Initial aims of residency

As the residency was of a much shorter duration than that normally undertaken, it was understood that what could be achieved in this time would differ from that of other residencies. The residency would act as a kick-start for further work in Glasgow Museums, and thus a particular emphasis was placed upon sustainability in the project.

Outputs & Outcomes

Outputs

During the 4 month period of the residency:

• 6 internal presentations delivered
• 4 conferences attended (presented at 3)
• 22 curators trained to edit Wiki over 5 training sessions
• 3 meetings of the Wiki Working Group held
• 1 editathon organised
• 3 other editathons attended

Outcomes

WMUK Outcomes most relevant to this Residency:

GM Outcomes for this Residency:

Positive influencing factors

• High level of staff interest and buy in for the project
• Staff champion identified: Tracey MacDonald
• Resident embedded within a very supportive staff team (Kelvin Hall project)
• Key staff supportive of image donation

Negative influencing factors

• Very short residency
• Barriers to image donation will take a long time to overcome

Responses and recommendations

Responses from Glasgow Museums

Shahana Khaliq, Assistant Curator, Kelvin Hall Project, 26 March 2015

"The Edit-a-Thon was a great opportunity for the Showpeople community of Glasgow to put out the correct information about their heritage and culture by creating new and improving wiki articles. They found that they can improve articles to display how Showpeople have been and still are involved in many aspects of local and national life and are not an isolated community. They found this to be a very positive experience and are happy to use wiki as a platform for them to share their heritage with others as it is such a widely used website which will help their identity to be recognised better. For Glasgow Museums, this has been a very positive experience as it was another way that we were able to strengthen our support of a community, and their support for us. Working with Sara and utilising Wikipedia illustrates the evolving relationship of this working group between Glasgow Museums and the Showpeople, a group that we have been working in collaboration with for a number of years."

Tracey MacDonald, Assistant Curator, Kelvin Hall Project, 27 March 2015

"The Wikimedian in Residency programme is a brilliant opportunity for cultural institutions to learn about the benefits of using Wikipedia as a conduit for collections awareness, research and participation. With the residency starting at Glasgow Museums, staff already had a few ideas of what we could do; however being part of such a large organisation, which is part of a wider local authority means things take can take time. Four months is a short time span for us, however, we did achieve a lot. Staff from across all departments attended the various excellent training sessions and were interested in how wiki was working with cultural organisations. The discussions and ideas that came out of these sessions are really a starting point for us. Without the Residency, these discussions and staff would not have usually come together. We also ran a great Editathon session with the Showpeople of Glasgow where the knowledge and gaps in information about these communities on Wikipedia was added to. The newly formed Wiki Working Group will be exploring ways to continue what has been started and we look forward to developing the relationship between Glasgow Museums and Wikipedia."

Statistics

Events organised or training run by WiR:

Event	Date	Location	Attendees	New users	Gender breakdown
Glasgow Museums Wiki Working Group Curator Training	24 Feb 2015	Riverside Museum	9	9	78% female
Wikipedia training for curators	23 April	Riverside Museum	3	3	100% female
Wikipedia training for curators	5 May	Riverside Museum	7	7	29% female
Scottish Fairground culture Editathon	7 May 2015	Riverside Museum	8	5	75% female
Wiki editing for curators	14 May	Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum	1	1	100% male
Wiki editing for curators	30 May	Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum	1	1	100% female

Events organised by others with WiR support:

Event	Date	Location	Organised by	Attendees	New users	Gender breakdown
Women, Science and Scottish History: University of Edinburgh Innovative Learning Week editathon series	16-20 Feb 2015 (Resident attended 16 & 17 Feb)	University of Edinburgh	University of Edinburgh Innovative Learning Week	22 & 13	See NLS Residency for details	85-90% female
Connect @ Edinburgh Napier University 'Writing Women Back into History' Editathon	4 March 2015	Napier University	Connect @ Napier	19	16	100% female
Dundee Art+Feminism 2015 edit-a-thon	6 March 2015	Hannah Maclure Centre, University of Abertay, 40 Bell Street, Dundee	University of Abertay	12	8	85% female
Women on the Platform Editathon	29 May 2015	Fountainbridge Library	Damn Rebel Bitches' Scottish Women's History Group			100% female

Talks and other events

Event	Date	Location	Organised by	Talk title	Recording/slides available?
Presentation to the Curatorial Forum	3 Feb 2015	Kelvingrove Museum	John Ferry	Wikimedian in Residence: Sara Thomas	Short presentation given to the curatorial forum of Glasgow Museums to introduce the Residency.
Friday briefing to Riverside Museum staff	6 March 2015	Riverside Museum	Sara Thomas	Wikimedian in Residence: Sara Thomas	No (GM logo not on open license)
Presentation at "Archiving Community Storytelling: Challenges & Opportunities" conference	13 March	University of the West of Scotland	Chair in Event & Digital Cultures Professor David McGillivray, & Jennifer Jones	"Reducing barriers to accessing (& producing) open knowledge"	No
Presentation to Learning & Access Curators	19 March	Glasgow Museums Resource Centre	John Ferry	Wikimedian in Residence: Sara Thomas	No (logos not on open license)
Friday briefing to Scotland Street School Museum staff	20 March	Scotland Street School Museum	Sara Thomas	Wikimedian in Residence: Sara Thomas	No (logos not on open license)
Friday briefing to St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art staff	3 April	St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art	Sara Thomas	Wikimedian in Residence: Sara Thomas	No (logos not on open license)
Wiki Working Group #2	8 April	Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum	Sara Thomas	Wiki Working Group #2	No (images not on open license)
Presentation to the Insight Cafe	22 April	Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum	John Ferry	Wikimedia and Glasgow Museums	Presentation to the Insight Cafe on 22/05/15 about what was achieved during the course of the residency, and what could be done in the future.
Co-presentation with Kelly Forbes at eCult Dialogue Day, part of EMYA 2015	13 May	Mitchell Library	European Museum of the Year Award	"Fostering open knowledge in Scotland’s museums"	No
Presentation to IT & Marketing staff	20 May	Glasgow Life offices	Sara Thomas / Jim Lithgow	Wikimedia and Glasgow Museums	No (Very similar to above)
Wiki Working Group #3	28 May	Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum	Sara Thomas / Tracey MacDonald	Wiki Working Group #3	n/a

Contacts for future collaborations

Contact details have not been listed for privacy reasons; all contact details have been forwarded to WMUK for any future collaborations.

Organisation	Contact name
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland	Carol Stobie
University of the West of Scotland	Chair in Event & Digital Cultures Professor David McGillivray, & Jennifer Jones
Braemar Castle	Castle Manager, Laura McMeekin
Digit! / Edinburgh Archaeology Wiki Club	Project Manager, Jeff Sanders
Campbeltown Museum	Curator of Social History and Fine Art, Elaine McChesney
Connect @ Napier	Debbie Ratcliffe
HATII, School of Humanities & Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow	Joint Curator/Lecturer in Museum Studies, Dr Maria Economou
Clare Henry Archive	Clare Henry
Open Data Glasgow	Graeme Arnott
Open Tech Calendar	James Baster

Presentation slides

Most presentations have not been included due to similarity in content, or use of content (partner organisations logos or screengrabs) that are central to the presentation, but are not available on an open license.

• 
• 
• 

Image Statistics

Image stats cannot be provided. A request was made in March 2015 to add the relevant categories to BaGLAMa 2, however this has not yet been actioned.

The Wikicommons categories {{Glasgow Museums GLAMWiki image}} and {{Glasgow Museums image}} were added for images created in the course of the GLAMWiki Partnership, and images donated by Glasgow Museums respectively.

16 images have been added to the {{Glasgow Museums GLAMWiki image}} category, no images have yet been added to the {{Glasgow Museums image}} category. The latter was added in anticipation of an image donation, it is anticipated that the former will be used at upcoming events.

Content Creation

Scottish Fairground Culture Editathon

Articles Created	Bytes	Articles Improved	Bytes	Images added
1	(+1252 bytes)	2	(+11,551)	1

Articles on Fairground Art, Fairgrounds and Cinema, and further improvements to Glasgow Fair were created in users' sandboxes.

Connect @ Edinburgh Napier University 'Writing Women Back into History' Editathon

Article Created	Articles Improved
3	9

University of Abertay Art + Feminism Editathon

Article Created	Articles Improved
10	1

Women on the Platform Editathon

Article Created	Articles Improved