Institution Resident Residency period Period covered Date of report
Scottish Library & Information Council Delphine Dallison May 2018 - March 2019 30 April 2018 - 31st July 2018 31 July 2018

Overview[edit]

Wikimedians Sara Thomas and Delphine Dallison
Delphine Dallison receiving the Up and Coming Wikimedian to Watch 2018 award

This report marks both the one year anniversary of the SLIC residency and the transition period between Sara Thomas (now Scotland Programme Coordinator for WMUK) and Delphine Dallison holding the post.

This is the first time that a residency has changed hands half way through its agreed duration and we are happy to report that the transition went well. The new resident Delphine Dallison had previously been a volunteer for Wikimedia UK for 5 years and had undergone Wikimedia UK's Train the Trainer programme. Thanks to her prior knowledge of Wikipedia editing and the Wikimedia community, Delphine was able to familiarise herself with the project over the first two weeks in post then fully engage with the programme of training sessions for librarians scheduled throughout the month of May. Sara Thomas led those training sessions in partnership with Delphine Dallison, which allowed her to complete a thorough handover and to signpost Delphine towards some of the tools and strategies she had been using when engaging with an audience of librarians. By the time all five sessions had been delivered, Delphine felt confident in her post and was able to start focusing on new ideas and directions in which she wanted to direct the residency. Despite the success of the handover, we must note that the change in wikimedian in residence may have affected the development of a couple of projects where the results might have been mitigated with a better understanding of broader context of the projects. These incidents are further expanded upon in the Strategic Goal One section of the report.

Reflecting on the first year of the residency, the overall results are overwhelmingly positive. Through the advocacy efforts led by Sara Thomas and subsequently Delphine Dallison, the interest in the project is evident. From a pilot project led with public libraries across 4 local authorities, in the past three months, there has been an additional 43 librarians trained across 18 out of 32 local authorities in Scotland, bringing the total number of local authorities with public libraries engaged in the SLIC residency to 21. These training sessions took place across 5 locations in Scotland, moving the training opportunities out of the Central Belt of Scotland and into its rural, harder to reach areas. This strategy is directly credited with the growth in numbers and geographic spread of the project, which now reaches all the way from the Scottish Borders to the Shetland Islands.

Since these training sessions have taken place, 7 libraries have initiated planning for their own Wikipedia projects with the wikimedian in residence, so we estimate that by the next quarter report 11 different local authority libraries will be engaged in long-term Wikipedia projects, independently from any Wiki Loves campaign activities. The variety of geographic locations, institutional setup and staffing resources has led to the development of a diversity of approaches to Wikipedia projects including editathons, surfacing local histories, intergenerational approaches and archive specific approaches.

To guide libraries through their first steps in engaging with Wikipedia, the wikimedian in residence now has a strong model in place which builds up staff's Wikipedia skills before engaging with a volunteer group and using that group for their first Wikipedia event. Libraries are responding well to this model and we currently have 3 successful libraries which have followed through the model to completion including Inverclyde Libraries, SLIC WiR project partner, and the North Lanarkshire libraries, whose Digital and Support Services manager also sits on the SLIC WiR steering. The wikimedian in residence will be working with these two libraries over the next quarter to develop a train the trainer programme aimed at librarians in Scotland in order to ensure the long-term sustainable future of the project.

The work of the wikimedian in residence over the past year has also extended beyond the scope of public libraries with a mixture of outreach events and advocacy sessions taking place across the library sector with HE and FE libraries as well as specialist libraries. In the past couple of months, there has also been some interest expressed from school libraries with the view to developing some Wikipedia information literacy resources to deliver with school groups. The residency has also attracted interest from organisations that work in close partnership with libraries such as the Scottish Book Trust and the Carnegie UK Trust.

On the 26th of June, the SLIC WiR strategic committee held their second meeting hosted by Wikimedian in Residence Delphine Dallison at the SLIC office and with the new addition of Sara Thomas in her role as Scotland Programme Coordinator. The steering committee is composed of proactive Wikimedia UK partners from across the GLAM and Education landscape of Scotland and they are committed to support the SLIC residency. Content upload has been pushed to the top of the agenda for the coming 6 months as historically these can be the longest projects to yield results within a residency. The feeling is that a case study demonstrating the benefits of content uploads to Wikimedia Commons could act as a positive trigger to encourage other libraries to follow suite. Inverclyde Libraries and NLS are both currently pursuing options to achieve this goal. Another focus for the next three months will be activating libraries participation through the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign and a small pilot revival of the Wiki Loves Libraries campaign in order to crowdsource images and content to create new Wikipedia pages or improve existing pages on libraries across Scotland.

As the residency reaches its one year anniversary, a yearly review will be carried out with SLIC and Inverclyde libraries. The review has currently been postponed until September due to changes in the SLIC project management team and to allow the new Head of Programme to settle into post. The results of the review will be conveyed in the October quarterly report.

Strategic goal one[edit]

Increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently underrepresented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects
Outcomes Outputs
  • Establish public libraries as key creators of high quality digital content on Scottish culture
  • Public library staff will be trained as Wikipedia editors and content creators
  • Public library staff will support library users to become Wikipedia editors and content creators
  • Increased volume of articles on Wikipedia covering Scottish culture (including Gaelic/Scots language material)

Progress narrative

Wiki-enabled libraries in Scotland map - July 2018
Delphine and Sara delivered the sessions in Inverness, Dundee and Glasgow together. Sara delivered the session in Stirling in order to free Delphine up to run an advocacy session at the Scottish public libraries Digital Champions meeting in Perth on the same day. Sara also delivered the training session in Galashiels as the date clashed with annual leave that Delphine had booked prior to starting in post. Delphine followed up with participants from the sessions she wasn't able to attend to ensure continuity. In total, 43 librarians from 18 (out of 32) local authorities in Scotland were trained during these sessions. 83.5% of the new editors trained during these sessions were female, 17 new articles were created as part of the practical editing sessions and 11 of those were biographies of women.
  1. Wiki-enabled libraries: These libraries have completed an Intro to Wikipedia training session for their staff, identified a group of volunteers to work with, completed an Intro to Wikipedia training session with their volunteers and delivered their first editathon. Two of the Wiki-enabled libraries (Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire) are part of the original pilot project led by Sara Thomas in phase 1 of the residency, whereas the Dunfermline project was a direct result of the training sessions delivered in May. The next step for these libraries is to take part in a train the trainer program currently in development, which will enable library staff with some experience of editing to develop skills at running Wikipedia events (planning and delivering events, engaging with the Wikimedia community, recording metrics, etc...) as well as delivering Wikipedia editing training to other library staff and library users. This train the trainer programme will be piloted with Inverclyde Library (project partner) before being rolled out to North Lanarkshire and Dunfermline in the next quarter.
  2. Preparing for first editathon: These libraries (North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire) were part of the original pilot project run by Sara Thomas. They have completed their first editathon and are currently in the process of identifying a volunteers group and preparing to run their first editathon. These libraries have been experiencing some changes in their senior management team and this may have affected their progress with their Wikipedia projects. The change of wikimedian in residence also means that it has taken a while for the new resident to understand how these changes in staffing have affected the project. The nature of the remit of the SLIC residency means that you have to develop relationships with teams of librarians that you might meet once or twice and the rest of the project development takes place remotely. The change in wikimedian in residence combined with the change of senior staffing has meant that these relationships have had to be redeveloped from the ground up, without the benefit of meeting in person. This only became apparent when Girvan Library tried to organise their first editathon, which had to be cancelled as they hadn't secured the support of a suitable volunteers group. Sara Thomas, being more familiar with the library team may have been able to preempt some of the planning issues and steered a better course. The current plan for these libraries is to wait until the new management team is in place then encourage them to set up a Wikipedia project steering group amongst their staff team, which the wikimedian in residence will meet with and help plan their first Wikipedia events.
  3. Planning first Wikipedia activities: Seven additional libraries and archives are currently in the process of developing Wikipedia projects with a view at running activities throughout the next quarter. Four of those libraries (Perth and Kinross, Hawick, Edinburgh and Falkirk) contacted the wikimedian in residence as a direct result of having one or more of their staff attend the training sessions in May. Two libraries (Dundee and Orkney) were inspired to take part after attending the talk delivered by Alana Ward, Sara Thomas and Delphine Dallison (Citation Needed: Wiki-enabling Scotland’s public libraries) at the CILIPS conference in June. Finally, the project on Skye was first initiated by Atlas Art, the primary arts and culture organisation in that area, who were working on a project with the Skye and Lochalsh Archives centre on tracing the history of suffragettes from the West coast of Scotland. In order to ensure that this project wouldn't be a one time occurrence, Atlas Art were asked to tie in with the Skye Library as well as the archives centre and introduce them to the wikimedian in residence so they may familiarise themselves with the wider context of the residency. As a result, the local library and archives staff will now be attending an Intro to Wikipedia training session ahead of the planned editathon, so they can use those skills to continue planning future Wikipedia events and add to the growing network of wiki-enabled librarians in Scotland.
  4. Attended 1 day Wikipedia for Librarians training: Out of the 18 local authorities who sent staff to attend a one day training session in May, 10 are yet to follow up with further Wikipedia projects and currently stand as possible leads to follow up in the next quarter as well as targets for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Libraries activities. Additional target areas for next quarter are Aberdeenshire and Dumfries and Galloway. Both local authorities are some of the largest in Scotland, yet failed to send staff to attend the training sessions on offer. The wikimedian in residence will be working on targeted methods to bring both regions on board with SLIC residency over the coming months.
- Event planning: Event planning has been identified in previous Wikimedian in Residence posts as being a big drain on time and resources, especially when working at sector wide level. To preempt this issue in the SLIC residency, it was agreed that the onus for planning and delivering Wikipedia events would be on the library staff, with the wikimedian in residence providing support during the event itself, either in person or remotely. This approach has been mostly successful, however in the same way as the role of the librarian is very diverse, the range of skills can vary from library to library and in some cases, the librarians organising and planning events may lack the skills or experience for planning successful events. Two editathons had to be cancelled in the past three months due to lack of sign-ups and in both cases, event planning issues were identified to have been contributing factors. Having to cancel events is always a last resort, as it can be demoralising for the organisers and cause projects to stall. To mitigate that issue, two approaches are currently in development. First, it was identified that the Wikipedia working group formed at Inverclyde library, which is composed of library staff, museum staff and heritage officers, has been successful in creating a cohesive approach to the Wikipedia project, with diverse points of view and a range of skills for planning and delivering events. Other libraries are being encouraged to set up similar working groups to help share the workload of planning events. Secondly, the wikimedian in residence is currently putting together a resource specific to planning Wikipedia events with a focus on identifying the audience for your event and how to reach out and activate your audience to take part. The resource will be drawing from examples of previous editathons organised by both libraries and wikimedians in residence and in each case identifying components of what made the event a success from an event planning perspective. Once finished, the resource will be made available to librarians involved in the SLIC residency as well as the larger Wikimedia community.
- Account creation: At the North Lanarkshire editathon in June, an issue was identified related to digital literacy skills and account creation, which is likely to reoccur in future as libraries start to run their own events. The participants from the Shotts history group had not set up their Wikipedia accounts ahead of the editathon and the IP block at Wishaw library prevented them from creating accounts on arrival. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been an issue as the wikimedian in residence has Event coordinator rights, however the participants were from an older generation with digital literacy needs and did not have access to their email account, so couldn't be sent an account password via email. The wikimedian in residence was not aware that they also had the option of creating the passw0rd without sending it via email, so as an alternative the edits were made from the wikimedian in residence's account. This situation has since been discussed with admin Stwalkerster at the Scotwiki meetup on the 11th July. Stwalkerster monitors new account creations and is working with the wikimedian in residence to come up with a solution to this issue for future occurrences.
- On the 19 May, the wikimedian in residence assisted at the Brave:Edit editathon at the Glasgow Women's Library. The event was organised by Sara Thomas and Amnesty International Scotland, who have expressed an interest in holding another editathon at their annual human rights activists' conference.
- On the 27 June, the wikimedian in residence attended a meeting with the Scottish Book Trust to discuss the possibility of taking part as a contributor at their Scottish Book Trust digital Festival in November. The Scottish Book Trust are also interested in running some editathons with their up and coming writers. They are also currently redeveloping their directory of contemporary Scottish Authors with the view of opening the license on some of its content so it can be uploaded to Wikidata.
- In preparation for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Libraries, the wikimedian in residence is in the process of arranging a meeting with the Carnegie Trust UK to enlist their help with the project of creating/improving the content for Carnegie libraries in Scotland.

Events

Date & duration Event name Location Attendees Usernames/link Trainers
Wednesday 25 July 10:00 - 12:00 Dunfermline Volunteers Editathon Dunfermline Central Library 8 Dashboard Entry Delphine Dallison
Wednesday 18 July 10:00 - 12:00 Dunfermline Volunteers Training Session Dunfermline Central Library 8 Dashboard Entry Delphine Dallison
Tuesday 19 June 13:00 - 17:00 North Lanarkshire Library Volunteers Editathon Wishaw Library 5 Dashboard entry Delphine Dallison
Wednesday 30 May 10:00 - 16:00 Training for Librarians: Galashiels Old Gala House, Galashiels 8 Dashboard entry Sara Thomas (WMUK)
Wednesday 23 May 10:00 - 16:00 Training for Librarians: Stirling The Engine Shed, Stirling 10 Dashboard entry Sara Thomas (WMUK)
Monday 21 May 10:00 - 16:00 Training for Librarians: Glasgow SLIC Office, Glasgow 8 Dashboard entry Delphine Dallison and Sara Thomas (WMUK)
Thursday 17 May 10:00 - 16:00 Training for Librarians: Dundee DCA, Dundee 5 Dashboard entry Delphine Dallison and Sara Thomas (WMUK)
Tuesday 15 May 10:00 - 16:00 Training for Librarians: Inverness Impact Hub, Inverness 10 Dashboard entry Delphine Dallison and Sara Thomas (WMUK)

Partnership interactions

Date Activity/purpose of meeting Institution/partner Location Attendees Meeting/Presentation/Conference Talk link
Wednesday 11 July Scotwiki Meetup Women in Red, University of Edinburgh, ScotWiki community, WMUK, NLS Southern bar, Edinburgh 11 attendees n/a
5 and 6 July Celtic Knot 2018 conference Various institutions involved in working with minority language Wikipedias National Library of Wales 55 attendees Celtic Knot Conference 2018
Wednesday 27 June Introductory Meeting Scottish Book Trust Scottish Book Trust office Philippa Cochrane and Kay Bohan n/a
Tuesday 26 June SLIC Residency Steering Group NLS, MGS, RGU, WMUK, SLIC, Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire Libraries SLIC Office 8 attendees n/a
Monday 18 June Wikipedia steering group Inverclyde Library Inverclyde Heritage Hub Various staff n/a
Monday 4 June Induction Meeting Wikimedia UK SLIC Office Daria Cybulska and Sara Thomas n/a

Data and/or description of Other Projects under SG1

There has been no large media upload or data uploads to date as part of the residency, however this is a top priority on the agenda for the coming 6 months and the wikimedian in residence has been developing partnerships with a number of libraries and partner organisations for this purpose as outlined below.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikisource

Wikidata

Other Projects

The wikimedian in residence has been volunteering on a number of smaller projects outwith the WiR residence role to upload images and content on other under-represented areas of Scottish culture.

Strategic goal two[edit]

Support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for the change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level
Outcomes Outputs
  • Advocate for open knowledge across the Libraries sector
  • Advocate for the use of open licenses on digital content created by libraries
  • Librarians and their support organisations will become better informed on the benefits of open knowledge in the cultural sector
  • Librarians and their support organisations will become better informed on the benefits of open licenses for digital content

Progress narrative

The wikimedian in residence has been involved in a number of advocacy sessions introducing librarians and the wider library sector to Wikipedia and the benefits of open knowledge.

Events

Date & duration Event name Location Attendees Details
Monday 11 June 13:00 - 16:00 ALT Scotland: Annual Catch-Up City of Glasgow College 35 attendees "Wikimedia: embedding it in practice" presentation
Wednesday 6 June 12:00 - 16:00 SCURL AGM Herriot Watt University 35 "Wikimedia and Scottish Higher Education Libraries" presentation
Tuesday 5 June 11:45 - 12:30 CILIPS Annual Conference Dundee Apex Hotel 25 "Citation Needed: Wiki-enabling Scotland's Public Libraries" presentation
Wednesday 23 May 10:00 - 15:00 Digital Champions Meeting AK Bell Library, Perth 30 Introduction to the new SLIC Wikimedian in Residence
Friday 18 May 14:00 - 15:00 Glasgow Women's Library - Open the Door Digital festival online 343 Live Views, 989 Video Replays Periscope Stream

Media

CILIPS Summer Conference - Citation Needed

Social media

Libraries have been encouraged to use the hashtag #SLICWikimedia to tweet about the residency. The wikimedian in residence has been investigating different solution to capture those tweets and will be setting up a TAGS twitter archive for that purpose from the 1st August.

Strategic Goal three[edit]

To support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK
Outcomes Outputs
  • Enhance skill set of public library staff
  • Improve digital skills development offer of public libraries
  • Improve digital and information literacy skills offer of public and other libraries
  • Participating users will develop their digital skills through exploring culture and creativity
  • Participating users will develop their digital and information literacy skills through the use of Wikipedia

Progress narrative

Events

Date & duration Event name Location Attendees Usernames/link Trainers
Wednesday 20 June 10:00 - 12:00 One City Glasgow City of Glasgow College 3 Intro to Wikipedia Presentation Delphine Dallison

Partnership interactions

Date Activity/purpose of meeting Institution/partner Location Attendees Meeting/Presentation/Conference Talk link
Wednesday 4 July Wikimedians in Residence Meetup WMUK, NLW, SLIC, University of Edinburgh National Library of Wales 7 n/a
Wednesday 11 July ScotWiki Partners Meetup WMUK, SLIC, MGS, NLS, University of Edinburgh, University of Stirling University of Edinburgh 9 n/a

Other projects under education

Projects/events in development (relating to any goal), if any[edit]

Press/Media about the residency[edit]