Submissions/Professional GLAM editors, what and what not to do

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

Presentation Media



Submission no.
2054
Subject no.
B16
Title of the submission
Professional GLAM editors, what and what not to do
Type of submission
presentation
Author of the submission
Axel Pettersson
Country of origin
Sweden
Affiliation
Wikimedia Sweden employee and volunteer
E-mail address
axel.pettersson@wikimedia.se
Username
Axel Pettersson (WMSE)/Haxpett
Personal homepage or blog
Haxpett.wordpress.com
Abstract
During the year I've taught some 50 professional GLAM staffers, curators and experts, from most of the national museums of Sweden, how to edit, upload images and interact with the community. In this presentation I'll talk about what their impression is on working on Wikipedia and with Wikipedians as professional editors. During GLAM-WIKI 2013 I gave a presentation about this but since then the evaluation is finalized and I'll share more details about their experiences and thoughts.
Detailed proposal
In the spring of 2012 Wikimedia Sweden and The Council of the Swedish Central Museums signed an letter of intent to start a collaboration. Wikimedia Sweden would provide training and help the staff at the museums, experts and curators, to learn how to edit, create new articles, upload images, films and sound to Wikimedia Commons and to work with the exsisting community of Wikipedia editors. During the fall a series of workshops, attended by 49 persons, were held and following that they have created over 40 new articles, edited almost 190, uploaded more then 500 images to Wikimedia Commons and have created some institution and artwork templates.

Results from the evaluation of the pilot shows that even though the project was initiated by the museums, they did not have a clear idea of what to do and the amount of time and personal to allocate to this. Some museums also saw this as a way to get a good article about the GLAM itself or to have their experts put text on Wikipedia that would stand regardless of quality or content, as the experts in the field would write it. During presentations and workshops I had to change some participants focus in some cases and as a follow up we are now coming up with ideas and smaller projects where the project participants can make a significant change and with their limited time expand and clean up some articles, for example before an exibithion starts.

Take away from this presentation:

  1. How to tell museum directors anyone can, and will, change the texts their experts write
  2. Coming up with focused tasks suitable for a group already overloaded with work
  3. Pulling volunteers in to get more momentum in a project

This is a follow up and more thourough presentation then the one held in London at GLAM-WIKI 2013 in April.

Track
  • Cultural and Educational Outreach
Length of presentation/talk
20 minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes, tickets already booked
Slides on Commons
Slides or further information (optional)
Slides from the presentation.
Special requests
No


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  1. Phoebe (talk) 05:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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