GLAMTLV2018/Submissions/GLAM and 100wikidays - hand in hand together

Submission no. 1
Title of the submission
GLAM and #100wikidays - hand in hand together

Author(s) of the submission
Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia)

vassia.atanassova@gmail.com

Country of origin
Bulgaria
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Type of session
Talk
Length of session
30 minutes
Ideal number of attendees

Abstract

Ever wondered how crazy Wikipedians can be? And how to measure their level of craziness, and estimate their number? Well, #100wikidays is a good way to do so.

#100wikidays is the self-challenge some Wikipedians undertake to write a new article every day over a period of 100 days in a row. No skipped day, no article written in advance. Almost 300 editors from more than 50 different language versions of Wikipedia have already undertaken the challenge in the last three years. And about one third of them have survived it!

  • Some of them: more than once.
  • Some of them: for more than 100 days.
  • Some of them: in more than one language.
  • Some of them: not only in Wikipedia, but also in sister projects like Wikisource, Wikidata, Wikiquote or Wikimedia Commons.

Now, if you are a GLAM person, who has just developed interest in the Free Encyclopedia and in collaborating with its community, this may sound terrifying. It's understandable.

Even experienced Wikipedians would not undertake the challenge (or, at least, would not repeat it :) ) because it *is* strenuous and *does* require dedication and focus on the goal. It can force you to set different priorities in your life for these 3.5 months, and will most probably break your sleeping pattern. :) But it's also a huge source of inspiration, and the community behind the #100wikidays is extremely friendly, supportive and thankful.

History remembers not one or two cases when the 100wikidayers wrote extensively about GLAM. Armine Aghayan from Armenia, in one of her ten runs of #100wikidays, wrote a hundred articles exclusively about cultural institutions and artworks. And in her two runs about Italy and Canada, inspired after the Wikimania editions in 2016 and 2017, GLAM again naturally became a central topic of Armine's contributions. In a parallel self-challenge, she uploaded hundreds of photos of cultural monuments from all over Armenia.

And while Armine was already experienced Wikipedian, when she started her #100wikidays, [[:en:User:Smirkybec/100wikidays |Rebecca O'Neill]] from Ireland was not. Being a museum curator in the middle of her PhD studies, Rebecca dedicated precious time for writing biographic articles about Irish female artists and writers, thus broadening her experience of what it means to be an active Wikipedian. And while the Irish community was preparing for the photo contest "Wiki Loves Monuments", Rebecca's articles in the challenge included a range of historic sites like architecturally significant houses, gardens, castles and megalyths.

And these are not the only examples, when GLAM and #100wikidays went hand in hand together. Wikipedians from Bulgaria, France, Iran, Macedonia, Poland, Tunisia, Ukraine and many other countries in the world, have written about cultural institutions, artists, writers, works of art, literature and architecture and intensively dedicated time and efforts to promote these cultural and human achievements. This shows the vast opportunities for collaboration between GLAM and the Wikipedian communities (as well as for measuring how crazy Wikipedians can be :) ).

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  1. Armineaghayan ArmAg 20:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]