WikiWomen Erasmus+/GLAM toolkit

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Wikimedia projects can offer powerful platforms for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs) to share knowledge with the world, activate volunteer communities and increase digital skills. On the other hand, there are sizable content gaps, like the under-coverage of women. The Wikiwomen project aims to fight this gender gap on Wikipedia, linking up with GLAMs to increase the representation of knowledge they curate and collect, enhance the digital skills to work with Wikimedia, and simultaneously increase the representation of minority languages online.

Not only can GLAMs work with Wikimedia communities to profile knowledge unique to their institutions, but they can also promote the knowledge collected by the expert communities they work with and represent. The goal of this toolkit is to help GLAMs setting up a structured outreach and exchange programme and forming a long term relationship with schools, to achieve the best results in your cooperation.

This toolkit is meant for educational outreach officers within GLAMs to help them welcome students into their GLAM context by incorporating the Wikiwomen programme into their educational outreach activities. The toolkit provides learning materials and a step-by-step action plan with several options and levels of incorporation.

Is this toolkit for me?

This toolkit is for any GLAM wanting to welcome students and pupils into their GLAM context. Your GLAM collection or officers’ skills do not need to cover all the bases of the Wikiwomen project, you can choose your own angle or resources as a pathway into the schools. Minority languages, gender imbalance, their online representation, research skills and digital skills are all (by themselves, or as a combination) possible pathways to take. Need more info? See our resources below.

Minority languages

Definition

The term minority language emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century. Using the term is not without controversy, as it means the language is always defined in the context of a majority language, and in terms of power issues.

The speakers of the language differentiate from the majority group in language and culture, and although most frequently demographic and power inferiority combine, the minority group isn’t necessarily inferior in number. The Council of Europe uses the term “regional or minority language”, in the Charter for regional or minority languages(1992) to protect these languages, as a result of long negotiations that show that the terms used may vary according to geopolitical contexts and the different standards applied to classify a language as such.

As a result, there is no scientific consensus on the use of the term. In most European countries, the languages are defined by legal documents affording some form of official support. The aforementioned Charter for Regional or Minority Languages stipulates the following definitions:

"regional or minority languages" means languages that are:

i. traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and

ii. different from the official language(s) of that State;

it does not include either dialects of the official language(s) of the State or the languages of migrants;

"territory in which the regional or minority language is used" means the geographical area in which the said language is the mode of expression of a number of people justifying the adoption of the various protective and promotional measures provided for in this Charter;
"non-territorial languages" means languages used by nationals of the State which differ from the language or languages used by the rest of the State's population but which, although traditionally used within the territory of the State, cannot be identified with a particular area thereof.

Why is it important

First of all, languages are immensely enriching. Besides a means of communication, it also tends to be a defining element of a person’s identity and their place in society. Secondly, coming into contact with other languages, and learning about them, fosters cultural empathy, and enhances cognitive abilities. Language learners of a ‘minority’ language exhibit a deeper appreciation for diversity and commitment to preserving the linguistic heritage.

Skills and partnering up

You do not need to be an expert on minority languages or in the regional language to incorporate the project into your outreach activities. However, as strengthening minority languages’ online position is one of the objectives of the project, having an open mind and respect for the multilingual situation in your region should go without saying.

If you do not have the expertise for the regional minority language at hand but wish to incorporate it, it’s a good idea to find an expert in the field to guide you through it. Not sure how to find one? Lots of languages have passionate representatives willing to help you along. The CLARIN research infrastructure for language is a nice example for an overview of contributing institutes in different countries.

Of course, you can always choose one of the other objectives of the project (digital skills, research skills, gender equality) as the main angle for your cooperation with schools.

Gender Gap

While the online encyclopedia Wikipedia stands as one of the most popular sources of information worldwide, it suffers from a glaring lack of representation when it comes to women and their remarkable achievements. Research shows that less than 20% of all biographies on Wikipedia are about women. Among the Wikipedia editors who create Wikipedia’s knowledge, approximately 15-20% are women. Women constitute only around 30% of the readers of English Wikipedia, with the numbers being lower for women readers from developing countries.

The biases present on Wikimedia projects can have ramifications beyond the platform, like the perpetuation of existing stereotypes, favoring of traditionally male-dominated viewpoints, the erasure or sidelining of feminist perspectives, and the omission of concepts and ideas that are important for women and non-binary individuals. The lack of gender diversity on Wikimedia projects can create a feedback loop where a lack of women’s readership can lead to fewer female contributors, which in turn results in less content for and about women. An underrepresentation of women on Wikimedia projects translates to fewer women leaders in the Wikimedia movement, where a lack of relevant women role models further decreases women’s participation.

Digital skills, research skills, and Wikipedia

To successfully oganise projects with Wikipedia, it is important that there is at least one member of staff who has learned the basics of Wikipedia, but it isn’t required to become an expert Wikimedian. This toolkit will give you the tools to Wikipedia basics like article writing, moderation, and editing. However, it is also recommended to get to know the codes of conduct on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia community. Try introducing yourself at the local village pump and learn more about the people behind Wikipedia and how to reach out to them.

Educator’s pack

Are you an educational outreach officer who wishes to incorporate the WikiWomen programme into their GLAM context? This toolkit will guide you through the use of the learning materials on the Wikiwomen project and Wikipedia essentials, and help you combine different activities to create your own outreach programme, and to work confidently with Wikipedia in terms of article writing, moderation, editing, and so on.

Activities

WikiWomen activities and working with local GLAMs

WikiWomen addresses many challenges for the coming years: the need for digital skills and literacy, the position of Europe’s smaller and minority languages, the need for multilingualism to be mainstreamed across school curricula, and the importance of gender equality, not only in society but also in the information we access.

Generations growing up today are used to the idea that they have the world’s information constantly available via the smartphone in their pocket. However, this overwhelming amount of information creates a need for new skills to be learnt: how to find trustworthy information, how to verify information found online, how to find relevant information you need and where to find information if it’s not available digitally. Digital competences are vital for coming generations, not only for future academic careers and job perspectives but also as informed citizens who will not easily be fooled by misinformation, widely known as “fake news.” Writing a Wikipedia article offers a great way for pupils to learn these skills, using and citing both online and offline sources, as well as themselves seeing the process of publishing work online which itself will serve as a source of information for others. With data from Wikipedia being increasingly integrated into the digital tools that we use, such as Siri or Google, it’s increasingly important for smaller and minority languages to boost their presence on the site to remain relevant in a digital age. Luckily, the open-source nature of Wikipedia means that we as individual users can affect real change.

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums are a treasure trove of information and in minority language regions they are particularly vital guardians of regional and linguistic cultural heritage. There is an enormous potential for education, particularly in terms of research skills and regional identity. Combining this with the objective of digital skills from the WikiWomen project can be a fantastic solution for GLAMs.

Learning materials/workshop templates

Link

Working with Wikipedia

Article writing

Moderation

Editing

Interesting resources

Open GLAM and Education: Teachers’ and educators’ perspective on digital resources. This report presents findings of the Open GLAM & education research project which attempts to understand the importance of online heritage-based tools, resources and digitised collections for formal and non-formal education in the EU countries.

Open GLAM and impact: This webinar discusses the different ways in which re-use of cultural heritage is taking place, how projects and institutions are approaching measuring their impact, and how some of these projects contribute to making the case for open access to cultural heritage.

The WikiMOOC: a new way to learn how to edit Wikipedia. Initial findings from the first session showed that the WikiMOOC was quite successful in reaching underrepresented people on Wikipedia. This provides initial evidence that MOOCs can be leveraged to promote diversity within projects.

Project pack

This project pack is designed to help GLAMs and language institutions with a step-by-step action plan to implement the WikiWomen programme structurally in their educational outreach activities. Here you will find inspiring good practices, tips on how to work with schools and other GLAMs in your region, and a guide on the various ways to use your minority language Wikipedia in your broader network and contribute to the online presence of the language.

GLAM institutions can offer pupils access to their unique collections and support them to develop skills and confidence in using them as a research resource. Public engagement will also inspire the public and lead to collaboration with the public. The Arts Council England gives the following five generic learning outcomes of public engagement. Thinking about which changes your GLAM context would want to inspire is advised before organizing an educational outreach activity.

Good practices

Working with schools

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History works with young people as part of their public engagement with research outreach. Learning activities include support for formal learning at different curriculum levels and engagement activities range from provision of resources for independent use to direct engagement sessions within GLAM’s inspiring spaces.

The Oxford University History of Science Museum organizes study days for pupils, like the Women in Astronomy study day. These study days are designed to inspire pupils and offer insight into research and other skills within the GLAM context, relevant to their studies.

Digital Literacy in GLAMs

Europeana, the digital cultural heritage platform of Europe, published a report on the digital transformation agenda for GLAMs.

Wikipedia defines digital transformation as ‘the use of new, fast and frequently changing digital technology to solve problems.’ For GLAMs, the term digital refers to all content, services, experiences, data, systems or technologies. At the heart of digital transformation is the notion of (often) profound change. An individual’s or an organisation's ability to deal with that change is defined first and foremost by their own digital maturity and digital literacy.

Since January 2020 the GLAM sector has, in effect, been thrown into the digital deep end. Organisations reacted, jumped or were forced to shift to digital working at a speed of change that would have been unthinkable before. Across GLAMs there has been lots of republishing and repackaging of existing digital content, the creation of some new content and a shift to putting on live events such as online storytelling in libraries, and live curator exhibition walkthroughs online. Inevitably, this brought many challenges around the capacity of staff to work online and highlighted what for many organisations were already serious gaps in the digital skills and confidence of their teams. For many GLAMs, digital capacity building should be first and foremost about getting the basics right - that would be transformative for many.

In recent years a wide range of support initiatives, services and communities of practice have developed around the world to build digital capacity in the GLAM sector. In the UK, Digital Skills for Heritage was launched in 2020. It is designed to raise digital skills and confidence across the whole UK heritage sector. It consists of several strands of targeted support, aimed at meeting the needs of heritage organisations of every type and at every scale.

The Digital Culture Network is an English initiative led by Arts Council England, the national development body for creativity and culture, distributing government and lottery funding. English cultural organisations can access one-on-one advice and digital resources from Tech Champions.

The Digital Culture Compass was commissioned by Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It is an online toolkit to support arts, culture and heritage organisations (note: including and beyond GLAMs) to integrate digital technology into their work. It has two elements: a Charter that outlines digital best practices and a Tracker that allows organisations to assess their approach to digital technology and develop plans for future work.

In Belgium, Digital leadership in the cultural sector focuses on the desired (or even necessary) competences and expertise to incorporate digital leadership in a rapidly changing society. It provides the foundation to tackle the digital transformation yourself and to work on a digital strategy. This training focuses on personal coaching and is specifically aimed at the broad cultural sector (not only cultural heritage institutions), leading to mutual knowledge exchange.

There is also the project Towards a digital cultural ecosystem. This aims to implement a shared vision in terms of governance, an infrastructure and data approach where interdependencies and shared services are key and a roadmap can be implemented to stimulate the digital transformation of the cultural sector.

The Europeana report also identified collaborative, multi-partner GLAM projects with different aspects of digital capacity building as part of their remit, have a look at them to see which might fit your purposes and to learn from their practices:

● GIFT - a collaborative research project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme. The project brought together internationally-renowned artists, designers, museum professionals and researchers to help museums create experiences that combine the physical and digital, offering personal encounters with cultural heritage.

● Meaning Making - an interactive digital storytelling course hosted by Deutsches Museum and led by Andrea Geipel and Abhay Adhikari. This programme helps develop practical ideas for developing your online cultural offering to educate, entertain and inform your communities.

● Smart Places - funded by Creative Europe this project has more than 55 different activities with a distinctive digital link, all aiming to address diverse segments within the existing and prospective audiences of each institution.

● Library Carpentry - digital skills building with a particular focus on libraries, focused on building software and data skills within library and information-related communities.

● Digital Arts Service Alliance (DigitalASO / OSANumériques) - funded by Canada's Digital Strategy Fund this is a cross-sectoral effort with a five-year mandate to empower the digital transformation of Canadian arts services through digital literacy research, training, alliance- and platform-building.

● GLAM Labs - an international GLAM labs community was born in 2018 at a global 'Library Labs' in the UK. The community has grown to 250 people, from more than 60 institutions, in over 30 countries. They also run a Slack channel for members.

Action plan

The key to a successful educational outreach activity is planning: it is important to think about why you want to engage and who you want to engage before deciding how you’re going to do it. Ideally public engagement should be thought about in parallel with the design of the research activity. The aim should be to prioritize those engagement activities that will enhance the quality or impact of the research.

Why

The first question to think about when planning an activity is: Why do you want to engage the public?

Putting your collection out there, promoting and protecting the regional identity and language, combined with educating pupils on digital skills are all part of the WikiWomen project. The goal is to collaborate with the public.

Who

The second question to consider is: Who do you want to engage?

People differ in many ways, such as their interests, affiliations, background, age, economic circumstances, location and gender. Who you want to reach will depend on the nature of your research and the reasons for the engagement.

The Wikiwomen activities have a clear and specific demographic in mind - rather than the ‘general public’. Target audiences can be mixed but it will be important to break down who is included within that group. For example, the target audience is multilingual secondary schools and the secondary school pupils in bilingual language areas.

How

Once you have identified who you want to engage, the best way of reaching out may be through a partnership with another organization. Contact language institutions or other GLAMs in your area to see if you can set up or co-host an event.

Find Experienced Editors: If you're hosting for the first time, it can be useful to have an experienced Wikipedian to help facilitate your event.

Promotion pack

The WikiWomen brand image is designed to enhance visibility and engagement. The established WikiWomen brand guidelines ensure a unified and a recognizable identity across all platforms and materials.

Sharing details about your event across your available social media channels can give more publicity to your collection and to the WikiWomen project and objectives. Many current organisers use X (Twitter), Instagram and Facebook as their primary promotional channels - you can also decide to take it a step further by creating a dedicated event page on Facebook to share event details and updates.

GLAM’s play a pivotal role in the WikiWomen project. Your messaging should articulate this unique position, emphasizing the importance of education, minority languages and emancipation. Use hashtags like #WikiWomen #Minoritylanguages and any regionally or event relevant hashtags.

Logo guidelines: Use the WikiWomen logo to boost visibility and engagement while maintaining a cohesive and recognizable presence across all platforms. Please ensure the logo’s colours, font, and arrangement remain unchanged. Stick to the provided versions for a consistent and recognizable identity:

2. 3.

Colour Scheme & Typography: The WikiWomen brand features a distinct colour palette and typography that form the foundation of its visual identity. WikiWomen utilizes ‘Open Sans Bold’ for headings and ‘Open Sans Regular’ for body text. The colour scheme is carefully selected to represent the brand:

Imagery and Icons: The visuals should mirror the brand’s ethos of empowerment, diversity and collaboration. Icons should be simple yet meaningful and should align with our colour scheme for brand consistency.

Evaluate

The final step of planning is to consider evaluation. When thinking about what you want to evaluate – as well as counting (people; downloads; views and other metrics) think about ways in which you can measure the impact of an activity i.e. by selecting a sample of the public participants and exploring whether a change has actually happened as a result of the activity. You should also reflect on the activity from your perspective as a researcher and think about asking other colleagues about their reflections. For example:

Inform & inspire activities: Did the public audiences change in any way – gain knowledge, change their attitudes, perceptions or behaviour?

Consulting: Did the public participants’ views and insight lead to a change in or did it help refine the goals of the project? Collaborating: In what ways did participation of the public lead to changes in how the project was conducted?