Wikimedia South Africa/Wikimania 2023/Ingrid Thomson Report

Scholarship Receivers Experience

Ingrid Thomson

Thank you to WikimediaZA for making it possible to attend Wikimania 2023 (Singapore) in person this year by granting me a full scholarship, and enabling me to attend the post-conference Library session at the National Library of Singapore on Sunday. And thank you to UCT Libraries for granting me leave to attend.

The programme was very full (as always) and I found myself moving around from room to room, noting down which sessions I would view online at a later stage. I also spent time looking at the posters. There is always so much to take away and share from Wikimania. Many of the sessions were recorded and are up on YouTube. I will need to watch them again.

It also was a great opportunity to network with fellow Wikimedians and to reconnect with others like Andy Mabbett, Natasa Nedanoska, Felix Nartey and to finally meet Wikibrarians Alice Kibombo-Ekany and Carol Mwara in person. And at long last to connect with Isla Haddow-Flood.

I looked for Library-related sessions, and Education-related sessions (especially for Higher Education and Education) but other interesting-looking sessions caught my eye, especially to assist with running editathons etc . I have not described everything I attended in this report. For libraries, Wikidata and Wikisource were hot topics, although during the conference, I did not attend any of the Wikisource programming but it came up at the library day at the end of the conference. And what can I say, I attended Africa Baraza which provided excellent networking and sharing. Immense fun!

Some highlights around Wikidata sessions: The New Zealand Thesis Project: A Nation’s Dissertations which describes the project of adding data to Wikidata from repositories of the 8 universities and 5 polytechnics. The aim is to upload bibliographic metadata from the public theses collections to wikidata to make them more accessible. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=276427938647087 The mix-and-match tool also came up at the post-conference library session with a hands-on session. The thesis project ties in with something I had been following earlier where Helen Williams (LSE Library) and Ruth Elder (at the University of York Library) had created a toolkit for uploading of ph.d theses metadata into Wikidata. I had been wanting to share with Higher Education institutions here in South Africa, as this is a project that could be undertaken by South African Higher Education Libraries. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Wikidata_Thesis_Toolkit has info about the toolkit and lists other similar theses projects . Teaching with Wikidata: A Resource for Educators and Students. This was a presentation by Wikimedia Chile which had created resources for students and educators. There is a digital booklet (in Spanish) which has 5 chapters: What is wikidata; the structure of wikidata; consulting the data ; visualising the data and integrating wikidata into the classroom. During the presentation, they showed a map of libraries and museums in wikidata, and the Global South was definitely underrepresented. https://wikimedia.cl/como-ensenar-con-wikidata/ The link to the booklet is here. It would be really useful to have this translated/adapted. What I've learned from my 5-years PhD journey: Exploring Wikidata as a learning platform Shani Evenstein Sigalov presented on her thesis, where she noted that there is a lot of information on wikipedia as a learning platform, but not on Wikidata. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-023-11664-1 links to an article she has written based on her research. The presentation is at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=866413738541436

Some highlights around Education and Higher Education Edit-a-thons in higher education: implementation, competence and skill development opportunities described using Edit-a-thons in higher education and what implementation, competence and skill development opportunities in the Hungarian context. Key takeaway line to use is “Wikipedia requires you to be able to interpret your knowledge to non-experts”. Presenter described how the Masters students in a particular course have to create an article on a topic as part of their coursework and have this uploaded to Wikipedia. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=194346080276250 Higher Education networking and meetup - This was an informal meetup of high education faculty and librarians talking about experiences and sharing what they learned. Common thread here was trying to get the academics to buy in, with some more successful than others. Guess one has to just keep chipping away at it! The Future of Wiki in Education: What we've learned from the EDUWiki Conference in May and next steps Included in this is the need for permanent self-education for teachers, together with creative learning for students. Needs to be included in the school curriculum. Need to have a database of education programmes around the world. Wikipedia and Education Hub. Wikeys, a pedagogical game to discover Wikipedia - I’ve been following the emails on the Wiki + Education mailing list, when the call was made for assistance with translating the French to English in preparation for Wikimania. The game was produced by Wikimedia France to help educators teach Wikipedia to students, using it in the classroom, explaining Wikipedia and the five pillars. It was quite fun (and a bit confusing at times) to play the game. I probably need to play it a few more times! Link to the print and play game https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikeys.pdf https://commons.wikimedia.org/.../File:Wikeys_in_English.pdf The link to the session’s recording https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1327962251142005

Some highlights around Community Outreach There were two sessions on senior citizens and Wikimedia, as well as a poster. I am aware of at least one public library system in South Africa which has sessions for senior citizens and digital literacy, so these were of interest, to be able to share with my library colleagues. The first session was “Empowering senior citizens through Wikimedia: promoting digital literacy and preventing misinformation” which described how Chilean senior citizens were empowered through Wikimedia promoting digital literacy. Wikimedia Chile, Google Chile and the Chile Department of the Elderly had pilot workshops. In a survey, two large areas of need were identified - that of misinformation and cyberfraud. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1353568401926879

The second session was entitled” Seniors write Wikipedia - how to keep them engaged in the long term run?” Wikimedia Czech Republic started the Senior Writing Wikipedia programme in 2014. And described how they keep the seniors engaged in this for the long term. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=997937271474129

I attended a session on the Secrets of Effective Editing Workshops and came away with much useful information and a checklist. Goals, Logistics, Registration form, Refreshment, Account Creation, Help, Feedback and Support for the event. Some of this I applied to the editathon that formed part of the LIASA conference following Wikimania, especially under Account Creation and the challenge about the limit of 6 accounts being created from a single IP. The tip was to use hotspotting! We were also reminded to find out about IP addresses of the venue and to test before the event itself, but that it was better to encourage people to create accounts before the event.

“Learn and discuss with members of the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network” This was a very useful session with the different speakers sharing their experiences. What is the difference with a Wikimedian-in-Residence and Wikimedian-at-large? The Wikimedian-at-large is not tied to any particular institution, but could be seen as a “taster”. Useful advice was to do high impact, low-hanging fruit, and to do the easy things first. And to find an ally.

Posters that caught my eye Art History and Wikipedia Women in Red WikiLovesAfrica #PhotoAfrica Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom WikiJournals Wiki Senior Citizens Network: the power of inclusion: A community of senior citizens GovDirectory Supporting 3D Content on Wikipedia: what it can do and why it is needed

On Sunday 20th August, there was a special session “Knowledge Beyond Boundaries: Strengthening Wikimedia and Libraries” at the National Library Board, Singapore.

The keynote was given by Gladys Low, Assistant Director (Singapore and Southeast Asia), of the National Library Board, Singapore. She oversees the strategy and policy of collection development at the library. Singapore’s documentary heritage is collected, preserved for posterity, and made accessible for the study and enjoyment of Singapore residents.

This was followed by a series of panel discussion and presentations on “Libraries and Wikmedia: Past, present and future”.

Silvia Gutierrez, the Senior Program Officer for Wikimedia and Libraries, presented an overview of the Wikimedia and Libraries movement (edit-a-thons, workshops training librarians, workshops training readers, Wikimedians in Residence, digitization, international campaigns, gifting the world with trusted references. organize conferences), introducing the Cultural Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Rajene Hardeman introduced herself as the chair of the Wikimedia and Libraries User Group. She reminded us that Wikipedia is a reference source, which libraries should learn for both personal and professional reasons. There are a lot of Wikimedia projects across the globe to which librarians can make essential and timely contributions. Orly Simon from the National Library of Israel described its contribution of content to Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and the Hebrew Wikipedia. And the growing impact it has from 2016-2023. She described initiatives ranging from #1lib1ref (Israel has come in first place in the past!) to running camps on editing Wikipedia for kids. Dr. Nkem spoke about the Movement Strategy while Clifford Anderson spoke about Generative AI: copyright infringement, disinformation/misinformation

And then Mike Dickison (Wikimedian at Large in New Zealand) presented on Wikisource for Libraries sharing a practical example of how to use Wikisource. Key elements for scanning in public domain material, is that it needs to be pre-1928 (because of US copyright law). He described using a normal library scanner. As he was talking, I was wondering what my own institution had in terms of public domain material and whether these could be uploaded to Wikisource. Another question to myself was whether there were isiXhosa materials in Wikisource. So for myself some cryptic notes - What is Wikisource? Introduction to Wikisource for beginners: the process of upload, transcription, proofreading and validation; the Wikisource community; examples of texts that have been transcribed; a cheat sheet of transcription templates. Wikisource is a Wikimedia Foundation platform that allows volunteers to transcribe and proofread out-of-copyright books, which are then freely available as PDFs or EPUBs. Alice Kibombo presented on Wikisource and how it is being used in Uganda. (Alice is going to do a presentation for South African librarians on Wikisource)

The afternoon saw a discussion and workshop about Connecting Library Metadata to Wikidata. Connecting library metadata to Wikidata can either be done manually by creating Wikidata items or by doing batch uploaded using Wikidata Quick Statements. In the workshop, we used Mix’n’Match mix-n-match.toolforge.org. The workshop was facilitated by Dr Tamsin Braisher and Pru Mitchell. Etherpad for the session is here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikimania2023Libraries