File:The GLAM-Wiki Revolution.webm/srt

1 00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:15,250 I'm Jonathan Cardy and I'm the GLAM Organiser for Wikimedia UK.

2 00:00:15,250 --> 00:00:19,350 I'm Daria Cybulska and I'm the Programme Manager at Wikimedia UK.

3 00:00:19,350 --> 00:00:24,279 GLAM is an acronym for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums - and it's a very

4 00:00:24,279 --> 00:00:30,289 convenient acronym for Wikimedia to use because we want to do outreach to the cultural sector.

5 00:00:30,289 --> 00:00:35,440 GLAM institutions often start working with us by dipping their toes in the water.

6 00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:42,440 For example, hosting a one off event like an editathon or a backstage pass, and if it feels like

7 00:00:42,440 --> 00:00:49,399 the right sort of cooperation with them they often move on to hosting a Wikipedian in Residence.

8 00:00:49,399 --> 00:00:54,030 The chapter's first involvement with GLAM was a programme that was run at the British Museum.

9 00:00:54,030 --> 00:00:58,820 After the success of the British Museum event in London, we've had further events

10 00:00:58,820 --> 00:01:05,000 in London, but we've also gone to Bristol, to Birmingham, to York, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

11 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:07,880 We've had a range of events around the United Kingdom.

12 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:21,780 I'm Liam Wyatt, and I was the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Museum for about five weeks in 2010.

13 00:01:21,780 --> 00:01:30,400 So, in 2009 I was working in Sydney. I was a Wikipedian but I was working

14 00:01:30,400 --> 00:01:37,220 around the cultural sector, trying to license multimedia from the cultural sector to use on a website -

15 00:01:37,220 --> 00:01:44,600 and having great difficulty, which radicalised me into saying "there's got to be a better way to do this".

16 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:50,700 That ended up being - long story short - the GLAM-Wiki conference in Canberra,

17 00:01:50,700 --> 00:01:55,080 held at the Australian War Memorial. And that brought together for

18 00:01:55,080 --> 00:02:00,470 the first time a community of Wikimedians and a community of the cultural sector, put

19 00:02:00,470 --> 00:02:05,619 them in the same room and actually met and discussed, and it got a lot of important people

20 00:02:05,619 --> 00:02:11,099 from the cultural sector in Australia and New Zealand to show up. One of the results

21 00:02:11,100 --> 00:02:18,320 of that conference, as a two day conference, was a list of recommendations in both directions.

22 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:25,640 One of them I slipped into the middle - because I wrote the recommendations - was have Wikipedians

23 00:02:25,640 --> 00:02:32,349 in-house, in cultural institutions, as Wikipedians in Residence. I then shipped that idea - that

24 00:02:32,349 --> 00:02:36,549 one recommendation - around to all the cultural institutions I knew in Australia, and said

25 00:02:36,549 --> 00:02:40,271 "Hello, I would like to do that. I would like to be a Wikipedian in Residence,

26 00:02:40,280 --> 00:02:42,880 whatever that means, with you. I would like to volunteer."

27 00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:46,020 "Oh, no, no. Couldn't possibly. All too scary."

28 00:02:46,020 --> 00:02:52,000 I happened to be in London a little bit later, and Mike Peel and I went around

29 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:58,600 to a couple of cultural institutions to say 'hello' and build a proactive relationship.

30 00:02:58,600 --> 00:03:03,100 So we had a meeting at the British Museum where we walked in with our ties and sat down

31 00:03:03,109 --> 00:03:08,749 with the web department and told them about a variety of things we could do - a long list

32 00:03:08,749 --> 00:03:13,469 of things that we might do. "Thanks very much, goodbye." Six months later I got a

33 00:03:13,469 --> 00:03:20,420 phonecall from the British Museum, saying, "We've read your proposal, we've done

34 00:03:20,420 --> 00:03:25,310 a risk assessment, we will allow you to fly to London and volunteer for us."

35 00:03:25,310 --> 00:03:29,859 I tried to be as innovative as possible. A lot of those things were the first time they

36 00:03:29,859 --> 00:03:36,859 had been done. We didn't have a word at the time for editathon. We still don't have

37 00:03:36,860 --> 00:03:42,819 a more generic word for "Hoxne Challenge", that's the only time that's been attempted

38 00:03:42,819 --> 00:03:48,659 - to get everyone who knows about this one topic and lock them in a room with coffee and Wi-Fi.

39 00:03:48,660 --> 00:03:52,860 That's only been done there but everyone seems to like it. So I'm most proud

40 00:03:52,879 --> 00:03:59,879 about having demonstrated it's possible to break the barrier, not the one individual

41 00:03:59,880 --> 00:04:06,200 thing but to change both communities' perspectives that cultural institutions and Wikimedians

42 00:04:06,209 --> 00:04:11,349 can work with each other for mutual benefit. For my own ego's sake I would like to think

43 00:04:11,349 --> 00:04:18,809 that my Wikipedian in Residence program - five weeks, volunteer at the British Museum - was

44 00:04:18,809 --> 00:04:24,869 of seminal importance. Maybe it was an idea whose time had come anyway,

45 00:04:24,869 --> 00:04:27,509 I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

46 00:04:34,620 --> 00:04:39,660 I'm Pat Hadley and I was the Wikimedian in Residence at York Museums Trust.

47 00:04:40,020 --> 00:04:48,980 The great strength of a residency program is that it allows the curators, the volunteers, the other

48 00:04:48,980 --> 00:04:54,030 regular staff around the big institutions - or even small institutions - to get used

49 00:04:54,030 --> 00:05:03,480 to this idea of working with Wikipedia. Within York Museums Trust, I think I've been really

50 00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:09,360 lucky that it's an institution in which almost all the staff - all the staff that

51 00:05:09,360 --> 00:05:15,560 I've encountered - share the vision of it being about sharing knowledge first.

52 00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:29,900 My name's Ally Crockford and I'm the Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland here in Edinburgh.

53 00:05:29,900 --> 00:05:35,140 I think that Wikipedia really needs to look at the kind of material

54 00:05:35,160 --> 00:05:40,880 that libraries have available. Libraries are repositories of an immense amount of knowledge.

55 00:05:40,880 --> 00:05:46,220 Here at the National Library of Scotland alone, something like more than seventeen million

56 00:05:46,220 --> 00:05:52,080 items in the collection, and that's a collection that grows by about I think 500,000 items every year.

57 00:05:52,080 --> 00:05:58,760 This is an organisation that has access to the kind of knowledge that can completely

58 00:05:58,770 --> 00:06:02,990 revolutionise the quality of information that Wikipedia makes available.

59 00:06:02,990 --> 00:06:09,840 And I think that if you are working towards making the sum of all human knowledge accessible as per the

60 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:15,390 vision of Wikimedia, you have to look at the organisations whose mission has been for the

61 00:06:15,390 --> 00:06:19,750 last hundred years, two hundred years, doing pretty much the same thing.

62 00:06:25,300 --> 00:06:30,940 My name's John Cummings and I was the Wikimedian in Residence at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London.

63 00:06:30,940 --> 00:06:33,640 So the Natural History Museum's quite an unusual place

64 00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:39,960 to be a Wikimedian in Residence because it's really two institutions. It's the public-facing

65 00:06:39,960 --> 00:06:44,920 national museum that has five million visitors a year, but it's also one of the largest

66 00:06:44,930 --> 00:06:50,730 biodiversity research centres in the UK and it has 79 million specimens in its collection.

67 00:06:50,730 --> 00:06:55,020 The Natural History Museum is a wonderful opportunity not only to engage with the public

68 00:06:55,020 --> 00:07:01,250 but also with research scientists who have a specialist contribution to make to Wikipedia

69 00:07:01,250 --> 00:07:06,490 that's built over a whole lifetime of knowledge. Museums should care about Wikipedia because

70 00:07:06,490 --> 00:07:12,050 it's one of the largest information sources for the public. They want to educate.

71 00:07:12,050 --> 00:07:17,610 And Wikipedia isn't really in competition with what they're doing - museums can give context

72 00:07:17,610 --> 00:07:21,710 and interpretation whereas Wikipedia is kind of straight facts.

73 00:07:30,260 --> 00:07:36,600 I'm John Byrne, I was Wikipedian in Residence at the Royal Society in London in 2014.

74 00:07:36,600 --> 00:07:41,580 The Royal Society is the national academy for the sciences and technology in the UK.

75 00:07:41,580 --> 00:07:49,420 Its fellows are the recognised top scientists in the UK. The Royal Society's the most prestigious

76 00:07:49,420 --> 00:07:57,080 organisation in the scientific sector and it gives Wikipedia credibility and other organisations

77 00:07:57,080 --> 00:08:03,430 in the sector have looked at that partnership. Wikipedia needs more editors and it needs

78 00:08:03,430 --> 00:08:10,030 expert editors, and expert editors can have a particular role checking and reviewing what

79 00:08:10,030 --> 00:08:15,730 other people do and it's really crucial we keep up our body of expert editors.

80 00:08:15,730 --> 00:08:21,080 The Royal Society has got a very wide range of contacts throughout the scientific sector

81 00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:29,480 at all levels, it's not just the fellows, and working with them enables us to reach

82 00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:34,760 many levels of scientists in this country which is great. It's a very widely recognised

83 00:08:34,760 --> 00:08:41,040 problem in the UK particularly that women, young women, don't go into science.

84 00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:47,340 The Royal Society and the rest of the scientific sector have been making great efforts to address this

85 00:08:47,350 --> 00:08:53,790 and they definitely saw Wikipedia as one aspect of that.

86 00:08:53,790 --> 00:09:02,389 I think that the issue of diversity is very important in a role in science education because

87 00:09:02,389 --> 00:09:07,380 women traditionally in science have had a huge contribution that has been under-recognised,

88 00:09:07,380 --> 00:09:15,240 and that Wikipedia, being the widely-used resource that it is, is a wonderful tool to

89 00:09:15,240 --> 00:09:20,700 help readdress that. One of the projects I ran was with the ZSL - the Zoological Society

90 00:09:20,709 --> 00:09:26,340 of London - and we ran an editathon in the pavilion they have there, which is an amazing space.

91 00:09:26,340 --> 00:09:28,740 You kind of look out and there's kangaroos jumping around outside.

92 00:09:28,740 --> 00:09:34,020 We focused on women in natural sciences.

93 00:09:34,020 --> 00:09:41,100 It was a wonderful event - I think we had 90 per cent women come which is really nice.

94 00:09:41,100 --> 00:09:46,040 I think the effort to include women in the Wikimedia events organised with the National

95 00:09:46,040 --> 00:09:51,449 Library of Scotland have been really quite successful. To my knowledge we have not yet

96 00:09:51,449 --> 00:09:57,310 had an event where women have made up less than 50 per cent of the contributors, which

97 00:09:57,310 --> 00:10:01,639 I think is an incredible achievement, and we've had events where women have made up

98 00:10:01,639 --> 00:10:07,259 90 per cent or even 100 per cent. We also have had a lot of events that have focused

99 00:10:07,259 --> 00:10:13,809 specifically on women in different areas. We had a very successful women in science

100 00:10:13,809 --> 00:10:19,339 editathon that we held in collaboration with the Medical Research Council and the Royal

101 00:10:19,339 --> 00:10:25,299 Society of Edinburgh, and that was quite a large and very successful event which went really well.

102 00:10:25,779 --> 00:10:34,779 I think that Wikipedia reflects some of the biases that are out there in society, so biases

103 00:10:34,780 --> 00:10:43,100 in terms of gender inequality, inequality with respect to race, disability, and I think

104 00:10:43,110 --> 00:10:51,810 it's our responsibility to make a conscious effort to redress that bias and those inequalities.

105 00:10:51,810 --> 00:10:59,720 Wikimedia, having the goal of providing the sum of all human knowledge, it's important

106 00:10:59,720 --> 00:11:04,240 that we recognise what that really is and where the gaps are,

107 00:11:04,240 --> 00:11:07,060 and try to fill in those gaps wherever possible.

108 00:11:30,200 --> 00:11:35,540 My name's Andrew Gray and I was the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library during 2012-2013.

109 00:11:35,540 --> 00:11:39,040 The residency was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and

110 00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:43,520 as such as well as focusing on content-oriented projects within the library itself, we looked

111 00:11:43,520 --> 00:11:48,040 at supporting the work of researchers and academics wanted to engage with Wikipedia

112 00:11:48,050 --> 00:11:51,990 and wanting to disseminate information through Wikipedia and through similar channels.

113 00:11:51,990 --> 00:11:58,820 The British Library has a large and diverse collection of material ranging from a significant philatelic

114 00:11:58,829 --> 00:12:06,959 collection for example, through to contemporary prints and large amounts of ancient and otherwise

115 00:12:06,959 --> 00:12:11,889 historic manuscript material. We looked at taking some of these collections on a small

116 00:12:11,889 --> 00:12:16,850 scale and releasing them through Wikimedia Commons. In many cases, versions of this material

117 00:12:16,850 --> 00:12:22,850 existed already but in lower quality, often third-generation scans taken from a book,

118 00:12:22,850 --> 00:12:30,209 whereas we were able to go to original material to get high-quality archival images and disseminate these.

119 00:12:30,209 --> 00:12:35,509 Currently around 3,000 articles on Wikipedia are illustrated in some way with an image

120 00:12:35,509 --> 00:12:40,889 drawn from the British Library's collections or from material held or otherwise stewarded

121 00:12:40,889 --> 00:12:44,139 by the British Library. During the later part of my time there, we worked on releasing a

122 00:12:44,139 --> 00:12:49,319 large collection of material from the Canadian Copyright Collection. Because this material,

123 00:12:49,319 --> 00:12:53,939 which was all photographs, had been gathered in a relatively controlled fashion, under

124 00:12:53,939 --> 00:12:57,930 copyright deposit law, we knew the exact copyright status of it, and we were able to say with

125 00:12:57,930 --> 00:13:02,459 confidence it was all in the public domain. Wikimedia UK and the Eccles Centre for American

126 00:13:02,459 --> 00:13:08,790 Studies supported the digitisation of this material, and then we were able to release

127 00:13:08,790 --> 00:13:13,959 it to Wikimedia Commons, but also release it onto the British Library's own infrastructure.

128 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,779 One of the most interesting parts of this collection was that because it was obtained

129 00:13:17,779 --> 00:13:23,269 through copyright deposit and through legal deposit, it was non-selective. Anything someone

130 00:13:23,269 --> 00:13:29,369 chose to register for copyright was included in the collection. Almost every other significant

131 00:13:29,369 --> 00:13:33,709 photographic collection in the period - this is around the turn of the century - has been

132 00:13:33,709 --> 00:13:38,829 curated in some way; someone has chosen to select, "this is significant, this is interesting,

133 00:13:38,829 --> 00:13:43,369 this... this isn't really relevant, it's pictures of cats. We don't care about cats."

134 00:13:43,369 --> 00:13:47,279 Whereas we were able to find some remarkably interesting ephemeral material within the

135 00:13:47,279 --> 00:13:53,910 Canadian collection, such as for example a twelve-photograph set of pictures of cats

136 00:13:53,910 --> 00:14:00,170 posing with newspapers. We have no idea why someone in Toronto in 1900 chose to pay to

137 00:14:00,170 --> 00:14:05,290 get these pictures copyrighted, but they did. And we feel that there is clearly a very interesting

138 00:14:05,290 --> 00:14:09,170 story here for a researcher in the future. We simply would not have known about this

139 00:14:09,170 --> 00:14:13,089 without the combination of this collection and the attempt to digitise it.

140 00:14:13,089 --> 00:14:17,429 I think GLAMs should host a Wikimedian in Residence to show they're serious about

141 00:14:17,429 --> 00:14:23,269 open knowledge, and to do something about it. I'd like to think that working with

142 00:14:23,269 --> 00:14:31,429 Wikimedia caused the cultural institutions in the UK to think more seriously about open

143 00:14:31,429 --> 00:14:36,309 knowledge and for example to include it in their strategic objectives.

144 00:14:36,309 --> 00:14:43,640 Another thing that I tend to see now is that when an institution does for example a digitisation project, they

145 00:14:43,649 --> 00:14:48,209 include in the planning thinking about how they're going to share it openly afterwards,

146 00:14:48,209 --> 00:14:50,629 for example on the Wikimedia projects.

147 00:14:50,629 --> 00:14:59,019 Having a residency has led to YMT being more open. I think it was preaching to the choir

148 00:14:59,019 --> 00:15:05,679 in that they are an institution that was keen on digital and keen on opening up their collections

149 00:15:05,680 --> 00:15:11,560 anyway, but the Wikipedia project has kind of acted as a catalyst.

150 00:15:11,560 --> 00:15:18,520 It's accelerated the process. The key shift, which I think is happening globally and they've latched onto,

151 00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:23,020 is that they're working now on an assumption of openness,

152 00:15:23,020 --> 00:15:25,500 rather than an assumption of closed.

153 00:15:25,509 --> 00:15:30,660 I'm really impressed with the way that the library has changed its attitude towards its material.

154 00:15:30,660 --> 00:15:36,000 They're still a little bit hesitant, but they are increasingly becoming more open.

155 00:15:36,009 --> 00:15:41,079 They've already identified a couple of thousand images that they're keen to release over

156 00:15:41,079 --> 00:15:47,749 the coming months which I'm very excited to see happen, and I think that the material

157 00:15:47,749 --> 00:15:53,999 is going to be really interesting. It also means that going forward as the library digitises

158 00:15:53,999 --> 00:15:59,339 more material, that material will also be able to go up on Wikimedia Commons, so I think

159 00:15:59,339 --> 00:16:05,069 it's a significant step towards developing a sustainable partnership with Wikimedia.

160 00:16:05,069 --> 00:16:09,709 There's a lot of benefit both ways for the Royal Society and Wikipedia working together.

161 00:16:09,709 --> 00:16:17,089 We get improved content and they get improved coverage of science generally

162 00:16:17,089 --> 00:16:20,120 which is a large part of what they're about.

163 00:16:20,120 --> 00:16:25,820 The role at the Royal Society has attracted quite a lot of interest from other learned societies as they're called.

164 00:16:25,820 --> 00:16:31,120 I would certainly encourage all of them to explore what they can do with Wikipedia.

165 00:16:31,129 --> 00:16:36,199 To encourage museums to work with Wikipedia what I would say is that it's where most

166 00:16:36,199 --> 00:16:41,920 people are looking for information and it's this balance between being a curator and being

167 00:16:41,920 --> 00:16:46,259 a gatekeeper to the information, and I think that what Wikipedia does is it allows you

168 00:16:46,259 --> 00:16:53,009 to release the information in a way that is truly worldwide. What I'd say to museums

169 00:16:53,009 --> 00:16:59,369 is if you only have information on your website, it really puts the onus on the person looking

170 00:16:59,369 --> 00:17:05,169 for the information to know which museum has it, where on their website it is...

171 00:17:05,169 --> 00:17:11,179 If you put things on Wikimedia projects, if you provide information to Wikimedia projects, it really

172 00:17:11,179 --> 00:17:15,699 does allow the whole world to help you share your information.

173 00:17:15,700 --> 00:17:23,500 The Wikimedia movement and Wikipedia should engage with GLAMs, museums, libraries, archives,

174 00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:33,220 galleries, the lot, because they for the last hundred years have been the guardians of society's

175 00:17:33,230 --> 00:17:41,070 knowledge, of cultural knowledge, of natural and scientific knowledge. And Wikipedia has

176 00:17:41,070 --> 00:17:49,600 become the de facto first stepping point in finding knowledge for 90 per cent of people

177 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:57,260 in the connected world, and as a result the key sources for that knowledge, the key guardians

178 00:17:57,260 --> 00:18:04,860 of that knowledge, who have always had a mission to share, need to be engaging with the most

179 00:18:04,860 --> 00:18:11,159 effective mechanism, the most effective system, for sharing their knowledge.

180 00:18:11,159 --> 00:18:16,039 If I were advising a library on how to start working with Wikimedia, my first point of

181 00:18:16,040 --> 00:18:25,720 advice would be to do it now. Don't wait, don't sit there and have meeting after meeting

182 00:18:25,730 --> 00:18:30,720 after meeting. When it comes to Wikimedia, take the plunge, just go for it.

183 00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:34,940 The line I use at the end of every single presentation is:

184 00:18:34,940 --> 00:18:40,280 We're doing the same thing, for the same people, in the same medium,

185 00:18:40,280 --> 00:18:43,880 for the same reason, just in a different way,

186 00:18:43,880 --> 00:18:47,260 and so therefore we should be doing it together.

187 00:18:47,260 --> 00:18:49,720 Plain and simple.