Wikipedia:GLAM/NLS/11thMonth Report

Institution Resident's Name Period Covered Date of Report
National Library of Scotland Ally Crockford May 2014 - 14 June 2014 (Eleventh month of residency) 13 June 2014

Projects delivered

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Metrics

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Accounts Created
  • No new accounts created; focus this month was on uploading content (see below)

Objectives and outcomes

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National Library of Scotland's Mission Wikimedia UK's Mission
Enrich lives and communities.
Encourage and promote lifelong learning, research, and scholarship.
Provide universal access to information by comprehensively collecting and making available the recorded knowledge of Scotland.
Promote access to the ideas and cultures of the world.
To help people and organisations build and preserve open knowledge, to share and use freely.

Public outreach

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Objective: Delivery of 3+ public workshops for editors (i.e. edit-a-thons); help organise and host other Wikimedia related events for members of the public, Wikimedians, researchers and librarians such as workshops, Edit-athons, meetups, backstage pass tours

10th Month Outcomes:
  • WiR was invited to speak at the Glasgow Museums Curatorial Forum on 03 June; curators and staff from several Glasgow museums were there to listen to a brief talk about the collaboration between Wikimedia UK and the National Library of Scotland. Several curators expressed an interest in the residency programme as did a member of staff from the Mitchell Library who was also in attendance specifically for the talk. Two attendees also signed up for the Working with Wikimedia Workshop later that week.
  • A Working with Wikimedia workshop was held on 06 June at the University of Edinburgh Main Library. 11 representatives from GLAM and Educational organisations were in attendance. After discussing traditional GLAM-Wiki collaborative events, participants were encouraged to discuss the benefits and potential risks or obstacles, and to brainstorm ideas for future collaborations and ideas to make them reality. Response was very positive. Slides from the workshop are available on Wikimedia Commons.
  • A podcast interview with the Special Libraries Association Europe was held following the successful SLA Wikipedia Talk and Info Session in early March. The podcast will go live later this month.

Upcoming public events

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Known or Prospective Date Event Name or Description Host or Partner Organisation Scope of event or talk
POSTPONED Wikimedia Information Session Grampian Information, Aberdeen A follow on from the Grampian Information Annual Conference in December, the planned presentation at the Grampian Information AGM in June has been postponed; a rescheduled event is likely to take place in the autumn.
June 23-24 2014 Library Science Talks 2014: Wikimedians in the Library CERN Library, Swiss National Library Swiss National Library in Bern, the CERN Scientific Information Service in Geneva and the Association of International Librarians and Information Specialists organise an annual series of 'Library Science Talks'. Talk would bring together international and Swiss Wikimedians as well as Librarians to discuss the Wikimedian in Residence programme: possibilities, benefits, difficulties, experiences.
July 2014 Content release edit-a-thon (topic TBD) NLS (unknown partner org?) Once a successful process for uploading content to Commons has been put in place, an appropriate collection will be identified to feature as part of an edit-a-thon intended to insert images in relevant Wikipedia articles and improve the content of those articles.
Summer 2014? Jisc Rsc Scotland editathon New Jisc Rsc Scotland Offices Jisc Scotland are anticipating a move of house in the near future (date TBC), and have offered up their new offices as a venue for an editathon once they have settled. Topic yet to be determined.
Summer/Autumn 2014 Wikipedia Training Capture session (by User:ACrockford) Jisc Scotland, CILIPS MmIT?; Scottish government? Following from the Jisc 'Tales of a Wikimedian in Residence' webinar, Adobe capture would be used to provide a simple but thorough introduction to contributing to Wikipedia for Librarians and FE/HE educators. This would be released under CC-BY-SA license and uploaded to Commons, and also made available by Jisc as a wider learning resource for educators.
Sept/Oct 2014 Wikimedia & Libraries Information session (by User:Graeme Arnott and User:ACrockford) CILIPS MmIT General introduction to Wikimedia, background to GLAM:Wiki collaborations, details about NLS WiR programme, ScotWiki network of volunteers, aims and goals, specific examples of successful projects, etc.
October/November 2014 EduWiki Conference 2014 - Edinburgh Wikimedia UK It has been confirmed that the EduWiki conference will be held in Edinburgh this year, as a one-day rather than the usual two-day event; planning is under way although at a very preliminary state.
Undetermined date Datafest Scotland 2014 Alwyn Williams Building (School of Computing Science) and Boyd Orr Building, University of Glasgow, Scotland Wikimedia volunteers will be on hand to organise a tutorial on editing Wikipedia

Staff workshops and events

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Objective: Organise and host workshops for Library staff to explain how they can directly contribute their knowledge and expertise to develop Wikipedia articles; deliver 7+ workshops for National Library of Scotland staff and researchers or related institutions

10th Month Outcomes:
  • The 'Learning at Work' did not run this month, so instead two workshops were held with the Library's IPR Officer Fred Saunderson on 11 June. These events both focused on the Library's Digital Content policy and encouraging staff engagement with Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons and other open platforms. Staff in attendance included reference services, who manage public inquiries and requests, and cataloguers and curators from a variety of teams. In addition to informing staff about the change in policy and the resulting release of content to Wikimedia Commons, the event proved very useful in identifying issues with regards to digitisation and release procedure which would make the process more efficient in future.

Contributor communities

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Objective: Help establish relationships with the Scottish Wikimedia community, editors and projects

10th Month Outcomes:
  • Sixth Edinburgh Meetup - a meetup was organised for 08 June at Brew Lab in central Edinburgh; unfortunately there was minimal interest. However, an additional meetup in Glasgow is planned for 27 July
  • Second EduWiki planning meeting via Skype was held on 29 May. In attendance was Toni Sant and Hannah Jones, with Padmini Ray Murray making her apologies. The venue was selected and organisers are now pursuing a contract with to be confirmed as soon as possible

Material for future digitisation

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Objective: Explore adding digital resources such as digitised books, articles, photographs and posters to Wikimedia Commons; work with staff, including librarians and curators, to identify areas of Wikipedia and sister projects that could be enriched with resources and knowledge from the Library’s collections

10th Month Outcomes:
  • Discussions were held with the Library's Intellectual Property Officer and Marketing and Enterprise Officer with regards to the size of files to be uploaded. While the NLS has adopted a digital policy that retains the high-resolution .tiff file under a CC-BY-NC-SA license, it was agreed that the highest resolution .jpg derivatives would be released under a CC-0 license where appropriate and that these would be uploaded to Commons
  • A generalised metadata mapping has been created that will enable the quick and efficient upload of subsequent collection; the Library's metadata for several collections identified for upload has been exported into XML files in preparation for uploading
  • After many hold ups, the first three batches of NLS content were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. These included


  • The decision has been made with Digital Access manager Gill Hamilton to release the images in smaller batches according to their originating collection; this is partly to allow for the development and familiarisation with the batch uploading process and also partly to encourage more effective use of the images on Wikimedia Commons after their upload
  • Content currently selected for future upload includes:
  • Theatre posters, 1870-1900 - Summer upload (the Weir Collection of playbills, programmes and photographs mainly of Edinburgh theatres in the late 19th century)
  • Jacobite prints and broadsides - Summer upload (illustrations of people and events relating to the Jacobite Rebellions in Scottish history, 1715 and 1745-46)
  • Hutton Drawings - Summer upload (Over 500 drawings, maps, plans and prints relating mainly to Scottish churches and other ecclesiastical buildings. A few depict castles or other secular dwellings)
  • "Additional Images" from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible at the NLS - Autumn upload? (includes special shots taken to record watermarks, red printing and other special features. Some are taken at higher resolution than other images, some use special lighting techniques, some are close-ups, some pictures of the whole book)
  • Hopkinson Verdi collection - Autumn upload? (an internationally renowned collection of scores and libretti of the works of Giuseppe Verdi, featuring concert programmes, newspaper cuttings, photographs and stamps as well as sheet music)
  • The current strategy for release is as follows: in addition to the categories relevant to the images, a category will be created that is relevant to the collection (where appropriate - e.g.Theatrum Scotiae within the Commons category for John Slezer). As each batch is uploaded, messages and links will be posted to relevant WikiProjects and general topic talk pages making interested contributors aware of the new content and pointing them to the category.


  • Additional digital collections have been identified for upload but will require additional work to prepare. These collections include:


  • Following a conversation with curators at Edinburgh City Libraries during the 2014 EDGE Conference, a second Wikimedia Takes Edinburgh photo expedition has been proposed for July 2014. The event would specifically be designed to correspond with the release of images from the NLS' and Edinburgh City Libraries' shared collection of 19th and early 20th century photographs of Edinburgh (prospect of a 'now and then'-type focus was raised). A meeting with the National Records of Scotland was arranged for 5 May but was postponed; the meeting aims to discuss their involvement in the use of this material in Wikipedia articles, potentially identifying a few key 'lost' landmarks in Edinburgh for which old and new photos of the location could be uploaded and information from the NRS and the NLS could be used to create or improve articles on an area, event, or landmark.