Hi everyone,

As you may have noticed in the Annual Plan, the Wikimedia Foundation has proposed more support of GLAM-Wiki. I want to happily announce that Alex Stinson will be expanding and transitioning his role as Wikipedia Library Coordinator to lead this new position as GLAM-Wiki Strategist within the Community Engagement department at WMF.  He will continue to report and work closely with me in Wikipedia Library land, which I'm very happy about!

I'll let Alex introduce himself and his thoughts on the position, why it matters, and what its goals are.

Best,
Jake Orlowitz

User:Ocaasi (WMF)

Head of the Wikipedia Library

jorlowitz@wikimedia.org

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Hi all!

I am particularly excited to be shifting towards helping with GLAM-Wiki support. I plan to bring my long history of working in Wikimedia outreach, first as a volunteer in GLAM and the Education program and then as an employee with the Wikipedia Library, to improve our global GLAM impact [1].

As we point out in the proposed annual plan, [2] GLAM-Wiki has a long history as a programmatic strategy for volunteers and affiliates. These programs have collected some of our best content, pushed our technologies beyond their limits, and created a considerable volume of contributions from both Wikimedians and experts for over 8 years.

However, as these practices become more and more sophisticated and varied, volunteers from smaller communities without connections to the leaders of successful projects have found themselves unable to replicate this success, or replicating many of the mistakes from earlier projects.  At the same time, larger initiatives have been hindered by a lack of investment in infrastructure and technology.  

WMF has been a great supporter of GLAM through grants and affiliate support, but we can do more. We haven’t provided consistent global connection, communication and support for GLAM-Wiki resources and tools.  My goal is to help GLAM spread throughout our communities and potentially tens of thousands of organizations that - as folks like Liam Wyatt have been advocating from the beginning - share our same values: freely sharing knowledge with the world.

Below I have outlined our approach for the GLAM-Wiki Strategist role [3]. I want to use the next few months to listen and evaluate the needs of the communities actively involved in GLAM-Wiki work to make sure that I prioritize projects correctly. I am also going to be at Wikimania, and have already talked to a number of GLAM-Wiki leaders at Wikimedia Conference.

My role as strategist is to consult, collaborate, organize, and plan.  So, please reach out to me with your questions, thoughts, needs or other feedback.

Cheers,

Alex Stinson

GLAM-Wiki Strategist

Wikimedia Foundation

astinson@wikimedia.org

[1] A little about me

I have been working with the Wikipedia Library since May 2014, developing the Library’s publisher partnerships, building relationships with dozens of community and language leaders across our volunteer movement, crafting a broader strategy for engaging the largest libraries and international reference networks, and project managing tool and metrics improvements for our program.

I also designed and deployed the successful #1Lib1Ref campaign (1lib1ref.org) that drew nearly 30,000 viewers, 5 million tweet-impressions, and hundreds of participants from the library world to Wikipedia in our first ever viral, global micro-contributions drive for quality improvement.

In my volunteer, time I try to stay active as User:Sadads, where I am mostly active on English Wikipedia ( >98,000 edits). I have been actively writing content about literature and novels since 2008. I have always thought of our movement as a community with a lot of opportunities around partnerships and collaboration.

I was also one of the early adopters of GLAM-Wiki in the US:  While still in college, I approached the Smithsonian in 2010 about a partnership, establishing the dialogue which grew to one of our most successful long-term cultural partners within the movement. I have learned from those early attempts and have led GLAM-Wiki relationships with a handful of smaller organizations while in school and as a volunteer.

I am also a long time supporter of the Education program: I was trained as part of the Public Policy Initiative's first round of "Campus Ambassadors", the project that became first the U.S. and then the Global Education Programs.

I am based in Southern Vermont, where I enjoy hiking, the local and the local food culture. In my spare time, I try to produce sustainable food through my garden and homebrewing-- I just put in 4 rows of potatoes, and am about to start most of my summer crops.

[2] Annual Plan for GLAM

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/draft#Program_5:_Give_more_support_to_GLAM_partnerships

[3] Some thoughts on the GLAM-Wiki Strategist Role

What I hope to do:

* Help lead efforts to evaluate and improve our GLAM-Wiki documentation, and develop resources that make GLAM-Wiki a more approachable strategy for volunteers, especially in communities which don't have much experience in partnerships with formal organizations.

* Connect with and learn from the network of community leaders supporting partnerships with GLAM and other organizations

* Help document and share the most successful, repeatable GLAM-Wiki project models coming from our communities.

* Connect community leaders and outside organizations who approach Community Engagement and other Wikimedia Foundation departments about GLAM partnerships with the best volunteer leaders, resources, or learning materials.

* Communicate GLAM and GLAM-Wiki needs with teams and departments within WMF, including Community Resources, Strategic Partnerships and Engineering teams. I have already started these conversations, and hope to be able to share what I have been working on in the next couple months.

* Support strategic movement relationships with global organizations  (IFLA, ICOM, UNESCO, OCLC, Internet Archive, etc ) which can expand opportunities for GLAM-Wiki programming and partnerships by local affiliates.

What I won't be doing:

* Creating partnerships with local cultural heritage organizations

* "Coordinating" in any strong sense of the word -- It's not my role to be “in charge” of what others are doing in the GLAM-Wiki space -- instead my aim is to facilitate access to better tools and resources that help community leaders coordinate these partnerships more easily and effectively.

What I would like to learn from the community and GLAM program leaders in the next few months:

* Where does our community of GLAM-outreach leaders need the most support?

* What are the greatest technology barriers preventing the creation of easy-to-create and scalable relationships with cultural heritage organizations?

* What are the best opportunities for expanding GLAM-Wiki strategies to new or emerging communities with less partnership experience or affiliate support?

* How can we help a greater range of Wikimedia volunteers participate in partnerships with our GLAM allies?

I am very optimistic about the opportunities for GLAM-Wiki work, especially as Wikimedia becomes leaders of open and linked data, through projects like Wikidata -- and I want to make sure our communities have the tools and support to take advantage of that leading role in sharing cultural heritage knowledge around the world.

-Alex