Hi Reem! 

No one has addressed point 1 yet so: 

* At universities there are different kinds of jobs in the library, involving quite different work. Some librarians focus on acquiring and describing the material in the library. These people might be catalogers (if they focus on cataloging); acquisitions librarians (if they focus on buying or getting materials); or archivists (if they focus on older and rare or unique materials in archives). There are also librarians who focus on working with the students & staff of the university. They might be research librarians (there are different names for this) who specialize in doing research in one subject or many subjects. (For instance, my specialty is engineering, and my title is department liaison librarian, so I mainly work with engineering students and buy engineering materials, with a special focus on the EE & CS department). These librarians may assist with research, buy books, and teach classes as well as assisting faculty or researchers. Then there are librarians who specialize only in teaching, or only in metadata or technical work (like working on the website or database structures). 

My suggestion if you don't know who you are meeting is to ask them what their jobs entail and what their concerns and interests are. Some of the things that I say to librarians are: 

* students and researchers are using Wikipedia anyway, so it is in our best interest to learn how it works and how to use it well (eg understanding the page history, how material is added, why is ar.wikipedia so much smaller than en.wikipedia?) 

* if they teach students: teaching students to contribute to Wikipedia can be an excellent pedagogical exercise that can help them learn to use the library, since Wikipedia *requires* references

* if they work with more advanced researchers: contributing to Wikipedia or assisting others to do so can improve information about their subject for the public, and is an excellent way to disseminate good information about the subject. It can help students and researchers who do not have the opportunity of university. 

* if they work with archives or old  or unique materials, Wikipedia & Wikimedia commons provides a free and open way to share information about objects and collections with the entire world (add free photos, archival descriptions, etc.) 

* if they are more focused on the cataloging or database end, Wikidata can be very interesting since it links open data in a way that libraries have been trying to do for a long time in their catalogs. For instance, the library catalog could add identifiers from Wikidata that would connect their authority records to catalogs around the world .

* if they are focused on the licensing and acquisitions end: Wikimedia is an excellent argument for supporting open access efforts, since our readers would like to access the scholarly references that are cited. 

* it's rather out of date but you can check here too: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Loves_Libraries for project ideas 

Also I like to say that the missions of Wikimedia and libraries are aligned: we both want to make good information available to all, freely and openly. 

I'm not sure of the politics of Egyptian libraries, but you could mention that we had Wikimania 2008 at the Biblioteca Alexandrina, a wonderful experience for many of us, and we had great conversations with those librarians about contributing digitized and older unique materials to Wikimedia Commons. 

all best & good luck! 

Phoebe 

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 7:22 AM Reem Al-Kashif <reemalkashif@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Hope this finds you well. I didn't plan on meeting librarians at a university here in Cairo, Egypt, but they expressed interest in Wikipedia, so we are meeting :). The problem is, I really don't know what activities to offer them. I have zero experience in Wiki+libraries collaborations. It would be more than great if anybody could help me out. What I need is:
1. Understanding the nature of librarians work (I know it is a big topic, but some general remarks would do).
2. Having examples of activities they can be part of to contribute to Wiki (be it Wikipedia or Wikimedia).

3. Understanding how rewarding those activities are (so that I explain to them)
4. Having examples of similar activities, if any, around the world. 
Bonus  point 5. Having a clear plan of action to give them (i.e. what do we do after the meeting and so on)

Thank you so so much in advance for helping me navigate this uncharted territory.

Best,
Reem

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Kind regards,
Reem Al-Kashif

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