Hi Wikimedia program leaders and affiliates,
The WMF Programs Team is excited to remind everyone that even though it’s October, #1lib1ref is coming!
The campaign is January 15 - February 3, 2018, we will be launching our annual campaign where we ask librarians to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday by adding one reference to Wikipedia.[1]
This is the third year we will be running the campaign.[2] Last year we saw participation grow significantly from a handful of languages being actively coordinated by our communities, to dozens of affiliates and local organizers sponsoring or supporting the campaign and activating networks of librarians to be engaged. In particular:
the coffee hour kit, that helped librarians run simple editing events that taught other librarians how to participate: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref/Coffee_Kit
Support from the Wikipedia + Libraries Facebook group and an increased number of locally-led outreach and communications activities led to a steady increase in participation.
What’s new?
Following the success of last year’s campaign, we have identified a number of potential improvements that we would like to make to the campaign:
Some of the most successful #1lib1ref efforts, involved either pledges (i.e the State Library of Queensland pledged to add 1000 citations), or playful competition -- building on this idea, we are hoping to develop instructions and tactics for doing this. Look for more updates soon.
We have additional communications and community support at the foundation, from both the Communications team at the Foundation, and an engagement advocate and long time friend-of-the-campaign: Jessamyn West . This increased capacity allows us to do more targeted and supportive outreach the international library community, better design of outreach materials, and more coordinated and targeted support to our communities developing local language/context outreach.
Where to start?
We invite you or your affiliates to help support or coordinate local outreach to libraries! We need your help this year, to help make the campaign more inclusive:
Join the Wikipedia + Libraries Facebook group, where we will be coordinating many of the efforts during the campaign:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikilibrary
Start developing a list of allies or partners you think would be interested in #1lib1ref this year! Consider identifying regional library networks that you haven't partnered with yet.
Share your information so we can provide direct support: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEPXkpien91y2cRikM5IagBIct7Se6FTj7CMWYm9FrVr5qiw/viewform
We will provide regular status updates on tools, translation, and communication materials to folks who fill out the form above.
We’re looking forward to working together on the campaign this year!
Alex Stinson
[1] Note: Spanish speaking Latin American communities led by Wikimedia Argentina and Mexico plan on running a secondary campaign in Spanish in May to celebrate Spanish Wikipedia’s birthday and to avoid the Southern Hemisphere summer holiday season. If you would like to learn more contact: comunicacion@wikimedia.org.ar
[2] We have learned lots of great lessons from the last few years, learn more at: