Good day colleagues and a happy new year,

The Wikipedia in African Libraries course which is an adaptation of the OCLC Libraries + Wikipedia Better Together curriculum is meant to equip African librarians with the requisite skills to evaluate the quality and reliability of individual articles, edit and create content of local and personal interest on Wikipedia and sister projects with laid down benchmarks for quality and relevance. The course will also assist librarians to better understand how and why Wikipedia is a current resource for dissemination of information as well as a teaching tool that promotes quality education thereby increasing access to knowledge for sustainable development in Africa.

Course Benefits

• The course will teach African librarians how they can better assist their user communities to use Wikipedia as they will be encouraged and supported to physically (or online because of COVID-19 safety protocols) run Wikipedia programmes in their libraries as community projects or assignments.
• This would present great opportunities for communities all over the continent to tell their stories by themselves on a very visible global platform thus increasing the volume of information about Africa – our heroes and heroines, our meanings and philosophies that is integrated into the global body of knowledge.
• The course will also nurture relationships between Wikipedia communities in Africa with libraries. This is expected to lead to collaborations with librarians during and after the life-cycle of the project.

Registration

The course is open and free for all African library educators and Librarians in all library types. It is structured in such a way that there is something for everyone irrespective of the library type or library training institution. Participants in Cohort 1 will be trained from 1st February – 24th April, 2021. To know more about this project and register, follow the link below:

https://web.aflia.net/wikipedia-in-african-libraries-course-cohort-1-registration-opens/ 

Please note, the call for the Cohort 1 is open until 14^th January, 2021 (12 midnight GMT).  Successful applicants will be notified on or before 15^th January, 2021.

Regards and thanks in advance,