Hi All,
Just a change of subject for this email thread. Next month, my colleague and I will be introducing Wikipedia to a group of librarians and wanted to include a slide on conflict of interest and librarians. Is there a policy or best practice set of guidelines that we can reference and share?
Please let me know,
Thank you, Rajene
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 05:30 Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, unfortunately the way we often promote 1Lib1Ref can leave that impression (it’s cleaning-up after some lazy Wikipedians!). There are a number of ways to deal with this.
Firstly explain away “1 Ref”, just say that it’s asking librarians to take a first step, and obviously we hope they will do more than 1. Tell them it can 1Lib10Ref if they prefer.
Second, the topic doesn’t have to be random. If the library has a particular topic area of interest (probably something they actively collect and are proud of), talk to them about adding citations in articles relating to that topic area. Now your librarians are exploiting their special collection material and their special expertise in that collections. Such citations (particularly if they refer to online accessible content on their website or at least a catalogue entry) will drive interest in the library (and its website). Librarians like that because it provides a way by which they can promote their special collection (without crossing the COI boundary – remember [[WP:CURATOR]] says it is not COI for a GLAM to do edits that relate to the content of the GLAM’s collections).
The way to work with a special topic is to **not** use Citation Hunt but rather use the tool Petscan to find the articles in their topic of interest that need citations
with which you can construct a list of articles within a specific category tree in Wikipedia (which relates to one of library’s area of interest) which are intersected with the tracking category “All articles with unsourced statements” (which means the article has a citation-needed template in it). Note, that the documentation for most of those “quality” tags usually mentions a tracking category (so you can look for other quality issues if you want)
So if your library’s special interests is Egypt, then here’s an example of a search for citations needed in Egypt articles
https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?language=en&project=wikipedia&depth=3&a... =
That query (with depth 3) produced 845 articles. But if you want more, try depth 4 (1465 results), then 5 (2186 results), etc (the greater the depth, the slower the execution, but you probably have more than enough with 845 possible articles!
I print these Petscan lists out, and progressively cut them up into some single article strips (for the total beginner) and into some larger multiple-article strips (for the not-beginner), put them in a “lucky dip” box and let people draw out one or a group at random. Or let them choose from a single big list (but get them to mark off the one they are doing so people aren’t duplicating their effort or creating edit conflicts). Whether or not they succeed in finding a citation, throw away that topic after their attempt. Don’t let them spend too long on any one topic (there’s plenty more articles if one proves difficult). It’s quite OK to focus on the easy wins as it is a more positive experience for them and all citations added benefit Wikipedia. (Aside, if your expert librarians can’t find a citation in their area of special interest, it may be a hint to you that maybe it’s time to remove that content from Wikipedia as perhaps no citation does exist).
If adding citations doesn’t appeal, then try away the whole citation-needed idea and pursue a “let’s expand articles about your topics of interests” or “let’s add photos from your collection” Call it 1Lib1Expand or1Lib1Photo if you like. Explain that the campaign is just to provide a focus for librarians to engage with Wikipedia. However they want to engage is just fine. It’s all improving Wikipedia. Here’s an idea that might appeal to other libraries:
At State Library of Queensland last year, we had a sub-goal for 1Lib1Ref. We said to ourselves that public libraries are important civic amenities (and what librarian doesn’t believe that!) and that every public library in Queensland therefore should be mentioned in the Wikipedia article for that town/suburb/district. So we used
http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/visit-us/find-a-public-library/browse-library-bran...
as our lucky dip list and the pages linked from it and also this master spreadsheet of other info about all public libraries as our sources
http://www.plconnect.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/388497/SLQ_S...
to add a few snippets about each public library (cited to the sources above). We added the address of the library and who operates it and the year it opened and anything special about that library that was worthy of mention (e.g. special collections). So just a sentence or two with citations. Thanks to 1Lib1Ref, we now have every Qld public library (and its mobile libraries stop-off points) mentioned in the relevant Wikipedia article. (The only catch is that it turned out that there were places with public libraries but without Wikipedia articles – those were handed to me, and I created a basic place article, and the library was thrown back in the lucky dip jar when I had made the article.) Now the librarians involved (about 40 of them who did about 25 edits each on average) really engaged well with this; libraries are meaningful to them and so they saw value in doing the task. When we finished doing public libraries, we started working on lists of Qld schools (education matters to librarians too). I note that we do 1Lib1Ref in “editathon” sessions and the librarians enjoy the social aspect of that (although people are free to do it at their desks if they prefer and many leave the editathon session with some extra lucky dip topics saying they will do them at their desk or at home that night). OK, this is not “traditional” 1Lib1Ref but let’s call it 1Lib1Lib or 1Lib1School J
So don’t see the format proposed for 1Lib1Ref as a straightjacket. It’s just one way to engage librarians and Citation Hunt does provide a set of tasks for the individual librarian who might be interested but who isn’t in an outreach relationship. But if another way works better for the librarian in an outreach situation (and particularly so if you are working with a library rather than an individual librarian), then just do it that other way. It’s the engagement that matters, not the format. No matter what they do, they acquire some Wikipedia skills, which they might continue to use on their own or be willing to use in another partnership or campaign. It’s a first-step campaign. Once they have taken it, you need to work out what step 2, 3, and 4 is for them.
Kerry
*“I would like*, if I may, to *take you* on a *strange journey” – Rocky Horror Picture Show*
*From:* Libraries [mailto:libraries-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Paulo Santos Perneta *Sent:* Monday, 17 September 2018 10:54 PM *To:* libraries@lists.wikimedia.org *Subject:* Re: [libraries] Meeting Librarians Soon. Help!
Last #1lib1ref was not successful here: The librarians we've contacted were not interested in fixing references for random articles, and they had difficulties on understanding why they should get through all the trouble of learning to edit Wikipedia just to fulfill the objective of 1 ref per librarian.
Probably in the next edition we'll be reformulating the contest locally to make it more attractive to them.
Paulo
Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca escreveu no dia segunda, 17/09/2018 à(s) 13:39:
Hello Reem,
I'm not a librarian, but what worked well with librarians here in Quebec, Canada was the #1lib1ref campaign. We organized a little friendly competition between different university and institutional libraries and it was very successful in my opinion. We also invited students in relevant university courses to participate and taught them how to add references to Wikipedia. From what I have been told, since last year, the International Federation of Library Association (IFLA) is actively supporting the cooperation between libraries and WMF projects, especially through #1lib1ref. I'm sure there are people more qualified than me on this mailing list to explain to you what is #1lib1ref, but you can find information about it on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/1Lib1Ref
Thank you and good luck with your meeting!
Jean-Philippe Béland
Wikimédia Canada
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 7:23 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:
- 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).
- 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
--
*Kind regards,Reem Al-Kashif*
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