All,
Andrew Gray and I met with the Imperial War Museum in London earlier this week. They're the lead organisation for marking the 2014 WWI anniversary in the UK, and they're very interested in cooperating with Wikimedia UK as part of the program.
The main part of the discussion was their plans for a Wikipedian in Residence - we're still working out the details (funding, reporting, management etc), but they're planning to employ a Wikipedian in Residence during 2013 or 2014, probably full-time for six months. They are keen to treat it as an interpretative role - rather than focusing on working with the collections, they really want to have someone content-oriented who'll spend the time looking at WWI content on Wikipedia, seeing where it lacks, and trying to organise ways to improve it, fill in gaps and draw together duplicated topics. The post will hopefully also involve outreach to the various (academic and non-academic) communities researching the war, helping them collaborate with Wikipedia, and working to support the existing community by providing sources, supporting material, etc. for articles.
On the whole, it's a promising project - in many ways, almost a "historian in residence on Wikipedia". As I say, the details are a bit fluid (notably dates) but me and Andrew will try and keep you all informed of what's happening as it goes forward. If you've any comments or suggestions, do let me know!
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
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