On Tue, 2013-10-29 at 12:08 +0000, Stevie Benton wrote:
Hello everyone,
I had a couple of really interesting conversations last week that have led to some good ideas. I wonder if you might like to take a look and share any thoughts.
Firstly, I'm in touch with a fairly senior manager of a local authority library service. We've talked about how Wikipedia is widely used in public libraries and I wondered how we might engage with those people. I've put together a draft proposal at https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Draft_proposal:_Thurrock_Libraries and would love to get your views.
I've been dropping off Wikipedia brochures and cheat-sheets in quite a few of Edinburgh's public libraries. There is an interest from staff, but a lack of time.
A bit more work on the city's politicians, and they'd probably okay staff attending training/workshops during their regular hours. The only library staff likely to attend otherwise are the small 'army' of volunteers that help keep Edinburgh's libraries running (a million times better than stacking supermarket shelves through Workfare).
As I suspect is the case in many of the UK's libraries nowadays, quite a few of the staff in Edinburgh are multilingual. I'd hope that UK-targeted literature, in languages other than English, might be one thing to come out of Wiki Takes Leicester.
Brian McNeil.