Hey Pradeep and the rest of you,
What I think was my biggest take away from the GLAMcamp is: GLAM and
Outreach cannot be separated. Similar holds for expanding the India
Wikipedia community. While doing Wikiacademy or workshops or clubs or
meet-ups, the idea is to spread the word as much as encourage a culture of
good editing. That is what these guys back at the camp take very seriously,
every occasional meetup is a wonderful outreach opportunity! Let's talk
more about that :)
Warmly
Noopur
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Pradeep Mohandas <
pradeep.mohandas(a)gmail.com> wrote:
hi,
Thank you for your update, Noopur. Coming back with more good and
concrete is great and the best way for the community to reflect.
Personally, I think there are people right now who are focussed on
building a new breed of editors through WikiAcademies and
Wiki-Workshops. This seems to be happening in tech schools and not in
art schools. Very few of the tech school junta might be interested in
the arts or history. But, they can teach the arts school junta to edit
and help them out. I think it is this cross-disciplinary editing that
we need to foster more in the Indian community.
There are people on this mailing list who are interested in
participating in GLAM. I hope they respond to this thread and
participate in the conversation.
warm regards,
Pradeep
On 12/12/2011, Noopur <noopur.raval(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,
These are my insights from GLAMcamp Amsterdam. I have put them in form
of
some key questions. For me it was a brilliant learning experience. So,
most
of these answers are not mine, rather they have
been generated as
collaborative responses by various people from different chapters. I am
grateful to WMF, WM-NL and WM-UK for their special interest in helping
encourage GLAM participation in India.
This is the link to the programs:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_Amsterdam#Schedule and in each
session you will find an etherpad link to the live discussion!
Why GLAMwiki is becoming all the more important?
Flickr: popular mass upload tool but is no longer available; it has
pending
requests and flickr commons has no money to
support more file sharing.
Wikimedia Commons allows almost the same functions and metadata sharing,
open licensing with a bonus Wikipedia link (something that institutions
go
by). Since most institutions don’t really know
what Wikimedia or commons
is, the Wikipedia name leverages partnerships and allows them similar
archiving benefits. For us, it is also outreach.
Common questions by GLAM institutions in other countries:
-
Why Wikipedia, why not our own website?
Because of the abysmal disparity in web-view. Simply, Wikipedia is the
5thmost visited, gives far more visibility in web traffic as compared
to your
own website. However, integrating wikis and providing links is not hard
either. So, it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
-
This is complicated, is there an easier way to collaborate?
Advice to GLAM and cultural/outreach people: Carry presentations (PPT),
simple statistics, don’t go into metrics jargon, show in simple numbers,
percentage, fractions how people can make a difference or vice versa.
Use
things like color coding, emphasize on the importance and seriousness of
‘free knowledge’, larger things that Wikipedia is also in service of.
This
helps people connect at different levels. Most
importantly, break your
hierarchies and trash your rule books (or make simpler ones that use
less
jargon). If you are concerned about quality editing there are two
solutions
(get content specific editathons and organize a
Wiki academy EVERY
week).
What happens once partnership is over? How to sustain?
This is why a GLAM coordinator is not simply a GLAM person. S/he is also
someone who does massive outreach: Wikipedia takes your city; Wiki loves
monuments, wikiacademies, PR and network building with local, regional
and
national resource persons outside the community.
While in capacity as a
fellow, the idea is also to do value addition, train employees (at least
train in minor edits, article making, image uploading). Source one
contact
through another.
(My take: As I see it, there has to be a crucial change in orientation.
From exhaustive internal debates, discussions and tool building
exercises,
it has to move and adapt to the larger Open and
free scene, involving
people albeit on a temporary basis and expanding. Monopolizing Wikipedia
as
a city, state or indic language space is only
going to create a highly
concentrated yet a very niche community)
-
(Question asked to me) 52 cultural partnerships listed on GLAM
request
page, why not India?
Frankly, I had no answers why. My hunch is that since traditionally
science
and technology oriented courses and vocations
have been encouraged, few
lay
people really know their culture or feel as
passionately about
conservation. On the other hand, placement of government officials to
unrelated departments (museums) included leaves them little motivation
to
go beyond their regular duties. On the other hand, there is also a large
communication and visibility problem since Wikimeetups aren’t really a
matter of common knowledge even to journalists. Wikimedia India really
needs to carve out a place and get involved in academic and art spaces,
have people just talk about their experiences, present smaller
individual
pilots (Sumanna)
-
Why no Indian participation in ‘This month in GLAM’?
Because there is really no ‘Indian’ GLAM or ‘Indian’ community. As
wonderful as the Indic language efforts are, it would be great if there
were biannual national meet-ups, regional meets and more frequent local
meets. Identify at least 4-5 cities that can act as pivotal regional
meeting and resource points. This will also help generate smaller goals
and
activities and we can have our own newsletter as
well as TMIG updates.
-
How do we identify, regulate and strengthen local community based
interactions?
Most important: Every chapter must have a national outreach coordinator.
Have mandatory sections in agenda: Gender gap, Indic, English, GLAM,
tools,
updates, outreach. Invite guest speakers or
professors who can give a
talk
or attend and that way get to see the internal
workings of the local
community. Try and concretize a press team, media releases, word of
mouth,
social networking channel so that every time news
passes by, we have a
loyal reader, enthusiast base.
-
What tools are used to digitize artifacts?
Proposed GLAMtoolset, more on etherpad, apart from this proposal to move
GLAM to a different portal from Outreach redirect. More on etherpad
-
Do people really know who a Wikipedian is, what Wikimedia projects
are
about?
Andy Mabbett, Fae from UK chapter spoke about their fund raising and
outreach activities, also on how to recruit new editors and how to
recruit
new Wikimedians
Important task is to categorically do outreach and editor involvement
together.
-
Who all do you invite in a wikimeetup?
Go to institutions and say how can we help you
Go with groups to cultural institutions and get volunteers so that you
get
focused group
Organize a fb group and event
Is there a monthly update?
Need for a cultural outreach coordinator position
Need for a monthly newsletter that binds all indic and English community
members
Need to look at GLAMs more seriously because women’s outreach and GLAM
are
intricately connected.
Need to move to more friendly UIs and keep discussions going. Of course,
mailing lists exist and they can be for people specifically involved in
a
community but for the novices and to attract more people, there is a
need
to get FB groups going, have more Wiki academies.
These are a few salient questions. I will appreciate your suggestions,
advice, comments and questions. Let us try and be civil about criticism,
like mature, secure adults :) Look forward to your responses!
Warmly
Noopur
--
Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690
--
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email -
http://goo.gl/6v1I9
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Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690