Wikipedia:GLAM/Wellcome/End of Residency Report

Introduction

The Wikimedian in Residence

A Wikimedian (or Wikipedian) in Residence (WiR) is a Wikimedian who builds a relationship and works with an organisation to facilitate a relationship with the encyclopaedia. The role involves building interest, engagement, and confidence both during the residency and beyond the period of the residency too. The aim of this residency was to promote understanding of Wikimedia projects among Wellcome Library staff, local communities and Wellcome Trust funded researchers. Often, residencies centre upon digitising, organising and uploading a GLAM’s resources. In this respect, the Wellcome residency is quite unusual; Wellcome had already released the vast majority of its images onto Wikimedia Commons. Wellcome’s residency was therefore more about advocacy and building opportunities for people and groups to engage with Wikimedia and the existing content.

Background to the project

In 2014, Wellcome Trust funded a Cancer Research UK residency, and in 2015, Wellcome Collection had uploaded nearly 100,000 images to Wikimedia Commons, demonstrating an increasing interest in the potential for engagement with Wikimedia. The Residency at the Wellcome Library was first advertised in January 2016. Wellcome sought a part-time independent contractor to work

Key aims of residency

When the residency began, Wikimedia UK had the following Strategic Goals^*:

1. Increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently underrepresented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, with a particular focus on cultural content.
2. Support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level.
3. To support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK.

And also the goal to “develop, involve and engage with WMUK volunteers.”

Correspondingly, the residency had the following overarching objectives:

1. Develop a policy and workflow for adding to Wikimedia, Wikipedia, etc., in a sustainable and ongoing fashion that will continue long after the residency ends. Add more resources to Wikimedia Commons.
2. Work with staff, including librarians and curators, to identify areas of Wikipedia and sister projects that could be enriched with resources and knowledge from the Library’s collections.
3. Be an advocate for open knowledge within the Library and externally.
4. Support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK.
5. Organise and host Wikimedia-related events.
6. Work with the Library to develop an outreach policy to coordinate contributions from the Library and the wider communities to support the development of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia community in under-represented areas.

Summary of activities and outcomes

NHS leaflet, Your Health Service: How it will work in Scotland (1948) added to Commons as part of a Wellcome editathon

Strategic Goal 1: Content

Increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently underrepresented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects

Editathons

We held lots of editathons during the course of the residency, during the course of which we introduced editors to Wellcome’s resources (which could be used beyond the event), trained people how to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and improved content. There were often themes to the editathons: examples include women in STEM, medical history, and history of mental health and psychiatry. We often worked in collaboration with societies or institutions, facilitating the uploading of content from places beyond Wellcome.

Number of Editathons	Attendees	Women Attendees	New accounts	New articles	Improved Articles
20	208 (approx.**)	71% (lowest estimate**)	154 (approx.**)	117	848

The high percentage of women editors is particularly exciting, as surveys have indicated that women make up fewer than 15% of Wikipedia editors on Wikipedia as a whole. It is a remarkable feature of Wellcome’s residency that so many women feel comfortable participating in editing at our events.

Participants at the British Society for the History of Medicine Editathon

Expert Contributions

The staff of Wellcome Library is incredibly knowledgeable, with expertise such as Early Modern medicine and iconography. One of the first activities in the residency was to reach out to the staff and get them editing and adding some of their knowledge to Wikimedia. We ran five training sessions over the residency, at which 34 attendees learned about how to edit and why it is valuable for them to edit. They were later involved in #1Lib1Ref.

Going beyond the staff, Wellcome has excellent connections with researchers in many fields, and the WiR also has a background in research. In order to capitalise on this expertise, our editathons targeted particular areas where coverage on Wikipedia was poor, but where attendees had specialised knowledge to contribute and thus make a dramatic improvement to the encyclopaedia. The significant amount of content contributed at specialised editathons reflects the success of this strategy. For example:

• IET Women Engineers: 45,014 bytes added over 13 mainspace pages.
• NHS: 83,360 bytes added, with 5 pages as the focus of the first day and 9 the second day.
• British Society for the History of Medicine: 143,814 bytes added, 25 pages created and 97 improved.
• Beyond the Asylum: 287,944 bytes added, with 33 new articles and 205 page improvements as a result of the first day, and 35 new articles and 237 page improvements as a result of the second day.

These are only a few examples: the full list of events can be seen on the Events page for the residency. It is not only the volume that’s important (though that is the easiest to measure!), but also the quality of the information and the degree of improvement.

A case study on using Wikipedia for academic impact and engagement outlining motivations, methods and outcomes.

Following the People’s History of the NHS editathon, a Case Study document (see right) was compiled to help academics and researchers to understand how they might go about engaging with Wikipedia, and what might be gained from doing so. This is applicable generally, but also specifically tailored to address the interests and concerns of British academia, where the Research Excellence Framework emphasises the importance of engagement with the general public.

Some of the pages edited at our editathons were the sort of large overview page (for instance on the History of the National Health Service) that are usually intimidating for editors to tackle because of their size and scope, and therefore can be poorly organised and composed. Facilitating editing by subject experts, as this residency has, means that people with both breadth and depth of knowledge can tackle such issues, thus making pages on important topics significantly more readable and informative. This is a key outcome of the Wellcome residency.

Guides for New Editors

The editors attending sessions run during the residency were often experts in their fields, but new to Wikipedia (see above, so the WiR created beginners’ guides to help them learn the basics. These included a guide to navigating a Wikipedia page, a guide to page features, an instruction page on how to create a biography article, and a checklist for new editors to work through.

• 
  A speedy guide on where to find the different buttons on Wikipedia, and explaining what they do - useful for complete beginners!
• 
  A step-by-step walkthrough guide on how to create an account and edit, including advice on how to interact with other Wikipedians.
• 
  A handout with lots of tips for what to include on a page, including some useful templates to include in pages.
• 
  An instruction page for creating a Wikipedia biography page, including a ticklist of steps to work through and an example page on the reverse with annotations explaining the sections of a page.
• 
  A checklist for editing Wikipedia with reminders of page elements to include and hyperlinks to helpful pages (e.g. notability, lead section, categories, wikilinks).

These guides are used beyond Wellcome events; several were used as part of the BBC’s 100 Women event and Wikiproject.

Strategic Goal 2: Advocacy

Support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level

Advocacy

Staff from Wellcome Library learning to edit Wikipedia at a staff training session as part of the Library residency.

Within Wellcome

Wellcome is clear in its Open Access Policy about its support for sharing knowledge:

Our mission is to improve health by supporting bright minds in science, the humanities and social sciences, and public engagement.

The main output of this research is new ideas and knowledge, which we expect our researchers to publish as high-quality, peer-reviewed research articles, monographs and book chapters. We believe that maximising the distribution of these publications – by providing free, online access – is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture.

We therefore support unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.

The residency therefore began from a position of helping to extend open knowledge reach even further. Within Wellcome, there have been several presentations for staff including a talk to around 150 members of staff from all branches of Wellcome Trust. The Director of Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, attended this talk and subsequently emailed to say: “Superb, I have never fully understood the whole process, your talk was so articulate, clear and made me want to find out more……thank you.” Teams in the Library and Trust have long advocated for open knowledge, and they are now able to also understand and communicate the potential for using Wikimedia as a method of extending the reach of that knowledge too.

There has also been more active engagement of staff via five training sessions (see above). Wikiclub meetings were then held to provide time and space for Library staff to edit. There was potential for more training sessions at Wellcome, and also for greater follow-up support of Wellcome editors via more Wikiclub sessions; unfortunately, the part-time nature of the residency made this impossible to act upon but it is something that could be achieved with more time. Consequently, though there was much enthusiasm and a great deal of editing during the early months of the residency, at the end of the residency there were no rolling active editors. More consistent support could potentially have embedded wiki-editing more sustainably within the Library’s activities, though other residencies have faced similar challenges, finding that “many staff who showed an interest in contributing were unable to do so in work hours, either because of large work loads, or because of staff shortages.”

Having a Wikimedian working within the Library Web Team meant that as Wellcome started looking at redeveloping the Library website, the possibilities of incorporating Wikimedia were raised in the very early stages. The developers are therefore now considering how they can make links to enhance users experience, for instance by possibly making use of the linked data in Wikidata. It is too early to know what the final website will look like and how it will make use of Wikimedia, but it is valuable from an advocacy point-of-view that the developers are now aware of the potential opportunities for using Wikimedia.

Editors concentrating on adding to Wikipedia at the Royal Society of Chemistry wikithon

Beyond Wellcome

Wellcome Library, as part of Wellcome Collection, is freely open to the “incurably curious”, and attracts a range of different visitors and users. It’s also a part of Wellcome Trust, which provides significant connections to researchers, learned societies, and other knowledge-based institutions. This means that the resident was ideally situated to advocate to individuals and organisations about the potential for engaging with Wikimedia, as well as helping those individuals and organisations to find and use Wellcome materials.

The vast majority (more than 75%) of those attending Wellcome editathons were new editors: they might have used Wikimedia to find information before, but it was their first time contributing. In itself, this is a fantastic thing: at least 156 people are now able to edit as a result of the residency.

One highlight of advocacy during the residency took place as part of the BBC’s 100 Women event: the WiR was able to advocate to a particularly broad audience by addressing participants from the BBC Radio Theatre stage in Broadcasting House and appearing on the BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast Show.

In addition to the direct engagement of individuals, engaging new audiences prompted even further interest from other people and organisations. After the first few months, most of the events run as part of the residency were brought about because the co-organiser had heard about the residency and the possibilities of using Wikipedia from someone who had attended a session. The most fruitful example of this is probably the collaboration with Dr Jess Wade. Dr Wade attended the Women Engineers editathon in November 2016. Dr Wade is very active in the WISE Campaign and she obtained grants from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Biochemical Society to run some educational wiki-events (see #Secondary Education below for more on this). From the initial event on women engineers, we have since run four large events, each of which has created further opportunities for future activities. This demonstrates the success of advocacy as part of this residency; a chain reaction of interest has been initiated which makes the initial work part of a sustainable pattern.

Engagement with Library partners

Over the course of this residency, we have worked with partners including:

• The Institution of Engineering and Technology
• The Women's Engineering Society
• The National Maritime Museum
• The University of Kent
• The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group
• The University of Manchester
• Liverpool Medical Institution
• The Consortium for Research Excellence, Support and Training
• The University of Warwick
• The Royal College of Nursing
• The British Society for the History of Medicine
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Imperial College London
• Northumbria University
• The Royal Society of Chemistry
• The Biochemical Society
• The Health Archives & Records Group (HARG)
• British Red Cross
• King’s College London

Some of these organisations had previous experience of working with Wikimedia, so it has been rewarding to facilitate their sustained involvement. Others were unaware of the potential for engaging with Wikimedia in order to share knowledge. It is particularly exciting that several organisations, including the RCN, CREST, LSTHM and the Royal Society of Chemistry and the IET have been involved in multiple events and continue to make more plans for future activities. This makes the potential for sustained contributions as a result of the residency a strong possibility.

This file explains how adding information and references to Wikipedia can be a great next-step for researchers whose work is open access. It features three case studies as examples.

Researchers

Researchers have been strongly impressed at the scope for public engagement that Wikimedia offers. The Pageviews Tool is of particular interest to those looking to measure the impact of their work (and also to demonstrate this impact in Research Excellence Framework submissions). Providing researchers with such information led to an appetite for continued advocacy and training provision from Wellcome, as demonstrated in this statement from a participant at one of our editathons:

I think that having a permanent Wikimedian would be incredibly valuable for all of Wellcome's researchers. We had a website, and yet we had not at all thought to edit Wikipedia... It's clearly a great potential route to widening your audience - 233 page views a day, far in excess of any journal article! - and to have meaningful engagement with others passionate about this subject - as shown by the 57 edits to our page by 28 editors. Having you come in to talk us through the etiquette, logistics, and uses of Wikipedia really built the confidence of members of our team, and made us able to edit thoughtfully, in a manner which was we hope useful for both knowledge in the public sphere as well as for broadening awareness of our own work and interests.

It is not practical for us to monitor how many people click through to original research articles funded by Wellcome Trust, but based on case studies, Wikipedia is likely to be a significant point of referral. To communicate the possible benefits to researchers and research projects of engaging with Wikimedia, a guide document, So Your Work is Open Access… Now What? was produced. It encourages researchers to put information from, and references to, their open access work onto Wikipedia. The document is now available for advocacy at Wellcome and beyond.^***

Strategic Goal 3: Education

To support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK

Secondary Education

Working with Dr Jess Wade of Imperial College London and WISE Campaign, and supported by grants from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Biochemical Society, we ran three wikithons for Secondary School aged students. The first was at Northwood College, the second involved three different London schools bringing students to Imperial, and the third was held at Northumbria University for NUSTEM summer school students. Approximately 90 students attended each of the first two sessions, and a much smaller group of seven attended the third. A case study is being written-up to share insights derived from these sessions, but generally speaking there are three main conclusions to be drawn:

1. Both students and their teachers enjoyed the day and learned a great deal about both the theme of the wikithon (women in science) and about Wikipedia.
2. A significant amount of energy, time, and support is required to run such an event. The list of pages to edit has by necessity to be a long one, and bringing in other Wikimedia trainers is essential.
3. More robust systems than usual are required to keep track of all the new editors and their contributions, and to keep them editing after the event itself.^**)

The sessions (and the resulting active engagement on Twitter) have generated a significant amount of interest. Several other schools have approached us about the possibility of running events, and there has also been interest in hosting similar events from a National Science Museum.

A rubric to help lecturers in the British university system to grade students' contributions to Wikipedia made as part of course assessments.

Higher Education

During the residency, history of science and medicine classes from two universities came to Wellcome for training in how to edit Wikipedia. There was also the opportunity to advocate to researchers from CREST-supported universities at a Workshop they attended at Wellcome. This led to another opportunity to engage with CREST research postgraduates at a workshop on online skills. Each of these activities was an excellent opportunity for advocacy, but with more time better follow-up could have been conducted, encouraging more students to become actively more actively involved in wiki-editing.

To help lecturers who might be interested in incorporating Wikimedia editing into their course, a Wikipedia Assignment Marking Rubric was created. This is available online for anyone to find and use in their teaching.

Professional Development

The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Nursing included Wikipedia training days in their professional development training programme: those who attended gained credits for doing so. There is great potential for providing wiki-training as part of professional development in a wide range of fields. A future event is being planned with as part of the Digital Futures skills programme run by the Museum of London and a case study is being written to share details and possibilities with others.

Infographic from the official end of the residency, in February 2017, after which the residency was extended

Reflections

Reflections of the Wikimedian in Residence

I had been editing Wikipedia for less than a year before the residency began, but have been passionate about the role. My teaching experience and familiarity with both Wellcome Library’s holdings and with the field of history of medicine, in which Wellcome specialises, meant that I foresaw so many exciting possibilities of what we could achieve with the residency. And in fact, I need not have worried so much about how much editing I had done previously. My relative wiki-inexperience actually made me well suited to the role, as I could relate to the questions (and sometimes scepticism) that came from the people I worked with over the course of the residency, and share my own recent learning-curve with them.

The Wellcome residency was very different from most GLAM residencies, because vast numbers of images had already been uploaded by Wellcome. Rather than carrying out the usual task of persuading an institution to release content, and then orchestrating uploads, I had to figure out how to make the most of Wellcome’s resources and unique standing in the wider knowledge community. In this, I had the support of everyone at the Library (and also great support from the Trust too). I began by advocating and training within Wellcome, and had a very warm reception. It was exciting to see the Library team dive into editing. It was a shame though when those who had learned so much, and who had so much knowledge to share, were too busy to keep up with the editing. Wikiclub went some way to supporting these new editors, but I wish that I had just a little more time during the residency to really firmly establish the initiative.

Editathons were a great way of engaging people with Wellcome’s materials, building connections with partner organisations, and adding content to Wikimedia. They were also fantastic fun! We capitalised upon Wellcome’s strengths and connections to make meaningful improvements to articles associated with important topics such as the NHS and mental health. I am very proud of what the editors at these events achieved, especially considering so many of them had never edited before. More content could perhaps have been added if the events had purely focussed on using established editors to contribute content, but the real value in the activities was in inspiring people. As connections built up, and word-of-mouth spread, we ran more collaborative sessions. Collaboration enabled us to run more events, as there were more people involved in organising and existing networks of people to attract to attend reduced the amount of advertising required. I continue to be delighted by the level of interest in running events and activities.

Throughout all these events, Phoebe Harkins has been remarkable and wonderful in her role managing the residency. Not only did she make connections that sprouted exciting new developments and promote and support every activity, she also ensured that I was managing my workload sensibly and maintaining some semblance of work-life balance.

This residency has also been particularly fortunate in benefitting from some outstanding experience from the local Wikimedia community. Wikimedia UK provided a great deal of support; connecting me with other WiRs and community members such as Navino Evans was especially helpful as it helped me to develop skills and inspired new lines of work.

Wikipedians from the London Meetups have been very warm and welcoming, providing advice and camaraderie in support of the residency. Experienced editors such as ClemRutter, LoopZilla, Joseph2302, Andrew D, Bondegezou, and Thryduulf have all attended editathons and supported new editors (as well as editing themselves, when they found a rare quiet moment!). Andrew D has particularly focussed on helping guide new editors through the Did You Know? process to get their new and improved pages onto the front page of Wikipedia. WereSpielChequers and ClemRutter have provided particular guidance on school and education-based wiki-ing. I am so grateful for everything that these Wikimedians have done to support the residency.

Wikimedians from the Wikimedia UK Train the Trainers group from 2016 have also been brilliant. Paul W, Jscammel, Samwalton9, MassiveEartha and Khintye have all participated in Wellcome residency events.

The content contributions, advocacy and educational initiatives have been successful because of these Wikimedians, and just in being warm and supportive they act as a beacon broadcasting the best of Wikimedia to newcomers: participants at our events have remarked what an unexpectedly friendly welcome they have had to editing. The community of new and experienced Wikimedians alike make me very proud to have been the Wellcome WiR.

Challenges

Being a little new to editing was less challenging than expected due to the fantastic support from the wider wiki-community. Time was by far the biggest challenge during this residency, and therefore is at the root of four out of five of the top challenges.

Top 5 Challenges

1. Deciding what to prioritise given a limited amount of time. Working two days per week was fantastic, in that it permitted a longer-running residency and the formation of relationships and opportunities for projects which would have otherwise been impossible. However, it also meant that it was difficult to maintain momentum on some things: when I was busy with external events, I had less time to support editors within the Library. In focussing on running events and building new connections, I had less time for the more administrative side of the role, so some reports were late and some events were not advertised by Wikimedia UK (fortunately, they were always very understanding about the challenges specific to this residency!).
2. Following-up sessions with resources and advice tailored to the group and event (it takes time but has a significant impact on the likelihood that people will keep engaged)
3. Finding an ideal day and time for regular Wikiclub meetings (this is nearly impossible with different people, including me, working flexibly)
4. Learning Wikidata with no computer science background – the jargon is bewildering.
5. And (very specifically to this residency), being part-time in this role is really tough. Juggling several jobs to pay the bills is difficult, especially without fixed days to set a standard “out of office.” Working freelance as an independent contractor requires setting time aside to create invoices, maintain records, and file tax returns. Doing all these things for the first time is intimidating, and it’s not always obvious where to look for help.

Lessons learned

Like editing Wikimedia, a Wikimedia residency involves a lot of “learning by doing.” Lots of lessons were learned in the course of the Wellcome residency.

Top 5 Lessons

1. Wikimedians will readily help if asked and are really supportive of residencies – their involvement make bigger and more exciting events possible.
2. It is all too easy to lose a sign-up sheet and therefore lose data for a whole session – this is very frustrating, particularly when the session was for around 90 people.
3. Running one event successfully, with passion and energy, often leads to more interest and events.
4. Navino Evans is fantastic at translating Wikidata, and more guides are needed to help absolute beginners realise its potential and how it works.
5. Sometimes it’s easier to go and do something directly and then to demonstrate its value to the relevant team using a solid example, rather than wait for them to get on board with an abstract idea.

Recommendations

Volunteer Database

A database of Wikimedians featuring their broad geographical location, fields of personal interest and their training/editing abilities would be enormously helpful. It would mean that WiRs would be able to narrow down who might be able to help and also who might be really passionate about a particular theme. It would mean that volunteers would get more opportunities to be involved in events that suit them. And it would reduce the burden on Wikimedia UK to coordinate WiRs and volunteers.

Shared WiRs

There could be scope to have shared WiRs: whilst one single organisation might only be able to find the time and resources to have someone in a couple of days per week, a combination of a few local organisations might build this up to a full-time role. Those I spoke to at the OER 2017 meeting expressed an interest in hosting a WiR but doubted that their organisation would be comfortable employing one. Offering the chance to have a WiR as an independent contractor for one day per week might reach those who have previously dismissed the possibility of more active engagement with Wikipedia. Having a full-time but shared WiR would enable that person to focus purely on wiki as a job and mean that all of the organisations involved would benefit from lessons learned at one. Such a scheme offers the additional possibility of facilitating collaborations between organisations that go beyond Wikimedia, such as professional development, conferences or exhibitions, and greater re-use of and engagement with online content.

Metrics tools

Wikimetrics is really useful, but also limited. It would save a lot of time for a WiR if there were a way to run a query on the total number of bytes/pages/edits over all cohorts involved in a residency’s events and have the results appear in-browser rather than as a JSON or CSV download. Even better if you could mark some experienced editors so that their contributions only appear for the day of an event, but new editors could be tracked for the duration in order to assess the impact of training them.

Legacy of this Residency

This residency has had an impressive impact; the expansion beyond the initial timeframe is clear evidence of Wellcome Library’s belief in the benefits yielded. In addition to the concrete, measurable legacies such as page improvements and editors trained, there is also a more intangible legacy to the residency in terms of the possibilities that have been produced.

Numerous events with very positive feedback have resulted in more and more opportunities for future engagement with Wikimedia, and this snowballing interest is probably the most significant legacy. The continuation of the role partly is a result of the continual and growing interest from partner organisations; there is so much still to do!

Excitingly, a full-time role building upon the WiR role is currently being advertised: Wellcome has decided to embed the Wikimedian position within the organisation. In addition to affirming the impact of this role, this also sends a signal to other cultural institutions about the value of engaging with Wikimedia.

Useful links

• Wellcome Library Wikimedia Project Page
• Wellcome Residency Reports
• The Wellcome Trust's Official Webpage and Wikipedia Page.
• The Wellcome Library Official Webpage and Wikipedia Page.
• Digitisation at the Wellcome.
• The Wellcome Library Blog where librarians, researchers and others post about what is in the collections.
• Wellcome images on Wikimedia Commons
• Wellcome image view statistics
• 2015-2016 Wikimedia UK Impact report
• Wikimedian in Residence Programme Review, conducted by Wikimedia UK in 2014

Notes

^* During the project, Wikimedia UK revised its strategy and introduced new strategic goals against which all programmes are organised. These are listed and expanded on here.
^** Due to the large-scale of two recent wikithons with schools, some of the details of participants were lost and thus cannot be included in figures. Each school event had around 90 attendees, and most students created an account but they tended to edit in pairs at the event.
^*** There were plans to write a blog for EuropePMC to communicate this on a wider platform. However, these plans stalled, in part because EuropePMC were disappointed to have found that links to Europe PMC content on Wikipedia were seemingly being changed to PubMedCentral links instead.