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Institution Resident's Name Period Covered Date of Report
Museums Galleries Scotland Sara Thomas 1 June - 5 July 2015 8 July 2015

Introduction

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The first month at Museums Galleries Scotland has been spent following up on non-Glasgow Museums contacts made during the Glasgow Museums Secondment; reaching out to the Recognised Collections; ascertaining an initial training offer; scheduling internal events to give staff an insight into the project and equip them with the information necessary to advocate for it in the course of their own work, and continuing to engage with other WMUK and open knowledge communities.

Projects delivered in the past month

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Wiki Events

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Event Name Date Location Attendees
Glasgow Wikimeet #6 Thursday 18 June 2015 Drum & Monkey, St Vincent Street 3

Conferences & Presentations

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Event Name Date Location / Organiser Title Slides
Presentation to the Museums Management Team 8 June 2015 Glasgow Museums Four Months at the Museums as below
Presentation to Museums Galleries Scotland staff 9 June 2015 Museums Galleries Scotland Four Months at the Museums as below
#OpenDataGLA #5 2 June 2015 University of Glasgow Four Months at the Museums

Objectives & outcomes

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WMUK Museums Galleries Scotland
G1: Develop Open Knowledge G1.1 help Scottish museums increase the quality of the existing open knowledge surrounding their collections.
G1.2 assist museums to make more open knowledge available through various channels and projects,
G1.3 work specifically with the Recognised Collections to make more open knowledge and images available through Wikipedia and their own websites licence free.
G2a: Develop, involve & engage WMUK volunteers
G2a.1 encourage and assist museum curators to become competent WMUK volunteers.
G2a.2 assist museum curators to help share their expert collections knowledge with other WMUK volunteers.
G2a.3 Work with other Scottish voluntary organisations to involve them where relevant in open data projects taking place in Scottish museums and galleries.
G3: Reduce barriers to accessing open knowledge G3.1 we will improve awareness of the benefits of open knowledge through education within the Scottish museum sector.
G3.2 we will actively work with a range of partners including the Scottish Government to help inform, develop and deliver a strategic action plan for responsible use of open data in Scottish museums.
G5: Develop, support and engage with other Wikimedia & Open Knowledge Communities G5.1 participate and encourage membership to the Scottish DigitaI Transformation Network.
G5.2 encourage partnership projects between Scottish museums to release their metadata licence free through API or other sources.


Developing Open Knowledge

Contact has been made with a number of museums as a result of following up contacts made during the Glasgow Museums Secondment. Significant contact has been made with the following institutions, those with whom a meeting has been had are in bold.

  • Glasgow School of Art (Archives)
  • Perth & Kinross Council Museums & Art Galleries
  • Surgeon’s Hall Museum
  • Braemar Castle
  • National Museums Scotland
  • Campbeltown Museum

An editathon with Glasgow School of Art is planned for 7 August, focussing on Women on the Honour Roll, which will also be open to Glasgow Women's Library. An editathon at Braemar Castle to mark the celebration of the 1715 Jacobite uprising will hopefully be scheduled for later in the summer.

An event to encourage participation in the project by the Recognised Collections has been pencilled in for 4 September. This event is to be held at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in partnership with Glasgow Museums, and will aim to produce solid leads for GLAM-Wiki partnerships in the latter half of the residency. Two northerly collections with whom I have not yet made contact have already indicated to other MGS staff that they would be interested. This event will form part of a series of MGS events in the latter part of the year engaging the Recognised Collections.

An initial in-house training offer has been ascertained and a series of two half-day introduction sessions will be held at Museums Galleries Scotland offices after the summer. These sessions will allow me to identify leads for further development work with museums across Scotland. The first session will take the form of a "Hintroduction" to GLAM-Wiki partnerships, showcase some examples and prompt participants to explore how their organisation could get involved. The second will be the "Introduction to Editing Wikipedia for Museum Staff" which has been delivered extensively during the residency. We will aim for these sessions to be run on the same day, to make attendance more likely for non central belt organisations.

Develop, involve and engage WMUK volunteers

The sixth Glasgow Wikimeet was held on 18 June in Glasgow city centre, with three attendees. The event was promoted on the Scot Wiki mailing list, OpenTechCalendar, Wikiproject Scotland, Yelp Glasgow, Cool Freak's Wikipedia Club, and a number of talk page messages. Despite the low turnout some useful progress was made in terms of network development. One editor from Glasgow Museums has enquired about the possibility of offering training to a local Archaeology group, and this will be taken forward in the next few weeks. I have had initial conversations with a new editor, who was inspired to sign up the presentation given at Be Good Be Social at the end of May, about the possibility of running an editathon with her organisation.

Off- and on-list support and advice was given to one (non-Scottish) museum through the Museums Computer Group mailing list, who had had a particularly negative first experience of Wikipedia. Inspired to begin editing by recent press coverage concerning the need for more female editors, they signed up and created a number of new stub articles, and were promptly banned. Having looked at the entries, it should have been obvious that the user was new and required support, not a ban. The frustrations felt by this editor were echoed by other members of the list. This kind of experience highlights once more the need for more support and understanding for new users, or more clear instruction on creating new articles.

Work continues in developing the Scot Wiki mailing list in terms of content and participation. Having met another of the list administrators at an Open Data eve I am hopeful that this list can be useful in terms of community development.

Reducing barriers to accessing open knowledge

The following new press pieces about the residency were published:

In addition, I contributed notes for another piece to be published in the Scotsman.

I presented to the Glasgow Museums' Museums Management Team, reporting on the achievements of the four month secondment and making recommendations for the future of the project within Glasgow Museums. The attendees included the Head of the Museums Service, and all seemed very receptive to my recommendations.

Developing, supporting & engaging with other Wikimedia & Open Knowledge communities

I have continued to be an active participant in the Digital Transformation Network LinkedIn group, and have volunteered to be a speaker at the next meeting later in the year.

I presented at #OpenDataGla #5, had some useful conversations and distributed Editing Wikipedia booklets.

Projects in Development

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Event Name Date Location Organiser Event Details
Women on the Roll of Honour 7th August Glasgow School of Art Sara Thomas / GSA Updating Wikipedia with details of women from Glasgow School of Art's Honour Roll.
  • Event at Braemar Castle in planning, likely to centre around Women of the 1715 Jacobite Uprising
  • Event for the Recognised Collections in planning
  • Editing Training for MGS staff to take place on 9 July and 30 July (rescheduled from 1 July)
  • Template policies for IP & licensing to be developed
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