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Wikimedia Community Ireland/Reports/Report 2021

< Wikimedia Community Ireland

The activities of Wikimedia Community Ireland continued to be affected by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 saw periods of re-opening across Irish society, but outreach has continued to not be a priority for many of our new and established partners.

Pass Freely mural, O'Connell Street, Dublin 2021

Events and outreach

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Online outreach

Our project coordinator, Rebecca, has continued live streaming Wikipedia editing on Twitch, which she started in May 2020.

Rebecca attended the Computers in Education Society of Ireland online conference in February 2021, and the CHERISH conference and the Decolonising Irish Public Heritage conference in May 2021. She also spoke at the National Libraries Now conference on 17 September 2021, and spoke at WikidataCon 2021 on Wikidata in Ireland, WLM and beyond!

Rebecca was invited to speak at two events for St Patrick's Day 2021. First with the OSMIE group for their #MapPatrick21 launch event, and then to the Wikimedia NYC WikiWednesday meeting.

Rebecca was interviewed on three podcasts:

And two news articles:

Outreach and events held with third level institutions

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University College Dublin

  • Based on the long-standing partnership between Dr Fulton, Dr Busillo of UCD library and WCI, a chapter written about this work was submitted to the book, Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project.
  • 28 June 2021 Rebecca was invited to participate in a workshop entitled Digital Sovereignty and Digital Citizenship: Towards Participatory Policy.
  • October to December 2021 UCD information studies is our longest standing programme with lecturer Dr Crystal Fulton. This year, students focused on Irish historical biographies relating to architecture, sculpture, and the arts.

National University of Ireland, Galway

  • 19 March 2021 Dr Sharon Flynn held a workshop for academic staff entitled Wikipedia familiarisation for academics.

Dublin City University

University of Limerick

  • 3 March 2021, a seminar held called Introduction to Wikipedia givento the students of the MA in Public History.
  • In October and November 2021, the MA in Public History students edited or created articles relating to a number of historical events or places.

Outreach and events held with GLAMs

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LGMA Decade of Centenaries

Work has been ongoing on the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) on a Decade of Centenaries Project, and it is hoped that the identified materials will be digitised in the coming months. As part of the project, ensuring that relevant content is digitised and published under an open licence has been central to WCI's role. There are still plans to hold Wikimedia workshops using this material when circumstances allow.

National Gallery of Ireland images

In early 2021, the National Gallery of Ireland released the first batch of 1000 images from their collections under an open licence. Initially, this has resulted in editors adding high quality images to Commons to projects such as The Sum of All Paintings. Unfortunately, the NGI platform does not allow for mass downloads or scrapping, but some initial conversations have taken place about how these could be made available to Commons editors to have them uploaded in a more systematic way. A discussion has also taken place about using Wikidata in relation to these images, and the wider collections of the NGI. We will take this conversation forward into our work next year.

Dictionary of Irish Biography new open access and Wikidata update

In 2021, the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography was relaunched under an open licence. Previously the content had been pay-walled. Rebecca has been working with the staff of the RIA to work on updating the identifier links on Wikidata that point to the old website, as well as getting a full dataset of all those included in the Dictionary to allow for the creation of new Wikidata items.

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

In 2021, Rebecca met with the heritage officer of the RCPI about potential future collaborations, and open licencing of images relating to their past presidents. This meeting resulted in the creation of a Wikipedia list of those past presidents, which present a large corpus for editing workshops in the future.

Dublin Port

We have continued to work with the heritage officer in the Port to explore any potential areas of collaboration, and the possible publication of archival material under an open licence.

Library at Trinity College Dublin

Rebecca has met with a number of staff in the Library in late 2020 and early 2021 to discuss incorporating Wikimedia outreach into a number of on-going projects, including linking library databases to Wikidata, the use of open licences on newly digitised archival collections, and editing workshops relating to newly accessible materials in the future.

National Museum of Ireland

It was brought to our attention in early 2021, that the NMI had adopted an open licence policy to their images. Based on this, an initial discussion has taken place between Rebecca and some members of staff about how to use this new policy for our mutual benefit. There are a number of technical issues around access to image collections and importation to Commons, but this initial step is a huge cultural change for the larger Irish national institutions.

Book chapter

In 2021, a book chapter by Rebecca was published in Museums and the Challenge of Change: Old Institutions in a New World by Graham Black. The chapter explores the experiences of Wikimedia Community Ireland working with the GLAM sector, using the Hunt Museum as an example of a museum committing to open policies regarding images, collections, and practice.

Museum Ireland publication

Later in 2021, a journal article by Rebecca will be published in this year’s edition of Museum Ireland, the journal of the Irish Museums Association. It is entitled Wikipedia editing as curation: Understanding the citizen curator, and focuses on how GLAMs can work with Wikimedians to attain joint goals and objectives through collaboration and the use of open licences.

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    Example of image published by the NGI now available on Commons
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    Example of image published by the NMI now available on Commons
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    Example of image published by the NMI now available on Commons

Additional outreach

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In 2021, some tentative connections were made with the Irish Travellers' group, Pavee Point, about the representation of Irish Travellers on Wikipedia. This has centred on the current article on English language Wikipedia about the community and the issues around potential bias and misinformation. It is planned to continue these conversations with Pavee Point and other representative groups over the coming 12 months.

Training undertaken

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Rebecca took part in three unique training opportunities in 2021:

  • In December 2021, Rebecca successfully graduated from the first train the trainers course on Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom.
  • ''Measuring Impact Logic Models & Choosing (and using) Tools.'' with The Wheel, 22 September 2021.
  • Introduction to Wikidata course held by Wikimedia UK on 23 and 30 November.

Contests

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Wiki Loves Folklore

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As an experiment in 2021, we ran a local edition of the media and editing competitions for Wiki Loves Folklore in Ireland. We made this decision quickly in January 2021 when it became clear that the pandemic was worsening in Ireland and that many lockdown measures would continue to seriously impact our ability to progress other projects or programmes. For the turnaround, the photography and media campaign yielded modest results, with 66 images from 5 participants. However, the overall cost and resources needed to run the competition was minimal, and we hope to build on what we have learnt from this first edition. Due to the theme of the campaign, it gives us a vehicle to interact with communities such as Irish Travellers and to work with GLAM institutions with relevant collections such as the National Museum of Ireland.

We also experimented with running a writing competition on Vicipéid aligned with the photo competition, but this did not receive any engagement from the community. In future, we may use this campaign in our outreach work to the Irish speaking community.

Wiki Loves Folkore Ireland winning images:

Wiki Loves Earth

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Ireland held Wiki Loves Earth for the second time in June 2021, with 367 images uploaded by 43 participants.

Winning images:

Wiki Loves Monuments

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Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 was Ireland's 8th edition of the competition, and saw 990 images uploaded by 48 participants.

Winning images:

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      Howth Harbour Lighthouse, County Dublin
    Photographer: Jonathan Baker
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      Piper's Stones, County Wicklow
    Photographer: Markiemcg1
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      Knowth, County Meath
    Photographer: Markiemcg1
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    highly commended: The Old Library, Trinity College Dublin
    Photographer: Oliver Gargan
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    highly commended: Castle Folly, Heywood Gardens, County Laois
    Photographer: Lorraine Strang
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    highly commended: Caragh Bridge, County Kerry
    Photographer: James O'Hare
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    highly commended: Ross Castle, County Kerry
    Photographer: Markiemcg1
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    highly commended: The Old Library, Trinity College Dublin
    Photographer: Diego Lopez
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    highly commended: Lord Iveagh's Clocktower, County Dublin
    Photographer: Diego Lopez
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    highly commended: Gallarus Oratory, County Kerry
    Photographer: Diego Lopez

Prizes awarded for the best and first image of a site from each province.

Wiki Science

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Took place in Ireland between 1 November and 15 December. Judging is currently on-going.

Movement Strategy

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Rebecca has been a member of the team looking to develop The Capacity Exchange pilot platform, with the team working throughout 2021. She has also been involved in the discussions around the establishment of a Language Diversity Hub, and other on-going consultation and movement meetings alongside other WCI members.

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