Why Wikipedia Matters for GLAMs

Why Wikipedia matters for GLAMs (Galleries, Archives, Libraries, and Museums).

Are you a museum person, librarian or archivist? Do you work in the heritage sector? If so, this talk held at Richmond Library is for you.

Wikipedia is the 5th most popular site on the Internet, with 70 million visitors a day. It exists in 301 languages, with 5.6 million articles in English Wikipedia alone. It's advertising-free, and the only site in the top 100 run by a non-profit charity. Wikipedia results and previews dominate Google Search results, so it's where our audiences are.

Organisations whose mission is making information accessible need to understand Wikipedia and have a plan for engaging with it and the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who write it.

The image-repository Wikimedia Commons and the open structured database Wikidata are equally important for heritage organisations, and libraries need to be aware of the new project Wikicite, which aims to create a Wikidata object for every publication.

Wikipedian-at-Large
Dr Mike Dickison, NZ Wikipedian-at-Large, will present an overview of Wikipedia, and discuss some possible engagement strategies for heritage organisations.

About the speaker:
Dr Mike Dickison is New Zealand’s first Wikipedian-at-Large. With support from the Wikimedia Foundation he is spending a year is in organisations ranging from museums to nature reserves, from Northland to Invercargill, training staff and helping them use their expertise to improve Wikipedia and make images, text, and video freely usable by the public.

During June 2019 he is Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Nelson Provincial Museum. Mike has a full programme of edit-a-thons and talks for the public, staff and sector colleagues, and the Wikipedia volunteer community.

Wikipedia:GLAM/New Zealand Wikipedian at Large

This event is kindly hosted by Richmond Library in collaboration with Nelson Provincial Museum.
Free, with limited spaces so please RSVP by emailing Helen (Helen.McCubbin@tasman.govt.nz).