University of Edinburgh, Wikimedia UK Partnership of the Year 2018
Following successful collaborations with Wikimedia in 2015, the University of Edinburgh hosted a Wikimedian in Residence from January 2016 to January 2017 as a part-time (0.5) year-long project to advocate and raise awareness of Open Knowledge, working with academic staff, students, library & archive staff and Wikimedians throughout Scotland. In January 2017, the residency was extended for a second year and increased to full-time. As of January 2019, the residency has now been made a full-time, open-ended position to continue & build on the successes of the first three years.
Are you a Wikimedian, or would you like to be? Do you live in or near Scotland? To keep up to date about Wikimedia events happening throughout Scotland, to learn more about ScotWiki projects, or to publicise your own ScotWiki event or project, join the ScotWiki Mailing List now!
The University of Edinburgh began a year-long Wikimedian-in-Residence project in January 2016. The success of the residency for the University has meant that it has been extended to three years, until January 2019. It has now been made open-ended.
It is the third successive residency to be established in Scotland, following the National Library of Scotland Residency which began in July 2013 and the Museums and Galleries Scotland residency which began in January 2015.
The vision of the University of Edinburgh is:
The creation, dissemination and curation of knowledge.
Edinburgh University's Learning, Teaching and Web Information Services Team – From left to right: Stephanie (Charlie) Farley, Lorna Campbell, Ewan McAndrew, Anne-Marie Scott. ScotWiki Partners Meeting – 10 July 2018University of Edinburgh edit-a-thon
The University of Edinburgh residency is to facilitate a sustainable relationship between the University and Wikimedia UK to the mutual benefit of both communities through improving knowledge exchange. To do this, the WiR will be an advocate of open knowledge and deliver training events & workshops which will further both the quantity & quality of open knowledge and the university’s commitment to digital literacy.
More practically, this will involve arranging & delivering skills-training sessions which will fit in with and, importantly enhance, the learning & teaching within the curriculum. The WiR will also stage events outside the curriculum which will draw on the university’s, and Edinburgh’s, rich history & knowledge.
The Resident is based in the Learning, Teaching & Web Services Division within Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh.
For general information about the Wikimedian-in-Residence programme, the following articles may be of interest:
On 14 July 2018, Wikimedia UK, the national chapter for the global Wikimedia movement, held its Annual General Meeting at the Natural History Museum in London. Each year the AGM recognises individuals of the Wikimedia UK community who have made a recognisable impact and this year it was announced at this year’s event that the University of Edinburgh had been nominated and won for UK Partnership of the Year, as the institution which had stood out in the past year as ‘the most effective Wikimedia and Open Knowledge Advocate’.
This is the second time the university has won this accolade following its win in 2016 for hosting the Open Educational Resources conference (OER16) and follows Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew, being named UK Wikimedian of the Year in 2017.
Other ScotWiki award winners included Delphine Dallison, Wikimedian in Residence at the Scottish Library & Information Council, who won Up and Coming Wikimedian of the Year and Sara Thomas, Scotland Programme Co-ordinator for Wikimedia UK, who received an honourable mention for UK Wikimedian of the Year 2018. Read more about the nominations on Wikimedia UK’s website.
Science is shaped by Wikipedia "I sometimes think that general and popular treatises are almost as important for the progress of science as original work." – Charles Darwin, 1865
Wikipedia and Information Literacy – Ruth Jenkins, Academic Support Librarian at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.Teaching with Wikipedia – Dr. Chris Harlow
Wikimedia UK have set up a new website as a central reference point for university educators to find out about Wikipedia in Higher Education including details of past assignments, current assignments and courses planned for the future at universities the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. The page was created in August 2016 but has been populated with a number of examples already; including many from the University of Edinburgh. The intention is that educators can better communicate & co-ordinate their efforts both with Wikimedia UK and with other educators if information is available from a central point of reference.
Undergraduate English Literature Course: Global Modernisms: Inter/National Responses to Modernity (ENLI10369) – one iteration before the residency began in 2016.
University of Portsmouth: Applied Human Geography. First-year undergraduate core module for BA Human Geography students involving researching & writing new articles about villages in England.
University College London: UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) ran an event for 36 postgraduate translation studies students.
Queen Mary University London: FLM509 Research Methods (Film). Level 5 module. Second-year undergraduate module for BA Film Studies students.
Middlesex University: MED3040 Publishing Cultures. Level 6 module. Third year module for BA Publishing and Media students.
'Changing the Ways the Stories are Told' – Melissa Highton speaking at the Wikipedia Science Conference – 3 September 2015Melissa Highton – Changing the Ways the Stories are Told – Wikipedia Science Conference 2015
Background to the residency
The University of Edinburgh residency is a result of a long term engagement and also a credit to the quality of the UK Wikimedians and their ability to support, impress and influence senior managers, who in turn, shape institutional strategies and investment.
The lead for the partnership at University of Edinburgh is Melissa Highton. When she was Director of Academic IT at University of Oxford her teams attended the editathon organised by JISC (June 2012) to improve articles on World War One. Oxford holds the Great War Archive and they were keen to ensure, in advance of the centenary, that their collection of open educational resources (OER) could support public engagement and school teaching on the topic. Martin Poulter was the Wikimedian in Residence at JISC at the time.
In 2013 Oxford hosted an editathon for Ada Lovelace Day. Martin Poulter provided training for the event and brought several other Wikimedians to help. Liz McCarthy and Kate Lindsay worked with Martin to make the whole event a great success.
Oxford hosted another editathon for Ada Lovelace Day 2014, but by that time Melissa had moved job to become Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at University of Edinburgh. There had not yet been any Wikipedia editathons at Edinburgh so Melissa brought her teams to the EduWiki conference to find out more. Ally Crockford (Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland) spoke at the event and she highlighted the WiR scheme. Melissa met with Gill Hamilton (Digital Access Manager at the NLS) to learn about the job descriptions, support and work plans which would be successful for a WiR partnership.
Edinburgh University runs an annual Innovative Learning Week designed to enable staff and students to attend day long, or week long events outside of normal timetabling patterns. The first Edinburgh editathon ran during ILW 2015. Ally Crockford and Sara Thomas (Wikimedian in Residence at Museums & Galleries Scotland) came to help deliver the: Women, Science and Scottish History editathon series. Ally was very bold and went for an event spanning the full 4 days.
Images from the Women, Science & Scottish History editathon for Innovative Learning Week 2015
“We certainly couldn’t have done it without Ally and Sara but the striking thing for me was how quickly colleagues within the University took to the idea and began supporting each other in developing their skills and sharing knowledge amongst a multi-professional group. This inspired me to commission some academic research to look at the connections and networking amongst the participants and to explore whether editathons were a good investment in developing workplace digital skills. This is the research I presented at Martin’s Wikipedia Science Conference which underpinned my business case for establishing a WiR at University of Edinburgh with focus on skills development as part of the University’s commitment to open knowledge.“
“I have been repeatedly impressed by the quality of the Wikimedians and the generosity of their host organisations to help at events. It seems to me only fair that University of Edinburgh which has benefitted so much from our local WiRs should now host a WiR to continue a sustained involvement with the scheme and the Wikimedia UK community. Once Edinburgh has shown the way I hope the other Scottish universities will follow suit to ensure that there is always at least one WiR for the nation.” – Melissa Highton – Director of Learning, Teaching & Web Services at University of Edinburgh.
Events and Workshops
EuroStemCell Wikipedia Editathon at the University of Edinburgh's MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine – July 2016
The Resident will be organising a variety of events, including edit-a-thons and training sessions, during the course of the residency.
If you're interested in running an event with the Wikimedian in Residence, please get in contact through Ewan McAndrew's talk page. Or alternatively, you can email: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk or follow/message me on Twitter: @emcandre
University of Edinburgh Spy Week Wikipedia edit-a-thonUniversity of Edinburgh Spy WeekEdinburgh Gothic – Wikipedia editathon for Robert Louis Stevenson Day
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 12:30pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 12:30pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 12:30pm and 5pm.
Conectando: Scottish Encounters with Spanish & Portuguese is an exhibition and a Wikipedia editing event hosted at the University of Edinburgh Library.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 12:30pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 12:30pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies celebrating the diversity of Edinburgh's alumni. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 10am and 2pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women engineers. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 2:30pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 1pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning about Wikipedia's sister project, Wikidata, a hub of structured machine-readable linked open data where the possibilities are endless. All welcome.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 1pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 1pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 1pm and 5pm and meet our new Women in Red student intern Laura Rose Wood.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women. We will be celebrating the Women on Climate Change, Women of Sustainable Development, Women of History, Women Making History, and Women of Edinburgh. No experience necessary. All welcome. Drop in and join us when you can anytime between 1pm and 5pm.
This is a workshop aimed primarily at anyone who is interested in learning how to edit and helping to create biographies of notable women in science, tecnhology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). No experience necessary. All welcome. Join us at 12.45pm – 1pm on 16 August to help improve Wikipedia's coverage of the lives and contributions of Women in STEM! Book on Eventbrite here!
Discussions & preparations are under way to deliver the following projects. Any expressions of interest in helping with these events would be welcome along with any suggestions on individuals or groups, either within the university or outwith the university, who maybe interested in either attending these events or assisting in their preparation would also be welcome.
Vet School Wikipedia research session – Edit-a-thon event for Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies students to research & create new Wikipedia articles on Veterinary Medicine.
"Why we still need to talk about diversity in Physics" – Dr. Jess Wade One of Nature's '10 people who matter in Science' 2018, Dr. Jess Wade is a physicist who made the resolution to make a Wikipedia page every day of 2018 to highlight the often underacknowledged work of women, LGBT+ and scientists of colour. Jess was invited to speak at the University of Edinburgh's Science and Engineering campus by the Women in STEM Society. In this talk, held at the University of Edinburgh's Swann Lecture Theatre on 30 January 2019, Jess addressed why talking about diversity in physics is still so essential and what we need to do about it. You can also watch Jess's TEDx talk here.
Wikipedia has a problem with systemic bias. A 2011 survey suggests that on English Wikipedia around 90% of editors are male, and are typically formally educated, in white-collar jobs (or students) and living in the Global North.
"if there is a typical Wikipedia editor, he has a college degree, is 30- years-old, is computer savvy but not necessarily a programmer, doesn’t actually spend much time playing games, and lives in US or Europe."
Students and staff creating new Wikipedia pages about Scottish suffragettes at Processions 2018Edinburgh Residency infographic – Year one (cropped)
This means that the articles within Wikipedia typically reflect this bias. For example only 17.8% of biographies in English Wikipedia are of women. Many articles reflect the perspective of English speakers in the northern hemisphere, and many of the topics covered reflect the interests of this relatively small group of editors. Wikipedia needs a diverse community of editors to bring diverse perspectives and interests.
Women in Science and Scottish history – the Edinburgh Seven
The very first Wikipedia editathon hosted at the University of Edinburgh was Women in Science and Scottish History in February 2015 and was focused on the Edinburgh Seven, the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university.
As a research-based institution, Professor Allison Littlejohn from the Open University was invited to come along to the event to help us make sure there was value in a collaboration with Wikimedia UK and to analyse what was going on in these editing events and what their impact actually was. And what she discovered was that there was indeed genuine formal and informal learning going on at these events and she’s produced two research papers arising from that 1 event.
Becoming an online editor: perceived roles and responsibilities of Wikipedia editors. The second paper looked at the process of becoming a Wikipedia editor – and how participants felt editing was a form of knowledge activism and helped generate important discussions about how knowledge is created, curated and contested online and how Wikipedia editors can positively impact on the knowledge available to people all around the world and addressing those knowledge gaps.
Wikipedia's women problem – Melissa Highton writes for the Dangerous Women project At the University of Edinburgh, the Wikimedia residency's focus on redressing this imbalance has proved to be a successful approach with women editors accounting for 65% of our attendees this year and 69% in year two. Another problem of coverage on Wikipedia has been the representation of different language Wikipedias with English Wikipedia the largest of all the 295 different language Wikipedias by a considerable margin. Hence, it has been especially pleasing that Translation Studies MSc students and Edinburgh University Translation Society have embraced the need to redress the imbalance by translating content from one language Wikipedia to another.
Wiki Women in Red editathon at the University of EdinburghChemistry staff and students at Royal Holloway College c.1899 – Pictured in the centre is Elizabeth Eleanor Field, a British chemist and the Head of Chemistry at Royal Holloway College for over nineteen years. She is also noted as one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.
We held events for International Women's Day in 2017 (Women writers); International Women's day 2018 (Suffragettes); Black History Month 2017, Ada Lovelace Day 2017 (Women in STEM with a special focus on Women in Chemistry and the nineteen Women Chemists who petitioned the Chemistry Society in 1904; Women in Medicine; Women in Anthropology; Women Human Rights Defenders, Lost Literary Women; Women Artists; and International Nurses Day. All these events had a strong focus to address the gender gap on Wikipedia and create new role models for young and old alike.
Wikipedia Women in Red editathons are held every month at the university to allow Wikipedia editors a place to come and gain further practice and advice in a supportive environment but also to focus on the creation of pages about notable women missing from Wikipedia to help address the content gender gap where only 17.7% of biography articles are about women.
Wikipedia Women in Red editing is part of the new 4 year Athena SWAN action plan at the university with a focus on improving the visibility of female role models in ten academic disciplines.
To celebrate 100 years since the Representation of the People Act (1918) gave some women the vote, we held three #Vote100 Wikipedia editing events. 34 brand new biography articles have now surfaced on Wikipedia about Scotland’s suffragettes and the Eagle House suffragettes, along with 220 improved pages and items of data so people can discover all about their lives and contributions.
New Wikipedia pages telling the stories of the Scottish suffragettes have been created including: Maude Edwards slashing the portrait of King George V at the Royal Scottish Academy and her defiance at trial; the force-feeding of Frances Gordon and Arabella Scott at Perth Prison by the doctor who was “emotionally hooked” to Arabella Scott and offered to escort her to Canada. The attempted arson conducted by pioneer doctor Dorothea Chalmers Smith, the Aberdonian suffragette & organiser, Caroline Phillips, being sacked by telegram by Christabel Pankhurst, and the “energetic little woman from Stranraer” Jane Taylour who was a firebrand lecturer on Women’s Suffrage touring up and down Scotland and England. Read more in the Histropedia timeline (external website).
Women's suffrage in Scotland – a Histropedia timeline built from Wikipedia articles and data in Wikidata. Shown off to good effect by University of Edinburgh Archives Manager (and Wikipedia editor), Rachel Hosker, and Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew.
Mary Susan McIntosh (1936–2013) sociologist, feminist, political activist and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights in the UK featured as a ‘Did You Know‘ fact was on Wikipedia’s front page on 11 May 2017. The front page is viewed, on average, 25 million times a day. Mary’s page was only written on 8 March 2017 during our International Women’s Day event here at the University of Edinburgh by one of our attendees, Lorna Campbell. Mary’s page has now been viewed in excess of 10,500 times because a) editors were motivated to address Wikipedia’s gender gap problem where less than 15% of editors are female and less than 18% of biographies are of notable women and b) we felt Mary’s story was important enough that it should be shared on Wikipedia’s front page and introduced to an audience of up to 25 million.
9 year old Scottish suffragette, Elizabeth (Bessie) Watson, who would play the pipes on the platform at Waverley station to encourage suffragette prisoners being transported to Holloway prison.
JISC Case study:Wikimedia in the curriculum – addressing the challenges of digital and information literacy, digital scholarship and open knowledge at the University of Edinburgh.
What do we want the modern graduate to be – interview with Dr. Jenni Garden and Dr. Michael Seery on Wikipedia in education
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Interview with Dr. Alex Chow (World Christianity MTh/MSc programme)
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Interview with Áine Kavanagh (Reproductive Biology Hons. student)
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Interview with Edinburgh University's Translation Studies MSc students (excerpt)
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Interview with World Christianity MSc students
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Interview with Edinburgh University's Translation Studies MSc students
Teaching with Wikipedia – Dr. Chris Harlow (Reproductive Biology research session at the University of Edinburgh)
Video interview with Ruth Jenkins, Academic Support Librarian at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, speaking about the Reproductive Biology Honours Wikipedia assignment.
Global Education Citizens – Dr. Simon Riley and Dr. Richard Smith on the Reproductive Biology Wikipedia assignment
Wikipedia and Women in Chemistry – excerpt from interview with Dr. Jenni Garden and Dr. Michael Seery
Wikipedia in the Classrom – excerpt from interview with Translation Studies MSc student Mark Bradshaw
Wikipedia and Women in STEM – Athina Frantzana, PhD student at the School of Physics and Astronomy
The Wikimedian in Residence channel on Youtube now has accrued over 59,000 views of its 69 videos from 168 countries around the world with 258 subscribers.
"I use Wikipedia a lot, so it was good to be able to understand exactly what goes into editing it. The assignment also helped me understand where to find valuable references in places I
would not have known to look.
Reproductive Biology Hons. student
"I had the opportunity to translate a small part of Milton's poems, and it was a great translation practice. I became more informed about how Wikipedia works and how to create
and edit an entry."
Translation Studies MSc student
"It is nice to see my work published and online, and the content translation tool meant that I didn't have to spend much time worrying about formatting"
Translation Studies MSc student
"It demystified creation of online resources especially in this context, Wikipedia. I believe we had all the help and resources necessary for a successful article. Thank you for this
wonderful exposure, enabling in us the "I can" spirit."
World Christianity MSc student
"It surprised me that editing a Wiki article would be such fun."
Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Wikimedia is the collective name for the Wikimedia movement, revolving around a group of inter-related projects, including Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and others, which aim to use the collaborative power of the Internet, and the wiki concept, to create and share free knowledge of all kinds.
Wikipedia is a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Virtually anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by contributing neutral, cited information.
Wikidata aims to create a free knowledge base about the world that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. It provides data in all the languages of the Wikimedia projects, and allows for the central access to data in a similar vein as Wikimedia Commons does for multimedia files.
Wikidata: The New Rosetta Stone – 25-11-2015 | Alex Hinojo CCCBLAB Research and Innovation in the Cultural Sphere. "With more than fifteen million items compiled in the space of just three years, Wikidata is set to become the main open data repository worldwide. The eagerly awaited promise of linked open data seems to have finally arrived: a multilingual, totally open database in the public domain, which can be read and edited by both humans and machines."
Wikimedia Commons aims to provide a central repository for free photographs, diagrams, maps, videos, animations, music, sounds, spoken texts, and other free media. It is a multilingual project with contributors speaking dozens of languages, that serves as a central repository for all Wikimedia projects.
Wikivoyage aims to create the world's largest free, complete and up-to-date worldwide travel guide. Wikivoyage was launched in January 2013 and is written by volunteers in the same spirit of sharing knowledge that makes travel so enjoyable.
Wikisource is a multilingual project to archive a collection of free and open content texts. It is not only a superior format for storing classics, laws, and other free works as hypertext, but it also serves as a base for translating these texts. Wikisource has several editions in many individual languages.
e.g.Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator at the University of Edinburgh, has uploaded a PhD thesis by Thomas Jehu to Wikisource here.
The Wikimedia Residency at the University of Edinburgh (3 minute video).
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Sophia Jex-Blake as a young woman
9 year old Scottish suffragette, Elizabeth (Bessie) Watson, who would play the pipes on the platform at Waverley station to encourage suffragette prisoners being transported to Holloway prison._(cropped).jpg)
Instructor Basics, How to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool (Wiki Education Foundation)
Case Studies, How instructors are teaching with Wikipedia (Wiki Education Foundation)
Theories: Wikipedia and the production of knowledge
Illustrating Wikipedia brochure (Wiki Education Foundation)
Editing Wikipedia brochure (Wiki Education Foundation)
Evaluating Wikipedia brochure (Wiki Education Foundation)
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Reproductive Medicine case study
Wikipedia in the Classroom – Translation Studies MSc case study
Wikipedia in the Classroom – World Christianity MSc case study
How to conduct Wikipedia Editing Training (lesson plan)
Exemplar training ppt
Wikipedia and Academic Research
Wikidata in the Classroom – Data Science for Design MSc case study 2 July 2018
Feedback from the Data Science for Design MSc case students about the Wikidata project to import the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database.
