Wikipedia:GLAM/Yorkshire Network Project/Report5

Institution	Resident's Name	Period Covered	Date of Report
Yorkshire Network Project hosted by York Museums Trust	PatHadley (talk)	19 February 2015 - 17 April 2015	28 April 2015

Overview

Building on the image donations and institutional relationships established over the last period, I have now been able to improve relationships with individual editors through the Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon and several training sessions. Further, getting my own training in the GWToolset and developing the tracking of Wikimedia Commons image donations should improve the scalable and easily measurable aspects of the project. This period has been much more detail-focused and shows that should be possible to create a skilled and sustainable community of Wikipedians connected to Yorkshire's museums by the end of the project.

Meetings and workshops

March 2015

6 - Training session at Hepworth Wakefield
8 - Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon Hepworth Wakefield

April 2015

8 - Toolset Mass upload training London]
10 - ODI- Our Heritage & Culture: How open data can help us engage London
12 - Leeds WikiMeetup
13 - Digitisation and Museums Workshop (co-leading) Barnsley Museums
15 - Training session at York Castle Museum

Training events

Art+Feminism at the Hepworth Wakefield

The Hepworth Wakefield hosted a fantastic event for the global Art + Feminism edit-a-thon programme. The event was set up by Holly Grange, curator at the Hepworth, after she saw some coverage in the art-sector press about last year's edit-a-thons (she's not sure where!). This led to her contacting Dorothy Howard in New York, being passed on to Daria Cybulska at Wikimedia UK and then to me. This was a great development as previously the Hepworth had not responded to promotion of the Yorkshire Network Project.

The event attracted 19 participants, and led to the creation of 12 new biographies of female artists and the improvement of 14 other articles. The event got coverage in the UK's Independent newspaper and on Leeds Student Radio in their Arts show (including an interview with Pat Hadley).

A training event was run with Hepworth staff and a group from Rotherham museums the Friday before the event. This was attended by 8 new editors:

MadelineBoden - University of York Art History student/Hepworth Wakefield Intern
NobleKarl - Rotherham Heritage Services Curator
Hannah Kayi Mason - Mentoring Programme Manager and Content Manager for The Art House, Wakefield
JennaMoughton - Assistant Collections Officer for Rotherham Heritage Services
BeckyPGee - Rotherham Heritage Services
Sandra Hicklin - Archivist Rotherham Archive Services
Elspethrose - Hepworth Wakefield Collections Assistant
Holly Grange - Hepworth Wakefield Curator

The edit-a-thon itself was attended by a few existing Wikipedians, members of the public and a large group of students from the University of York's Art History department. New users were:

Existing Wikipedia users were:

FionaArt1986 Collections Assistant at York Art Gallery
Sam Walton Wikipedia Admin (based in Liverpool)
Mrsmartfellow York Museums Trust Digital Team Leader
PatHadley Yorkshire Wikimedia Ambassador - organiser

And three of those created on the Friday training session:

MadelineBoden - University of York Art History student/Hepworth Wakefield Intern
Elspethrose - Hepworth Wakefield Collections Assistant
Holly Grange - Hepworth Wakefield Curator

Apologies were sent by:

ColinFine

Museums training events

There were two one-to-one training events - one at Harrogate Museums and one with the Yorkshire Museum. These are explained in more detail below.

NicolaOates - YMT Volunteer and William Smith specialist
Jonathan Fenny - Harrogate Museums volunteer

Castle Museum

I ran a training day for staff and volunteers at YMT's Castle Museum most of whom work on social or military history material.

JamesWake - History curator
Pnewton1987 - History curator
Mfprior - History curator
Limetree1 - YMT volunteer
Thixendale - YMT volunteer
HenryTrotter - YMT volunteer
Cooldudescrib - YMT volunteer
Shorthand Diaries - YMT volunteer

The day session went very well and the group generally learned pretty fast. Hopefully, the increase in skills and awareness will create scope for more work with the history collections of YMT and has already led to a plan to donate some high quality images of WWI artefacts currently featured in a Google Cultural Institute exhibition: 1914: When the world changed forever.

Building relationships

With editors

Harrogate Museums were keen to build on their image upload with the training of one of their volunteers in order to set up a partnership with a Wikipedia Editor keen on Egyptology. The inspiration for this partnership between someone inside the museum and a Wikipedian with a topic specialism is the project with the Thomas J. Watson Library and editor Johnbod. Though Harrogate's donation (71 images) is relatively small. Their team have been keen to learn that this should lead to more than a million views on Wikipedia in the next year. An informal post about this Forecast:A million pairs of eyes has been useful for the Harrogate team to feedback to their managers and for encouraging other museums to overcome their hesitations. I ran a one-to-one training session with Harrogate's volunteer Jonathan Fenny and we have set a partnership with Egyptology enthusiast/expert Iry-Hor. The initial topic is pre-dynastic Egyptian pottery and the discussion of this has been taking place on the Museum's GLAM Directory talk page. Jonathan has also been developing his editing skills and knowledge of Wikipedia's policies by rebuilding the article for Harrogate's Royal Pump Room museum in his sandbox. Things are progressing very organically and I am optimistic for a strong partnership but sensitive to the needs and challenges faced by both parties.

One editor trained at the Laurence Sterne Trust's event at Northumbria University has continued editing and recently begun an internship with the Blyth Tall Ships Project. This has led to her making improvements to the article on explorer William Smith. Hopefully this will lead to more collaboration and possibly some images or other content from the trust. Their Flickr Galleries include a mixture of historic imagery, artefact photos and informative photos of boats being restored.

One editor from the Hepworth Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon has continued to edit: AnnisStead on a range of subjects. She is York-based so it is hoped that she might get involved in other projects that interest her related to local GLAMs.

I attended my first Leeds Wikimeet to engage with the existing editing community and though there were no immediate new plans from this, the next meetup should hopefully be in York on June 14.

With museums

Malton

A presentation was made on my behalf to Malton Museum's trustees but nothing has come of it as yet, despite following up. The trust is currently focused on its new Arts Council-funded project 'Vivat Fido' and the scope for GLAMwiki work may become clearer once that has got going.

Barnsley

We are hoping to make a big leap in progress with Barnsley soon as they are about to commence a new project with their fine art collections. On 13 April I co-ran a day-long session on digitisation, photography and opening up collections. This was with the other members of YMT's digital team as part of YMT's role as an Arts Council major partner museum. The attendees included representatives from Barnsley's archive service, Rotherham museums and others. There was a very positive response to opening up collections through Wikimedia Commons.

Burnby Park

Burnby Park's participation in GLAMwiki work has been held back by their lack of digital capacity rather than enthusiasm. They will be the second organisation to receive digitisation training from YMT and potentially a loan of equipment in the follow up. This will lead to a donation of images to Commons relating to the history of the Stewart Family that occupied the house.

Rotherham

Rotherham Museums has made a donation of files intended for Wikimedia Commons but the first set of files was not suitable for upload due to a misunderstanding. However, they have also donated a unique interactive programme about a local Roman fort from which screen captures will be donated to Commons. This will provide a unique resource of didactic images explaining Roman fortifications.

Commons Uploads

Commons uploads have slowed down while new relationships are negotiated with other museums. I have continued to upload a small trickle of images from York Museums Trust and have made an effort to organise the existing imagery from the National Media Museum in the hope that I can build a stronger case for them to get involved with the project. BaGLAMa2 tracking has recently gone live for the Laurence Sterne Trust and Harrogate Museum's images and all of YMT's upload categories. The figures for March are very encouraging:

Initial BaGLAMa reports
GLAM Category	Total number of images	Number of article appearances	Number of images used	Total views	Most viewed article	Most viewed image
Images from Harrogate Museums and Arts	86	15	15	134,971	Anubis	Anubis Mask from Harrogate - rotating animation - HARGM10686
Images from the Laurence Sterne Trust	49	22	25	29,208	The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman	Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman by Charles Robert Leslie CCWSH1157
Images from the York Museums Trust Online Collection	108	120	40	149,267	Napoleon III	Portrait of Mlle Rachel by William Etty YORAG 988
Images donated by York Museums Trust Online	457	157	105	243,952	Constantine the Great	Bust of Constantine I from York YORYM 1998 23

The GLAMwiki Toolset Training at Wikimedia UK has led to the whitelisting of .adlibhosting.com, a domain that includes YMT's online collection and this should enable a test upload from York Museums Trust in the near future. The plan is to use the tool to improve the metadata quality and organisation of images but keep donations divided up into curated sections. This should make it easier to encourage Wikipedians to engage with them.

York Museums Trust images

Yorkshire Museum's high-resolution, colour-accurate Map

Low-resolution, high-colour version - currently more useful on Wikipedia?

Two versions of Smith's 1815 Strata map

As we approach the 200th anniversary of geologist William Smith's publication of his first geological map, the Yorkshire Museum and other organisations are celebrating and promoting his contribution to science. Until now, the largest version of the map on Commons was 4.63MB. Now, a high quality version of the Yorkshire Museums copy is available and is nearly 70MB! Unfortunately, the map is not yet used on any Wikipedia articles and - due to the accurate representation of its faded colours - has limited value at thumbnail size. I have contacted Durova about creating a digital restoration of the map for use in Wikipedia. Also, I trained NicolaOates - a volunteer working on Smith's material at the Yorkshire Museum - to edit Wikipedia and she will be adding material over the next month or so. YMT are committed to releasing high-resolution files and there are plans to investigate whether a gigapixel version of Yorkshire's map might be created.

York Museums Trust's images have now achieved excellent reuse across Wikipedia and I have investigated the remaining unofficial images of YMT objects still in use on Wikipedia articles. table shows that there are only 32 images left that need replacing with high quality official images.

Upcoming plans

Within YMT

In the coming weeks there are plans to further develop content related to William Smith, including hi-resolution scans of the images in his books being uploaded to Commons. Though the Tempest Anderson collection has languished a little in comparison with the ambitions of the initial project, we are now planning to upload another batch of images as a test of the GWToolset. This will lead to a Curators Choice article.

Outreach and engagement

On April 29, there will be the first meeting of a University of York Art History society 'WikiClub'. This was organised due to the enthusiasm of the group that attended the Hepworth Edit-a-thon. Hopefully it will lead to a regular meeting of keen editors with access to York's University Library and York Art Gallery resources.

On May 14 I will be meeting staff at Northern College about scope for their students working with Wikipedia, particularly in connection with Barnsley's museums.

On May 29 I will be delivering a workshop on GLAMwiki for the Yorkshire FED Conference. This should be a great opportunity to further amplify the project's message and use the existing successes to push things forward.