Over an 18 months period, the SLIC Wikimedian in residence facilitated training on how to edit Wikipedia and contribute to its sister open knowledge projects for a total of 162 librarians across 23 Scottish local authorities. The gender ratio of the participants was 75.31% female.
The project was funded by the Public Library Improvement Fund (PLIF), so priority for training was given to public librarians (73.45% of total librarians trained), but opportunities were also offered to public library partners across the library profession including school librarians, HE and FE librarians, specialist librarians, health librarians and law librarians.
In the past 6 months, the project has culminated with a Train the Trainer programme specifically tailored for librarians to enable them to deliver their own Wikipedia related activities with their local library users. A total of 32 librarians have taken up this opportunity from 9 local authorities and will constitute a network across Scotland delivering consistent high quality training and able to collaborate across the library sector as well as with other partners from the Scottish Wikimedia community.
Throughout the residency, a total of 10 editathons were delivered with support from the SLIC Wikimedian in Residence and a further 7 are currently in planning by librarians who have undertaken the Train the Trainer programme. To date, a total of 45 library users have been trained to edit Wikipedia during these events and 55 new articles on Scottish history and culture have been added to Wikipedia using sources from the libraries' rich collections.
Over an 18 months period, the SLIC Wikimedian in residence facilitated training on how to edit Wikipedia and contribute to its sister open knowledge projects for a total of 162 librarians across 23 Scottish local authorities. The gender ratio of the participants was 75.31% female.
The project was funded by the Public Library Improvement Fund (PLIF), so priority for training was given to public librarians (73.45% of total librarians trained), but opportunities were also offered to public library partners across the library profession including school librarians, HE and FE librarians, specialist librarians, health librarians and law librarians.
In the past 6 months, the project has culminated with a Train the Trainer programme specifically tailored for librarians to enable them to deliver their own Wikipedia related activities with their local library users. A total of 32 librarians have taken up this opportunity from 9 local authorities and will constitute a network across Scotland delivering consistent high quality training and able to collaborate across the library sector as well as with other partners from the Scottish Wikimedia community.
Throughout the residency, a total of 10 editathons were delivered with support from the SLIC Wikimedian in Residence and a further 7 are currently in planning by librarians who have undertaken the Train the Trainer programme. To date, a total of 45 library users have been trained to edit Wikipedia during these events and 55 new articles on Scottish history and culture have been added to Wikipedia using sources from the libraries' rich collections.
