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Wikimedia Community Ireland/Reports/Report 2022

< Wikimedia Community Ireland

2022 was an eventful year for Wikimedia Community Ireland, in which the group are funded partners in an EU Erasmus Project and welcomed the first Wikimedia Libraries Convention to Maynooth, Ireland. The Erasmus funding has allowed for the most progression in our Irish language outreach since our establishment in 2014.

Maynooth University Library

Minutes of the monthly meetings of WCI can be found here.

Events and outreach

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Outreach

Our project coordinator, Rebecca, was interviewed for the radio show Do You Speak Tech? on Near FM on 24 February.

Online outreach

The monthly online Wikipedia editing events continued on Discord until May, at which point attendance dropped off as pandemic measures preventing in-person events were rolled back.

Rebecca continued with twice weekly Twitch streams on editing Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects until February, when it was decided to stop this series as society re-opened.

Rebecca was interviewed on 2 podcasts:

For one news article:

Rebecca also contributed to a blog post from the Digital Repository of Ireland entitled A Conversation about Open Access to Online Collections.

Outreach and events held with third level institutions

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University College Dublin

  • October to December, UCD information studies is our longest standing programme with lecturer Dr Crystal Fulton. This year, students focused on Irish historical biographies relating to visual artists.

Dublin City University

  • In January, Rebecca gave an introductory session to the Masters in Translation students, with some students opting to translate Wikipedia articles across a number of language pairs as part of their simulated translation bureau assignment.
  • On 24 March, Rebecca supported Dr Ruth McManus when she presented at the internal DCU lunch time talks on innovative pedagogical or teaching practices, the Sipping Point.
  • October and November, a Wikipedia assignment was again integrated in a final year assessment of Geography students, led by Dr Ruth McManus. The students edited articles related to planned communities across the island of Ireland.
  • In February 2021, WCI was approached to be a collaborator on a research project, Bitscope Project, by Dr Tómas Ward. The project is aimed at assessing user interaction with artworks in a virtual environment and was funded in early 2022. In November 2022, WCI consulted with one of the researchers about available and suitable Public Domain and openly licenced media on Wikimedia Commons for use in the project.

Trinity College Dublin

  • In February, an introductory session to Wikipedia editing on law subjects was given to a group of 90 law students at the invitation of Dr Eoin O'Dell.

University of Limerick

  • In October and November, the MA in Public History students edited or created articles relating to a number of historical events, people, 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, with digitisation beginning in 2022. 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.

 
Design Sketch for Irish moss dress by Sybil Connolly

Hunt Museum

  • On 20 January, a full day editathon was held in the Hunt Museum, Limerick focusing on topics relating to the Sybil Connolly collection and further utilise the images newly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the Hunt. This included experimenting with using digitised Connolly's sketches, matching them with the realised designs e.g. the Irish moss dress.
  • In late 2022, exploratory conversations have taken place about the Hunt Museum using the cloud service of WikiBase for their collections with Wikimedia Deutschland.

IFLA World Library and Information Congress

On 28 July, Rebecca took part in a panel entitled Strengthening Indigenous Languages Through the Collaborations in Wikimedia Projects: Celebrating the start of the UNESCO Decade of Indigenous Languages alongside Jason Evans from the National Library of Wales and Sara Thomas of Wikimedia UK at the IFLA World Congress at the invitation of the Indigenous Matters Section. It is planned to build on the discussions started with the panel in 2023.

Writing the City of Literature: Dublin Wiki Hackathon

On 15 October, Rebecca facilitated a Wikipedia editing workshop convened by the Dublin History Research Network, sponsored by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and Dublin City Council. The event took place in the Long Room Hub in Trinity College, Dublin.

Wikimania

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Rebecca and Fionnuala Murphy presented a live episode of their podcast, The World According to Wikipedia, with special guest Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Additional outreach

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Fighting Blindness

On 13 June, Rebecca was invited to give a talk to the technology social group of the charity, Fighting Blindness. This one hour talk and discussion was very fruitful for both our understanding of the needs of the blind community in using Wikimedia projects, and the social group's understanding of how Wikipedia in particular works.

VocalEyes training with the Irish Museums Association

On 7 July, WCI partnered with the Irish Museums Association to undertake training on alt text from the UK charity, VocalEyes. The exercise used images and alt text functionality on Wikipedia as an example of alt text and how to apply it.

 
Stickers at the GLAMwiki meeting

European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting

Rebecca took part in this meeting on 14-16 September, presenting 2 lightening talks.

Queering Wikipedia 2022

on 21 October, Rebecca was invited to give a quick update on work relating to LGBT representation in Ireland, and plans for the future as part of the opening session of the conference.

Training and workshops undertaken

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  • 10 May - Rebecca took part in a workshop by The Wheel on Helping Communities Recover from the Covid-19 Pandemic virtually.
  • 8 June - Rebecca took part in a workshop by The Wheel on Digital Connectedness and Inclusion virtually.
  • 23 June - Rebecca took part in a workshop by The Wheel on Social Value Ireland’s member session: Delving into Principles 1 & 2 virtually.
  • 1-4 December - Meghan undertook the Train the Trainer course with Wikimedia UK.

WikiWomen Erasmus Project

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WikiWomen Erasmus learning days in Donostia

Having secured EU Erasmus Programme funding in late 2021, WCI is a fully funded partner in the WikiWomen Erasmus Project with partners from Friesland and the Basque Country. The first partner meetings took place virtually and in-person in the first part of 2022. A teacher bootcamp took place in Donostia in July 2022. The first student editing exchange will take place in Monaghan, Ireland in March 2023. Work is currently underway on the teacher and student materials. A survey was developed to circulated with educators and GLAM professionals around the use of small language Wikipedias for outreach activities with secondary school students as part of the project's needs analysis.

Meghan Dowling, a volunteer with the project, developed materials for the Monaghan student group to start editing Vicipéid during an editathon on 8 November.

 
Wikimedia Libraries International Convention 2022 group photo

Wikimedia Libraries Convention 2022

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On 23 and 24 July, Ireland hosted the first Wikimedia Libraries International Convention which was convened in Maynooth University Library. WCI acted as the fiscal sponsor for the event, as well as Rebecca being a member of the core organising team. This work focused on logistical support on the ground in Ireland for the international core organising team, as well as providing visa letters and support, dealing with travel arrangements, and other associated bookings.

Along with Dr Crystal Fulton and Dr Marta Busillo, Rebecca convened a focus group as part of the conference schedule entitled Wikipedia in the Higher Education Classroom: A Fishbowl Discussion to Share Experience and Model Practice with presentations from Dr Sharon Flynn, Dr Elaine Sissons, and Dr Ruth McManus. Further focus groups have been convened since, and it is planned to publish this research in the near future.

Contests

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Wiki Science

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The winners of Wiki Science 2021 were announced in January 2022. One image, Non-Biting Diptera Midge Larva, by Karl Gaff was also selected as a winner in the international competition.

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    Microscopy winner by: KarlGaff
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    Microscopy runner up by: KarlGaff
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    Nature and Wildlife winner by: Lorraine Wenham
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    Nature and Wildlife runner up by: Riccardo Salvatore Riggi
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    Astronomy winner by: Photoneill
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    Astronomy runner up by: Photoneill

Wiki Loves Folklore

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Wiki Loves Folklore was held in Ireland for the second time in 2022 with 228 image submitted. Once again, participation was low, but plans were made to further adapt the competition for the local community in 2023.

Ireland's winning images:

Wiki Loves Earth

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Ireland held Wiki Loves Earth for the third time in June 2022, with 600 images uploaded by 59 participants.

Winning images:

Wiki Loves Monuments

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Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 was Ireland's 9th edition of the competition, and saw 1124 images uploaded by 41 participants.

Winning images:

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

Movement Strategy

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Rebecca has continued to be a member of the group looking to develop The Capacity Exchange pilot platform. She has also been involved in the establishment of the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub as part of the steering committee.

Rebecca and Meghan attended the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin in September.

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