2018 Annual Plan/Final Report

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Wikimedia Australia 2018-19 Annual Report (pdf)

Program story

2019 Wikimedia Australia Community Conference

Learning story

Title: Programs and Events Dashboard campaign

What problem does this solve?

During 2018-19, facilitators at Australian editing events have started used the ‘Programs and Events Dashboard’ at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org. (We refer to it as the ‘Outreach Dashboard’ in planning and events as that is the name people see in the URL)

The statistics collected via this process are extremely useful. However, the compilation of metrics from across multiple dashboards for events run across multiple states, facilitators and events has made it challenging to compile end-of-year reporting statistics.

What is the solution?

The solution is to develop a plan similar to the template shared by Wikimedia NYC for using the Dashboard, and to implement this in order to simplify 2019-20 reporting.

  1. Create a new umbrella campaign: Wikimedia Australia 2019-20
  2. Develop a procedure/policy outlining the benefits of this approach
  3. Discuss this with event organisers as part of planning
  4. Request that they include this campaign on their dashboard (in addition to other institutional or global campaign tags)
  5. Wikimedia Australia liaison contact to acknowledge this partnership in subsequent reporting and feedback about the event.

Evaluate the success of this strategy when it comes time to compile our 2019-20 reports.

Results

Wikimedia Australia had two programs for 2018-19, with each program made up of multiple projects.

1.    Community Support: To support and strengthen the engagement of the Wikimedia community in Australia; to increase the diversity of participants participating in online and face to face activities, in terms of gender, region, language, and topics/sectors of interest; and to build community capacity.

2.    Outreach and Engagement: To increase awareness and participation of new individuals and organisations; establishment of two new collaborative partnerships; and participation in global content competitions and wide promotion in Australia.

Operational funding was also included to ensure the Chapter and its programs were legally and efficiently managed.

Community Support

How did we go?

Our plan was to measure the success of this program according to the following metrics.

Metric Result Status Notes
Number of events increased over the 2017 total of 20 event reports in 12 months 27 Surpassed The Wikimedia Australia events report archive for the period July 2018 – June 2019 shows community support events
Details on attendees at those reports

names, number of attendees, interests in the Wikimedia projects which can be utilised later for future programs, details of their participation.

71 Progressing Outreach dashboards were used wherever possible.

Eventbrite registration was used for several events and provided personal data.

If only we had known how to collate these into an annual WMAU campaign to collect this is a manageable way. See Learning Story

Increased diversity of attendees and applicants for scholarships 10 Progressing Diversity themes were chosen for ten events, including: Art+Feminism Brisbane & Melbourne x 2; Women Write Wiki, Noongarpedia. Five events were held in the rural and remote communities of: Broome, Pt Hedland, Cairns, Toodyay, Alice Springs and Tennant Creek.

The specified target for an additional scholarship to attend the community conference was for someone from an underrepresented group.

At least one successful Australian presentation 4 Surpassed Wikimedia Australia has been invited to provide presenters for a number of professional conferences, as well as partnering with the University of Sydney’s Worlds of Wikimedia conference

This work was assigned to state-based WikiClub leaders, the WMAU committee Vice-President, and general committee member.

The Wikimedia Australia events archive for the period July 2018 – June 2019 shows 27 community support events were planned and advertised by Australian editing communities. These include WikiClubs, Meetups and organisation-based editing communities meeting on a semi-regular basis.

WikiClubs

WikiClubs are semi-formal groups that meet locally based on shared geographic and/or thematic interests. They are self-managed and responsible for their own initiatives. They are a key port of call for supporting Wikimedia Australia initiatives, and in turn, they see Wikimedia Australia as a source of connection to wider national and global projects.

Three existing state-based WikiClubs continued to meet during the year. Each WikiClub welcomes locals or visitors interested in finding out more, getting help with editing of Wikipedia or other projects.

There were also 10 meetups advertised on the events schedule, taking place in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. These tend to be attended by a small handful of editors, unless connected to a guest speaker event such as WikiTour.

WikiClubWest

WikiClubWest (WCW) is group of Wikimedians based in Perth, Western Australia, who support all WMAU activities in Western Australia. Over the last 12 months there have been 10 regular meetups where the group discusses activities taking place, who will be attending them, and how best to support them.

WikiClub West’s usual format of activities is monthly meetings, sometimes bi-monthly. The second half of 2018 was the busiest six months in the ten years of the group. Events included:

  • Victoria Quay Perth meetup #53 shared a stall with the Australian Association for Maritime History.
ESEAP

In 2018-19, the expected ESEAP 2019 conference (which Wiki Club West would have been a major player) was effectively cancelled due to lack of support from funding bodies. The significant bidding for Wikimania 2020, was similarly curtailed by a decision for another location. Wikimania 2020 Bid included a visit from Asaf Bartov to assess the facilities available to which he was surprised about both the number of options and what was available. Following a request from the WMF, events for ESEAP to host Wikimania in Bangkok, three members of WCW are actively involved with organising that event.

Archivists Conference

The Australian Society of Archivists 2018 conference was held in Perth in September 2018. WCW members were hosts at a stall during the conference which had over 500 attendees. People involved with Noongarpedia gave talks at the conference, as well WCW supported workshops held on Wikipedia and Wikidata, and also assisted Andy Mabbett. WCW also arranged for Andy to speak with Archaeology and Anthropology master’s students at University of Western Australia.

Digitisation

Following the GLAM Peak events which ran through 2017/18, WCW responded to a need of Western Australian GLAM community and put together a Digitization kit. This kit is being used to help improve content and also establish longer term relationships with GLAMs. Contact through WCW efforts resulted in Wikimedia Australia becoming a member organisation of the Australian Museums and Galleries Association, with projects currently being discussed in WA.

Noongarpedia

The efforts with Nyungar community are ongoing and have seen connections being created along with further expansion of Keny mia.

The Noongarpedia project represents several areas of importance for Wikimedia Australia, and the Wikimedia movement. As an Indigenous language project promoting knowledge equity it involves partnerships with both the Noongar and the academic communities and is a tangible model for future Indigenous language partnerships in other states of Australia, and globally. The fact that this prestigious national research project is using the Wikimedia infrastructure also provides a powerful example of knowledge as service.

Metrics Count
Participants 10
Files in use 1
Files uploaded 13
Items created 3
Items improved 16
New editors 2
Pages improved 54
7-day retention 2

5 participants at Meetup #53

6 participants at Meetup #54

WikiClubNT

The major WikiClubNT activity this year was centred on Tennant Creek.

WikiClub NT went to Tennant Creek (pop. 3000) in December 2018 for a Wikipedia Workshop at the Barkly Regional Council Library. Wikiclub NT meets to create and update Wikipedia pages about NT people, places and histories. Coordinator Caddie Brain reports that before the workshop there were only 20 images of Tennant Creek on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons. Using the new Wikidata tool, WikiShootme [1], it is possible to see where there were known areas of interest but no images in Wikidata. Showing the conversion of the red dots on the WikiShootMe map to green as a result of the workshop was rewarding for participants and made for a good visual to use on social media. This resulted in 5 new pages and 35 new images.

WikiClubNT Coordinator, Caddie Brain presented a learning story entitled ‘Editing in the bush, the WikiClub NT experience’ at the June Community Conference, based on the experience of establishing and running WikiClubNT events. Her slides and the recording of her presentation [first 15mins] are a valuable resource for those organising edit-a-thons.

QWiki

Q Wiki is a monthly Wikipedia editing club held in Brisbane on the last Tuesday of every month from 9am to 12 noon, at The Edge, State Library Queensland. Members work on lists and articles related to current events and exhibitions. SLQ staff and others in the Queensland GLAM community to come together and contribute to Wikipedia pages around a chosen theme based on material in SLQ collections. Wikipedian Kerry Raymond from Wikimedia Australia is at the sessions to provide training and support as required.

Content activity

QWiki projects in 2018-19 included work on Queensland inventors and real estate maps.

From July 2018 participants supported the SLQ Makers exhibition. As the SLQ website is licensed as CC-BY for text (but not images), they were able to reuse material about the exhibition to expand articles about Queensland inventors. Kerry Raymond developed instructions to facilitate this reuse of material. She also presented on this at a more advanced level as part of the Worlds of Wikimedia on 13 June 2019.

State Library of Queensland has a unique collection of digitised real estate maps and plans created by real estate firms from the 1850s to the mid-1900s. Real estate maps can provide information about how land was subdivided, auctioned, who the surveyors were and who sold the land. They can be gems for investigating urban development, local history and house histories. Working in the place name article, Q Wiki Club worked on adding the information from the map about the subdivision of the land at that time.

Dashboard for 2019

QWiki was featured in the March 2019 Queensland Memory newsletter.

hashtag #QWiki

QWiki poster

Dashboard: QWiki 2019

Metric Count
Articles Created 0
Articles Edited 117
Total Edits 396
Editors 16
Words Added 24.6K
References Added 321
Article Views 896K
Commons Uploads 2
Wikidata for GLAMs

In partnership State Library Queensland and Wikimedia Australia organised and co-funded a Queensland Introduction to Wikidata for GLAM event on Tuesday 11 September 2018 at State Library of Queensland, Brisbane. Held in the Auditorium, this was promoted as a professional learning event for library and GLAM professionals.

The event attracted 65 representatives from Queensland GLAM organisations. Andy Mabbett provided an accessible and engaging introduction to Wikidata and its relationship to the GLAMscape. The presentation covered:

·        What is Wikidata?

·        Why does the GLAM sector need to know about this?

·        Who verifies the quality of Wikidata?

·        How can my organisation contribute and how will this data be used?

·        What other Wiki projects relate to the GLAM sector?

The slides of the presentation were published and a professional video of the presentation was recorded for ongoing use by GLAM organisations nationally.

Following a catered networking morning tea, 16 participants stayed on for a hands-on workshop with Andy Mabbett in The Edge media lab, learning how to get started with Wikidata.

A feedback survey from the events rated it highly with 61% very satisfied, and 39% satisfied with the sessions, and the comments received showed we had met our targeted goal of raising awareness about Wikidata. Comments included:

  • I was a complete novice and had no concept of what Wikidata was and this presentation gave me a great grounding and base understanding of what Wikidata is and how it relates to our Wikimedia options
  • I really had no idea. Now I have an idea and am keen to do the follow up workshop. I am also thinking about how I can include information about Wikidata, and Wikipedia as well, into my information and digital literacy teaching as in general terms everyone needs to be aware of this type of service.
  • It would have been great if it was longer, perhaps a break in between so we could digest all that Andy had said. I felt that Andy had so much more he could have shared.
#1Lib1Ref 2019 at SLQ

State Library Queensland was an active participant in #1Lib1Ref in 2018. The 1Lib1Ref Dashboard May 2019.

Coordinator Jacinta Sutton presented on their learning from three years participation in #1Lib1Ref as part of the Worlds of Wikimedia Conference at the University of Sydney on the 14 June 2019. Her presentation was entitled: Libraries, Wikipedia and the yield of knowledge.

Dashboard: SLQ 1Lib1Ref 2019

Metric Count
Articles Created 0
Articles Edited 47
Total Edits 92
Editors 11
Words Added 9.44K
References Added 126
Article Views 438K
Commons Uploads 0

Women Write Wiki Sydney

Women Write Wiki June 2019

The Women Write Wiki project aims to improve the representation of Australian and Pacific women writers in Wikipedia. The group of 6 - 8 women meet every second Wednesday at The Women’s Library, Newtown with coordinator, Ann Reynolds. Their work provides amazing focus on the Wikiproject Women in Red.

Wiki Community of Practice @Uni

Communities of practice were established at several universities during the year. These were centered on higher degree students, researchers and librarians.

La Trobe University

La Trobe University has regular Shut Up and Wiki sessions coordinated by Research Whisperer. On occasion they joined virtually with the University of Melbourne Wiki Agenda.

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne’s Wiki Agenda is a community of practice meets in the Baillieu Library over lunch, as well as running all-day researcher support edit-a-thons. Their focus is addressing the diversity gap.

A regular meetup for University of Melbourne Wikipedians to address the Wikipedia diversity gap. The UMWA Community of Practice (CoP) builds on the successful ResearcHERs Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (2017) and the "I Made the Internet Smarter Today" Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (2018).

The format of each monthly UMWA CoP varies but includes discussions, how-to workshops, and opportunities for independent Wiki editing in good company. The group is open to all University of Melbourne staff and students.

The staff organising these activities are enthusiastic and committed to improving both Wikipedia and the skills and engagement of their students and colleagues.

Shut up and Wiki

On Friday 31 August 2018 the University of Melbourne UOMWiki community came together with La Trobe University's Shut up and Wiki, and Parlour's WikiD project as part of Researchers Week.

https://library.unimelb.edu.au/research/wiki

Dashboard: I made the Internet smarter

Metric Count
Articles Created 17
Articles Edited 65
Total Edits 329
Editors 21
Words Added 18.5K
Article Views 78.2K
Commons Uploads 4
Australian National University
Training: Beyond the Basics edit-a-thon at ANU

Following a 2018 Research Support Day for university library staff, at which Dr Thomas Shafee, La Trobe University and Dr Julia Kuehns, University of Melbourne presented about their university-based communities, Wikimedia Australia was approached by the Australian National University about establishing a similar program in Canberra.

Gideon Digby and Pru Mitchell held online meetings with the ANU coordinator to shape the program. Wikimedia Australia then funded a trainer with a background in academia to travel to Canberra and deliver the two days of training in April 2019 supported by local Wikimedians.

Volunteer support programme

The Wikimedia Australia Volunteer Support Programme is a small grants programme. Its goal is to enable members of the community to undertake an outreach or content-related activity directly related to Wikimedia Australia's mission, which members may otherwise be unable to undertake. There were no requests for funding under the Volunteer Support Program in the first half of the year so a focus was on promoting the grants via the WMAU website, in newsletters and emails on the mailing list. This resulted in several requests, and in total the Volunteer Support Program provided $2,363.69 worth of grants for the following activities.

Presentation: Digital Curation Conference, 4 - 7 February 2019

https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/IDCC19

The goal of this grant was to ensure that the International Digital Curation community (archivist, curator, librarian and academic) was kept aware of the main relevant developments in Wikimedia projects via presentation at IDCC2019.

This grant supported two main outputs. A focus on Wikidata and WikiJournals with live demonstration that prioritised Wikidata and a talk on WikiJournals. A live demonstration of Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata went very smoothly, with a range of examples used from science, law, and history topics. The talk was well-received with questions afterwards about how Wikipedia has changed over the past 18 years. A group of 8 people signed up for accounts and made their first Wikidata edits during a tea break.

Photography at Avalon Air Show

Funding to attend the Avalon Air Show in February 2019, resulted in a photo shoot of over 1500 photographs over the two days. Some of these were retakes, test shots or someone walking in front of the camera, with a conservative estimate that of the over 1500 photographs, about 750 are likely to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. As of 27 July 2019, 120 of the 131 photographs in March 2019 at Avalon Airport (including the Category:2019 Australian International Airshow subcategory) are a result of this photo shoot, of which seven are used on Wikipedia.

Scholarships to WoW and community conferences

These scholarship grants funded travel and accommodation for two WMAU members from outside Sydney to attend the Worlds of Wikimedia and Community conferences at the University of Sydney in June, 2019. As part of this grant, both recipients prepared and presented conference sessions.

Kerry Raymond presented at the Worlds of Wikimedia conference on Creating Wikipedia articles from CC-by content.  [2]. Her challenge to the conference: “Let’s stop depending on the cottage industry approach to Wikipedia and let’s start a Wikipedia industrial revolution”, pointing out the significant amount of Australian content available for re-use in Wikipedia.

Margaret Donald presented an informative session at the community conference on Wikidata and botany, entitled, Australasian Virtual Herbarium, taxonbar & Wikidata for botanical articles

This was an eye-opener for many at the conference both in terms of Wikidata and its connection to Wikipedia via the taxonbar, and the video of the session has prompted ongoing discussion via social media.

Outreach and engagement

Outreach to the wider Australian population is a priority in order to increase engagement. In this program Wikimedia Australia sought to increase the number of people who know about Wikimedia, who understand how it works and who are attracted to contributing. Specific target audiences included educators, the GLAM sector, and rural and Indigenous communities. The objectives for the 2018-19 outreach and engagement program were:

a.    Increase awareness and participation of new individuals and organisations

b.    Establishment of two new collaborative partnerships

c.     Participation in global content competitions and wide promotion in Australia

How did we go?

The outreach and engagement program for this period included continuation of successful activities, identified new opportunities and some capacity for responding to partnership requests

Our plan was to measure the success of this program according to the following metrics.

Metric Result Status Notes
Number of new accounts generated through outreach events 108 Exceeded Majority of Outreach dashboard editors are new accounts
Two new collaborative partnerships 2 Met University of Sydney

Women’s Art Register

Speaker requests to WMAU 5 Exceeded Requests to speak at GLAM events
Success of content competitions 65% photos

10% members

Did not meet 2,000 photos, 20 new members

This work was assigned to individual content competition coordinators, our Communications subcommittee and general committee members.

Partnerships page:

Partnerships

WikiTowns

Toodyaypedia is a collaborative project between the Shire of Toodyay, Toodyay Historical Society (THS) and Wikimedia Australia (WMAU). It started following a discussion between the President of the Toodyay Historical Society and Wikimedians who were attending the Western Australian State Heritage Awards in 2013.

Since then the collaboration has seen the creation of a Wiki Town using QRpedia codes, the first stage of which was to write articles on the heritage listed buildings. This was followed by the second stage which focused on some of the notable people from Toodyay over time.

On Saturday 29th of June 2019 the result of stage three, was publicly launched. It involved the Shire engaging a local historian Alison Cromb to research and verify the information used for a trail booklet. Toodyay Historical Society has a whole new perspective on the history of early development in the Toodyay area.

What started out as a small group of people some 6 years previously, has grown into a whole-of-town project.

Significantly arising as an issue is the QRpedia software which having been utilised in the two earlier stages of the project had problems arising, as a consequence, both Wikimedia Australia and Wikimedia UK began working on fixing the issues.

Freopedia WikiTown project based on the old port city of Fremantle, has been quietly rolling along most of the original QRcodes have now been removed mostly because of damage and vandalism. The community of people involved with the project has grown with an additional 13 people during the 2018-19 period growing the community to 63 interested parties. There has been a number of new articles created mostly about people related to Fremantle.

2.2 Content competitions

Competitions were chosen as a priority as they had been proven to generate new Australian content on a particular theme from a broad range of contributors, many of whom are new to Wikimedia. The competitions raise awareness of open licences in the broader Australian community and provide Wikimedia with media opportunities.

High quality images from Wiki Loves Earth were printed on postcards and handed out at conferences and events to promote membership.

There is an opportunity for email conversations with winning contributors. Wikimedia Australia competition coordinators also learn new skills from the process and feel more connected to the global movement through participation in these global challenges.

WikiSource competition

The WikiSource competition did not take place. Our plan was to hold a proofreading competition to extend our range of challenges beyond photographic contributions. The aim was to get 1000 pages proofread across 10 works with metadata added to Wikidata. We did not activate this project in this form, and recognise now we needed to recruit interested coordinators to make this happen. There are an increasing number of digital volunteer alternatives being promoted in the Australian GLAM sector through DigVol [3] as well as text-correction in Trove Newspapers.

Wiki Loves Monuments

During the month of September 2018 we promoted participation in Wiki Loves Monuments [4]

Leading up to Wiki Loves Monuments in September 2018, a team of Gideon Digby, Kerry Raymond and Alex Lum prepared datasets of state heritage-lists for use in Wiki Loves Monuments in Australia.

Our goal was 1,000 images uploaded and 100 in use on Wikimedia pages. We also aimed at an ambitious target of 10 new members brought in through this contest. We achieved 600 images, and no new members to our knowledge. While there appears that few of those who created new accounts in Wiki Loves Monuments continued contributing, we did notice repeat contestants across years, and across contests.

Metric 2018 Target
Photos contributed 600 1000
Photos in use 73 100
New WMAU members 0 10

As a result of the campaign there were 600 images contributed. Our target was 1,000 images uploaded. This had been considered achievable given our 2017 contributions totalled 1,254. The committee will consider future promotion strategies for this challenge.

Another metric might have been to consider Wikidata contributions which were significant as a result of work by members of the members of the community uploading lists of heritage sites: [5]

Wiki Loves Science

The goal was to increase participation in Wiki Loves Science from the 90 entries in its inaugural year 2017. While the global challenge did not occur this year, we do have a volunteer to coordinate this challenge when it next runs.

Wiki Loves Earth

During May 2019 we participated in Wiki Loves Earth, again aiming for 1,000 images to be uploaded, 100 in use on Wikimedia pages and 10 new members.

[6]. We achieved almost 700 photographs. Winners have been contacted. It is too early at this stage to determine how many might become members and the level of ongoing contribution by participants.

Metric 2019 Target
Photos contributed 695 1000
Photos in use 11 100
New members 0 10

Map of coordinates Wiki Loves Earth 2019 uploads

Engagement with GLAMs

GLAM Peak workshops

Wikimedia Australia participated as a technology partner for the GLAM Peak Digital Access to Collections workshops during 2018. These free two-day workshops focussed on digitisation and the provision of digital access to collections in small to medium GLAM organisations around Australia. GLAM Peak was a national roadshow of ten one day workshops held in 2017 and 2018.

The aim of the project was to gather everyone from a regional area from museums, libraries, historical societies, galleries, schools with collections to learn about digital access, to show them how to use the GLAM Peak Tool-kit, and discuss technical and other issues in getting collections online. GLAM Peak used Stage 2 funding from the Catalyst Fund through the Department of Communications and the Arts to fund workshop coordinator, venues, equipment etc. As is usual with government funding, the application required contributions of in-kind partner organisations to demonstrate broad community support for this type of activity.

Wikimedia Australia confirmed partnership in this project, and WMAU provided included travel, accommodation and the in-kind time and expertise of our volunteers.

The final three GLAM Peak workshops occurred during this 2018-19 reporting period.

Cairns, Queensland

Kerry Raymond represented Wikimedia Australia, and presented this workshop in Cairns Cairns report

Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Caddie Brain represented and presented on behalf of Wikimedia Australia

Broome, Western Australia

Gideon Digby represented and presented at this workshop. As a result of contacts made at this workshop, Wikimedia Australia received a requested to provide training for library staff in Hedland, Western Australia in 2019.

During the ten GLAM Peak workshops Wikimedia Australia engaged with 300 staff and volunteers from Australian GLAM organisations. As an ongoing initiative following up on interest and expertise developed during GLAM Peak workshops, a portable digitisation kit will be established and work with regional GLAMs will continue.

International Museum Day

As a result of the 2018 GLAM Peak workshop in South Australia, Wikimedia Australia collaborated with History Trust SA to run an edit-a-thon for International Museum Day 2019.

On Saturday 18 May 2019, International Museum Day, twenty South Australians reported for edit-a-thon duty at the Torrens Parade Ground, Adelaide. They spent the morning learning about Wikipedia, and adding and improving information in Wikipedia on South Australian museums. Museums to benefit included transport museums, religious museums, community archives and the Santos Museum of Economic Botany. This event was part of the month-long South Australian History Festival, well-organised by Catherine Manning, and History Trust South Australia. Thanks also to Adelaide Wikimedians Alex, Adam, Ruth and Clive for their support of the edit-a-thon.

Dashboard: International Museum Day

Metric Count
Articles Created 6
Articles Edited 33
Total Edits 159
Editors 19
Words Added 24.8K
Article Views 125K
Commons Uploads 1

#1Lib1Ref

Information Studies Students @CSU

On 7 Feb 2019 Pru Mitchell was invited to speak to the incoming class of Information Studies students at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga at their first Residential school. After a presentation entitled, Everything I know about librarianship I learned from editing Wikipedia.

Dashboard: CSUResSchool

Metric Count
Articles Created 3
Articles Edited 7
Total Edits 47
Editors 15
Words Added 2.57K
References Added 3
Article Views 592K
Commons Uploads 0

Yarra Plenty Regional Library

Project report from: [7]

Yarra Plenty Regional Library staff recently participated in the #1Lib1Ref Wikipedia global campaign inviting every librarian to specifically improve articles on the online encyclopedia by adding citations. The awareness raising campaign encouraged library staff to register for Wikipedia and check out how easy it is to use the citation tool in Visual editor. We participated in the winter campaign (15 May – 5 June), the first Victorian Public Library to do so since the worldwide campaign commenced in 2016.

Pru Mitchell trained 17 members of staff in a half day train-the-trainer style. These staff supported their colleagues with a total of 32 library staff becoming Wikipedia editors who edited a total of 78 Articles with over 15,000 words and 131 references added. 51 articles were related to our local areas. The top three articles edited included Greensborough Victoria, Rosanna, Victoria and Eltham North, Victoria.

We met out goals of updating local content on Wikipedia relating to our local government areas, in many cases place name articles and encouraging all staff to participate in the campaign.  We engaged staff in learning about and strengthening their Wikipedia citation skills. Staff committed time to researching and accessing information, editing articles and supporting colleagues which was extra to their regular workload. Congratulations to all staff who so enthusiastically participated in the project.

Dashboard: YPRL 1Lib1Ref

Metric Count
Articles Created 0
Articles Edited 78
Total Edits 221
Editors 45
Words Added 15K
References Added 197
Article Views 1.29M
Commons Uploads 1

Art+Feminism

Two Australian states took up the Art+Feminism event challenge during March.

Griffith University, Queensland

The Brisbane Art Architecture and Feminism event was organised by Louise Mayhew and Susan Best from Griffith University, and was held at the Queensland College of Art, South Bank on Saturday 9 March, 2019.

Dashboard: Art+Feminism Brisbane

Metric Count
Articles Created 7
Articles Edited 25
Total Edits 94
Editors 15
Words Added 6.32K
Article Views 12.6K
Commons Uploads 0

Women's Art Register, Melbourne

Wikimedia Australia was pleased to partner with the again, who hosted this year's Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, on Saturday 9 March, 2019. It was held in the Richmond and Burnley Historical Society rooms, in the basement of the Richmond Library. This is next to the Women's Art Register Archives, making it very convenient to access physical as well as online resources for articles.

It was wonderful to hold this year's event in conjunction with other long-term partners, the #WikiD team at Parlour: women, equity, architecture who joined forces with us for the edit-a-thon.

Pru Mitchell and Alex Lum facilitated the day's training, and used the very useful Outreach Dashboard. Collectively we added just under 20,000 words about creative women to Wikipedia, with new articles on:

·        Cynthia Reed Nolan, gallerist

·        Sarah-Jane Clarke, designer

·        Paula Whitman, architect

·        Barbara Bolt, art academic

Architecture criticism was another theme of the edit-a-thon, with many additions to the Wikipedia list of architecture critics. As a result of the day the #WikiD team donated the book Women Architects in Australia 1900-1950 by Julie Willis & Bronwyn Hanna (RAIA, 2001) to the Women's Art Register archives.

Dashboard: Women’s Art Register

Metric Count
Articles Created 14
Articles Edited 55
Total Edits 279
Editors 14
Words Added 23.6K
Article Views 163K
Commons Uploads 0

Invited conference speakers: GLAM

An effective way to influence national thinking and policy in the Australian GLAM sector is a keynote presentation at one of the large national conferences for GLAM professionals. Wikimedia Australia received the following invitations to provide keynote sessions at national conferences during 2018-19.

Open Access Week 2018 Forum

Dr Thomas Shafee and Pru Mitchell presented at the annual forum of the Analysis & Policy Observatory in Open Access Week 2018. There were 100 academics, policy makers and open access advocates attending. Presentations are available at: [8]

Wikidata Tour: Sydney Seminar

In partnership with the State Library of New South Wales, Wikimedia Australia presented a half-day seminar for the library staff, GLAM professionals, researchers and educators. There were six presenters and 56 registrations were received via Eventbrite. Of these 72% were women. A report of the seminar is available at: [9]

Research Management Conference

As part of the Wikidata Tour, Andy Mabbett presented on Wikimedia and Open Science at the 2018 Australasian Research Management Society Conference in Hobart, Tasmania. Wikimedia Australia had a stand in the conference exhibition space.

Australian Archivists Conference

During September 2018 Wikimedia Australia participated in the Australian Society of Archivists Conference in Perth by providing the closing keynote presentation, and workshops on Wikidata (Andy Mabbett), as well as a session on Noongarpedia.

Invited speaker Indigenous Conference

Noongarpedia provided a platform to extend the GLAM conference strategy to one of the key Indigenous language, education or equity conferences.

As a result of keynote presentation at the Worlds of Wikimedia Conference, University of Sydney in June 2019, Ingrid Cumming from Noongarpedia was invited to present at Wikimania 2019.

Chapter Governance

The chapter’s administrative objectives for 2018-19 were:

·        To ensure WMAU is legally and efficiently managed

·        To communicate effectively about Wikimedia activities within Australia to build positive engagement with members and the wider community

·        To provide the necessary legal and financial framework to enable regional based groups to operate, without duplicating costs

·        To develop community capacity in depth and breath

Metrics

The following provides reports against operational targets for 2018-19.

a. Financial and legislative reporting is up-to-date

All returns to the Australian Taxation Office have been finalised for 2018/19, and this report includes the financial report relative to the Simple APG grant. Reporting is up-to-date and available from the Wikimedia Australia website: [10]

b. Regular newsletters, updates to website and social media are published

Wikimedia Australia maintains a number of communication channels.

Two newsletters were published during the year in September 2018 and April 2019.

Social media: Baseline figures were collected at the mid-term point, and then at the end of the reporting period.

Twitter 31 Dec 2018 30 June 2019
Total tweets 845 983
Photos and videos 119 146
Followers 1,242 1,341
Facebook 31 Dec 2018 30 June 2019
Total posts 50
Followers 1,559 1,647


The LinkedIn profile that was established for Wikimedia Australia during 2019 had 7 posts and 66 followers.

c. At least 80% of members renew each year

Membership is one indicator of the health of the community, For the last financial year (2018-19) as of 30 June 2019, there were a total of 50 members with eleven new memberships, 48 yearly members and two five-year memberships (both paid in the 2017-18 financial year).

A gender gap still exists with (12) female members and (38) male members. This gap has remained stable, further recruitment needing to better target women to help reduce the gender gap that is not only faced within our membership and the greater Wikimedia Movement but to also reduce the gap that is faced on Committee, with only two out of seven committee members serving in the 2018-19 Committee.

Eleven new members joined Wikimedia Australia in this period.

Membership distribution

ACT Qld NSW NT SA Tas Vic WA OS Total
2017-18 7 3 14 1 2 1 13 9 1 52
31 Dec 2018 3 3 11 1 2 1 12 8 1 42
30 Jun 2019 3 5 13 1 4 1 13 9 1 50

These tasks were assigned primarily to the WMAU committee President, Secretary and Treasurer with support of the committee as a whole.

Membership and donor strategy

One of the committee’s tasks this year was to develop a strategy for recruiting members, and attracting donations and in-kind partnerships from within Australia, to build our capacity for outreach and education.

The committee recognised that communication is an area that has not been done well in the past. A session at our strategic planning workshop in June 2019 was facilitated to focus on a plan to improve this. The following pointers will be built into a strategic document.

Communicating with members

What: Inform on activities, opportunities, major updates

Why: Be more informed, more active, create more capacity, build sense of community. Increased networking opportunities

How: Newsletter, mailing lists (email), public meetings, social media, on-wiki (e.g. WMAU wiki)

Communicating with Australian contributors

What: Similar to Members and our existence

Why: Increased awareness of organisation and activities, encourage membership, create knowledge equity

How: Geonotices/banners, public meetings

Communicating with Australian partners

What: Branding, recognition, skill sets, help build their capacity, provide connection to community

Why: Amplify our work and ability to get things done, increase impact, access to their stuff!

How: Partnerships page on public wiki, case studies, support attendance to conferences.

Communicating with the Australian community (e.g. general public/media)

What: Create awareness of WP and dispel myths, who to contact

Why: Donations & philanthropy (raise money), create awareness of how it works and what we do as a community, create contributors, educate them, advocacy

How: Media outreach

Capacity building

Asaf Bartov from the WMF Community Capacity Development visited Australia and New Zealand in November 2018, and spent a weekend working with the Wikimedia Australia committee, and community members from Aotearoa New Zealand. The focus was on community capacity, and strategic planning. Extensive notes were made and form ongoing priorities for the WMAU Committee: [11].

Reach

There is an ongoing goal of extending the awareness of the general community that there is an Australian chapter of Wikimedia. Media stories provide a way of doing this at scale. The following media activity was published during this period.

1 August 2018 A feature article was published in The Australian Higher Education section, by Erica Cervini about the University of Melbourne edit-a-thon. Mary Tomsic was interviewed. Paywalled article: Australian university groups organise Wikipedia editing sessions

Universities are working with industry and community groups to rescue a diversity of people who have been left out of Wikipedia, the global online encyclopedia. The collaborations are benefiting students, who are learning new ways to research, write and edit.

17 October 2018 Gideon Digby spoke with Chris Taylor and Richard Glover on ABC Sydney's afternoon programme about Conflict of Interest editing, notability and verifiability. A recording is available at: [12]

24 February 2019 The Yarra City Council newsletter ran an article leading into International Women’s Day and the Art+Feminism edit-a-thon being held at their Library: Women's Art Register Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

22 March 2019 The March 2019 Queensland Memory newsletter from the State Library of Queensland featured QWiki

1 May 2019 The University of Sydney’s media release about Bunty Avieson’s paper: Is Wikipedia stealing the news

19 May 2019 Robots in the classroom and news on Wikipedia ABC Radio National Future Tense featured an interview with Bunty Avieson about her paper on Wikipedia’s role in news reporting, and the upcoming conference [starts at 21.40 mark].

Financial report

Spending total= AUD$30,199 (Total amount of Simple APG funds spent, in the currency of the grant).

Spending report= Detailed financial report (In the same format as budget for Simple APG, so that it's easy to compare the two.)

Metrics

Metrics for 2018-19

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