GLAM Macedonia User Group/Annual plan 2019

The logo of GLAM Macedonia

This is the annual plan of the activities of GLAM Macedonia User Group for 2019.

SMART objectives[edit]

GLAM[edit]

Wikipedian in Residence

The SMART objectives of the GLAM program, i.e. Wikipedian in Residence sub-programme are:

to deepen of GLAM collaboration in Macedonia
to educate the GLAM employees on Wikimedia projects, educate them to add references into articles, and create new articles or improve the existing ones;
implementation of WIkimedia projects within WiR work;
establishing connections and starting cooperation with new GLAM institutions;
improving the cooperation which already exists;
organize special events in collaboration with GLAM institutions, such as edit-a-thons; workshops and Wikipedian tours, which will bring Wikipedians on-site to work with staff on content creation and improvement;
enriching Wikipedia with new content.

Education[edit]

Wiki Clubs

The SMART objectives of the education sub-programme are:

establish new Wiki Clubs or Wiki sections;
recruit new editors and contributors;
add or improve the content of the existing Wikimedia projects in Macedonian
recruit a new Wiki coordinators for education;
establish new collaboration with schools
spread the word about Wikipedia among the students

Teachers' conferences

The SMART objectives of the conferences for teachers sub-programme are:

To educate teachers on how to use Wikipedia in the classroom;
To recruit a new Wiki coordinators for education;
To establish new collaboration with schools.

Wiki Camp

The SMART objectives of the Wiki Camp sub-programme are:

Build connections between experienced and new participants;
Engage new editors and members;
To increase the number of content pages.

Community[edit]

The SMART objectives of the user group regarding the community sub-programme are:

To increase the number of involved volunteers;
Maintain a good collaboration with the members;
Increase visibility of the user group in society, by followers on social media (Facebook), number of blog posts and visits to them, and number of media and press mentions.

Plan[edit]

Activities[edit]

GLAM[edit]

Our GLAM activities and collaborations are successful and they are in the process of growing. We have signed memorandum for collaboration with four GLAM institutions in Macedonia: with the State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia, the Museum of Macedonian Struggle in Skopje and the City Library “Braḱa Miladinovci” in Skopje and the Institute of National History. Our collaboration is mainly, but not exclusively, about sending Wikipedian in residence. On 17 April 2018 we held Wiki Tour in the Military Museum for Wiki Club’s members; On 4th of June 2018 we held Wiki Tour in the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje, and on 28 September we held Wiki Tour for Wikipedians and supporters of Wikimedia projects at the Archaeology Museum in Skopje. The Wiki tours were free of charge for our group of Wikipedians.

GLAM Macedonia has sent Wikipedians in residence in two GLAM institutions in Macedonia: three months in the City Library “Braḱa Miladinovci” and three months in the Institute of National History. Both Wikipedians had good and productive months in the calendar year 2018. The best thing was the collaboration with the employees of both Institutions. The employees of both, the Institute and City Library, provided the necessary help for easier and successful accomplishment of the Wikipedian's tasks. They have shown great interest in Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects and did not hesitate to provide both Wikipedians with the needed materials. Some of the employees showed interest and willingness to be part of Wikipedia and Commons (as contributors) and they took part in the edit-a-thons and workshops held by the Wikipedians. GLAM institutions in the Republic of Macedonia are closed ones, which means that we have to send Wikipedian in Residence in order to get closer to them.

The benefit of collaboration with GLAM institutions are many. We want to deepen of GLAM collaboration in Macedonia in order to educate the GLAM employees on Wikimedia projects; to educate them to add references into articles, and create new articles or improve the existing ones as the GLAM employees are high educated professionals. The implementation of WIkimedia projects within WiR's work is giving us chance to organize special events in collaboration with GLAM institutions, such as edit-a-thons, workshops and Wikipedian tours, which will bring Wikipedians on-site to work with staff on content creation and improvement. The GLAM institutions collaboration with us is opportunity to them to be more open to the public, to understand the need of digitization, as well as the need of sharing the knowledge, documents, historic photos and materials with the public.

Wikipedian in Residence

Plan for activities in 2019 is to send WiR in at least two GLAM institutions. We plan to deepen our cooperation with the Institute of National History in Skopje by sending Wikipedian in Residence for additional three months in the 2019, avoiding the summer period, because of the high temperatures in Skopje. Usually, the GLAM employees and volunteers are not willing to give their best in the summer time. Another Wikipedian in Residence will be sent to new GLAM institution (negotiation in progress), in the period of three months, again avoiding the summer period.

Our strengths are experienced Wikipedian in Residence, and good established collaboration with the State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia as well with the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje. We don't need to send WiR in those two institutions, as collaboration is already set on high level. We have an offer for collaboration with the several other GLAM institutions in Republic of Macedonia, and at the moment we are in negotiation of the future collaboration. Once when we will fix the nature of collaboration, the memorandum of collaboration will be signed. GLAM Macedonia has to sign Agreement with the WiR in order to be clear the activities the WiR is required to do: to serve as liaison between the GLAM institution and community, to engage the GLAM employees into Wikimedia activities, to establish a good collaboration and to build a sustainable platform that ensures outcomes long after the WiR has completed their service. We don't have a weakness in this area of activities, but the threat could be lack of interest of GLAM employees to edit Wikipedia in the future, or after WiR's task is done. To avoid this, we plan to engage them in edit-a-thons, in Wiki Tours, and most important, to provide the material for articles.

Education[edit]

Education program this year included education of students and education of teachers. Students are educated mostly in the Wiki Clubs. On the other side, for teachers we organized a conference. We have 86 new students (out of 253 trained students) involved in 4 Wiki Clubs, coming from at least 12 schools from the Republic of Macedonia. Also at the moment we have 10 coordinators of education. As a result, more than 2,500 articles were created or improved in 2018. Almost all of the Wiki Clubs members are using Content Translation tool. Wiki Clubs activities can be followed at this link.

Wiki Clubs

The first Wiki Club in Macedonia was established in the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje. The first working day of the Wiki Club was on 19 October 2016. We have students coming from at least ten schools from Skopje, all coming from different part of the city, most of them by bus, using their free time. The opening day of the second Wiki Club in Macedonia was on 1 March 2017, in the local elementary school in Staro Nagoričane. The third Wiki Club was established in Ohrid, and started from February 2018. The fourth Wiki Club was established in Stip, and started on 29 September 2018. The volunteer members of GLAM Macedonia maintain four Wiki Clubs. More than 250 students and more than 30 adults passed the training about Wikipedia in the Wiki Clubs, more than 4,000 articles were created or improved. The big success of the Wiki Clubs was an award which we received at the international day of the Museums, 18 May 2017.

In 2019 we plan to start at least two new Wiki Clubs. The regular meetings at the first Wiki Club are happening at least once a week. The regular meetings in the other Wiki Clubs are at least twice a month.

Our strength in this project so far is the reputation of the Wiki Clubs. We signed memorandum of collaboration with five schools, and students from many others schools participate in existing Wiki Clubs. We already had offers for collaboration with several schools out of the capitol city. We have opportunity to educate many students about Wikipedia, and we hope that a good number of them will continue to edit Wikipedia. The weakness is that we are not capable to answer all calls for collaboration with schools, as the volunteers will be overloaded with too many tasks. We plan to hire an honorarium person, in order to avoid this problem.

Teachers' conferences

We had one Wiki conference for teachers in 2018. There is always a big interest for these conferences. There were 65 participants, 4 speakers and 10 Wikipedians volunteers involved. After the conference was announced, we were unable to accept all the interested teachers. In 2019 we plan to organize two teaches' conferences, one in spring and one in autumn. Taking look at the past experience and success, we expect each conference to be visited by at least 65 teachers which will be trained, theoretically and practically, on using Wikipedia in classroom and also editing and improving Wikipedia.

The strength of this project are GLAM Macedonia members, Wikimedians who are teachers in the same time. The big interest of teachers in the Republic of Macedonia is giving us the strength also, as the great interest points that with such conferences we are on the right track to reach them. We teach the teachers on how to use Wikipedia in the classroom, and the opportunities are big for us: we can establish collaboration with the schools; we can start Wiki Club or Wiki section in their school; we can spread the word about Wikipedia, and involve the teachers and students into editing Wikipedia articles. We cannot list any problem which may appear one day, as for now everything is smooth: teachers are interested to participate and after the conference to collaborate with us; we have volunteers who are happy to organize or to help organizing the conference; the media covered the event.

Wiki Camp

Wiki Camp is a three-day camp for students and members of Wiki Clubs. We plan to organize one Wiki Camp for 50 Wiki Club active members and new participants, plus 12 volunteers, teachers and Wikipedians. Adults have to be present in order to maintain the Wiki Camp. The first day, there will be session for beginners on how to edit Wikipedia. All three days we will have edit-a-thons, workshops, one wiki expedition around the event place, workshop about Commons, etc. Wiki Camp in 2018 was held from 7-9 September in Doyran. There were 300 new articles created by the participants at the end of the event. One of our team members is an amateur athlete, and he was responsible to organize morning sport activities for the participants.

Strength: Our big strength for this project are our volunteers, who are ready to organize the Wiki Camp. We already have teachers ready to lead a group of students at the Wiki Camp, and also, the interest between the students is big for this kind of activity. The opportunity for us after this event is that we will be able to build connections between experienced and new participants, and also to engage new editors and future members of Wiki Clubs. The only problem we could faced with is not enough lap top computers for every student at the Wiki Camp. To avoid this, we plan to divide students into several groups while they will edit Wikipedia, using the available lap top computers.

Community[edit]

GLAM Macedonia user group is registered non-profit organization, and it is a user group of contributors, teachers and researchers who are interested to generate and organize projects and events including participation of Wikimedia volunteers, and employees from GLAM and educational institutions. At the moment, we have 100 members who signed the form for membership. The Board members and other GLAM Macedonia members have several meetings in person a month, in order to plan and strategize on new activities. Many times there is a need to discuss the ongoing projects or projects we plan to organize in person. As community projects we include workshops, media appearence and other public events.

On 18 January 2018 GLAM Macedonia organized open discussion "Importance of digitization in 21 century" in collaboration with the City Library "Braka Miladinovci" in Skopje. This event was organized to celebrate Wikipedia 17 in Macedonia, and also to support #1Lib1Ref campaign. Four speakers had their presentation on importance of digitization in the GLAM institution they work for:

Jasmina Najdovska, advisor for archiving material, a new period, from The State Archives of Republic of Macedonia,
Daniela Mitevska, historian educator from the Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje,
Gordana Andreeva, program manager from the City Library and
Gordana Jovik Stojkovska, Wikipedian in Residence in the City Library.

The event itself was announced on national TV channel.

On 17 March 2018, the members of the Mixed choir "Artizan" together with members of GLAM Macedonia, and the members of Wiki Clubs in Macedonia lead by GLAM Macedonia, created 20 new articles about music, 15 existing articles were improved and two photos regarding performance of the Macedonian choirs were uploaded on Commons. This collaboration on the theme music come after we received an invitation by several musicians in order to improve the music articles on mkwiki. The main editing together event took part at the evening hours in Public Room in Skopje. In collaboration with the Military Museum of the Republic of Macedonia, on 17 April 2018 we held one day workshop with the members of Wiki Club Museum of Macedonian struggle in Skopje. During the three hours of the editing workshop, eight new articles on Wikipedia were created, all biographies of people who were the General Secretaries of NATO. The selection and contents of the texts were selected by Viki Taseva from the Military Museum in cooperation with the two educators from the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Anna Višinova and Daniela Mitevska.

On 28 July we organized Assembly meeting. We discuss for upcoming activities and projects, as well for engaging external people for collecting donations. In 2019 we plan to organize several public events, as well as workshops, Wiki tours and an Assembly meeting.

Strength on this project are our volunteers and a big number of Wiki Clubs members who are trained to edit Wikipedia. The collaboration with the GLAM institutions in the Republic of Macedonia is on a high level, which is good as we hold events usually in collaboration with one of them: in order to get materials for articles, or to use their working room. The opportunities are many: organizing workshops for Wiki Club members proved to be a good way to engage the students to be more active during regular club meetings. Also collaboration with the media is on high level. We cannot list any problem which may appear during the future events.

Metrics[edit]

Metrics sheet

Priority levels[edit]

Level	Programmes/ Sub-programmes
High	WiR, Teachers' conferences, Wiki Clubs, Wiki camp
Mid	New collaborations, media appearance, other events.
Low	none