Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Museums (ID: 22272310)/Final Report
Report Status: Draft
Due date: 30 March 2025
Funding program: Rapid Fund
Report type: Final
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[edit]- Applicant username: Medhavigandhi
- Organization name: N/A
- Amount awarded: 4978.66
- Amount spent: USD,
Part 1: Project and impact
[edit]1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
This iteration of the project aimed to create open-knowledge resources that can be used to enrich Wikipedia articles with a primary objective to center South Asian voices. The project was able to engage scholars - historians and art historians in creating 9 openly licensed essays and familiarizing them with the value Wiki projects can add to their work. It worked for us to also open participation without the constraint of a 'fellowship'. (more details about this in following sections).
Our experience with GLAMs and past Wiki projects immensely helped with gaining support from relevant museums and archives participating in this project. An unexpected outcome was a partner-archive's decision to publish their material on Commons in the future. Currently we are trying to find support for them through developing their partnership with Wiki-communities.
Our efforts have also led to the conception of an Open Knowledge Network; the network currently includes academics, historians and commits to meeting once a month for editing. This was a completely unexpected outcome.
The activities and implementation of this fellowship also led to a partnership with Wikimedia UK to conduct the same, with UK-based GLAMs. It is hoped, that India-based researchers (fellows) will be able to use the material to create 'fresh perspectives' and material that can contribute to our main goal of entering South Asian voices in Wiki content.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
This project has been difficult to document because each researcher followed an individual pathway to creating resources. Since each of the essays are long, and involves image permissions, it is taking us long to add the same live. One example is here: https://www.theheritagelab.in/randhawa-chandigarh-museum-collection/ For this, the partner institution, Government Museum and Art Gallery Chandigarh has lent their collection. This was already a big win; from the same historian we have 2 more essays with 2 other partner institutions, but it is taking a while to get a formal letter of approval to use the images. This collection of 3 essays from one historian focuses on 'bureaucrats building museum collections in post colonial India'.
The Wikipedia articles that will be edited on just this one person's work is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohinder_Singh_Randhawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jamshed_Khandalavala Nanalal Mehta -- no page.
We faced an interesting challenge : The work undertaken by fellows of this project focused on creating openly licensed knowledge based on their study of primary sources. The work cited in the above example for instance, has not been studied before; this is why, the researcher is unable to add any notable sources to the existing Wiki pages. We felt, it would be odd and not a good practice at this beginner-stage to encourage researchers on citing their own published works!
Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
We used the Creative Commons' license descriptions to familiarise researchers with using these, not only for their own work, but also while using images from sources.
Our virtual sessions are where we mostly shared the Wiki pages that need improvement or why South Asian voices are important for post-colonial material.
3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Neither agree nor disagree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Neither agree nor disagree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Agree |
| F. Other (optional) |
Part 2: Learning
[edit]4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: The Heritage Lab works on building connections between GLAMs and the public; this participatory and research driven approach to creating resources is also aimed at going beyond traditional forms of documentation. As publishers of open-access resources, we would hope to learn about :
> the impact of open access resource creation on researchers & their future motivation for contributions. We will do so by capturing reflections of researchers during and after their research.
> how does the chosen theme and open-access license speak to different sets of readers - scholars, educators, journalists, etc.
> the possibilities offered by the digital technology in reformulating art and historical research.
In our debrief, we learnt that :
- there is little or no support for producing openly licensed research at University level.
- as regards future motivation for contributions, there were concerns about misrepresentation and propagandist historical narratives and the fact that institutional infrastructure and capacity often limit historians / professors from inviting students' Wiki participation.
- For emerging researchers, there is more consideration about investing their limited time which does not professionally result in their writing be cited.
- Museums and archives welcome participation, but
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
1. It did not work to have a small set of fellows; especially fellows who were undergraduate researchers as they could not access important archives because of their lack of experience. Given the theme, it started to emerge during application stage and the next few months that it might be better to open it up for individual experienced researchers. 1a. In opening up the opportunity to individual researchers, we grappled a lot with the structure of the fellowship. Tweaking the application form to an "interest form" that invited scholars and historians to publish research under an open license attracted many more people than the added idea of Wiki-editing. 1b. Many educational institutions viewed 'Wiki editing' as a negative than a positive, which opened up a space for us to have a dialogue and share examples around the world (e.g University of Edinburgh) who use Wiki as a teaching tool as well. 1c. We also included voices of curators who are engaged in the Wiki movement in Europe as examples, and that seemed to lend a lot of 'legitimacy' to cultural professionals interested in the movement. This learning directly helped us develop our project for 2025 with Wikimedia UK as a partnership for India-UK researchers. This is in progress (April - August 2025).
2. The lack of access to primary sources was a huge challenge; as soon as an archive is told that these images would be added to WikiCommons, there was an uncertainty and disapproval, and the researchers' individual influence and relationship with the archive mattered more. This has helped us with an insight for future program designs.
3. As we were working with experienced researchers, time contribution played a huge role and there was hardly any consensus towards voluntary Wiki editing as opposed to "original research published with their own name". While we planned to conduct wiki-focused editathons with the researchers, we were not able to do so, as supporting the research and publishing itself was very intensive and resource consuming for both researchers, and our team. We have therefore established the Open Knowledge Network, which will focus on the editing Wiki aspect. As academic researchers, fellows felt bound by institutional infrastructure and permissions to share the Wiki editing process with their students. It emerged that other scholars and academics be invited to closed group sessions and have their feedback on projects such as these while developing a basic understanding of the importance of their involvement in the Wiki movement. This resulted in the Open Knowledge Network. This Network, as imagined, would enable academic researchers to build their own Task-Lists and commit to monthly editing as a volunteer community.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
We hosted an event and editathon with DAG Museums' exhibition in Mumbai titled "Shifting Visions". At this, we also invited members from the Wiki community. Another meet-up with Marg Publications will follow, where we hope to introduce the Open Knowledge Network as a future pathway.
Part 3: Metrics
[edit]7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 4 | 3 | Instead of two undergraduate researchers, we worked with an experienced historian through an independent expression of interest. |
| Number of editors | 4 | 0 | We mark this as 0 as the historians were familiarised with Wiki, and 2 of the 3 researchers even edited Wikipedia, but the contributions were very minimal. We are currently looking at 14 members in the Open Knowledge Network. |
| Number of organizers | 10 | 3 | N/A as our program design needed us to pivot, we did not have researchers organise editathons. |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 60 | ||
| Wikimedia Commons | 40 | ||
| Wikidata | 80 | ||
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
No
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Provide the link to the financial report
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
Yes
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
14.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)
Review notes
[edit]Review notes from Program Officer:
N/A
Applicant's response to the review feedback.
N/A