Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Yes. After having to move this event twice because of the pandemic, I was able to finally convince the participants and the team to do this activity online. We are able to reach a much wider audience and was able to promote both Wikipedia and Wikidata through this campaign. The online event was graced by the a few prominent people on this campaign. We are all grateful to Felix Nartey, Venus Lui, Ime Amor Mortel and Camille Francoise for helping us make this event more meaningful. The actual plan was to locally organize similar events in partnership with several institutions, however, with the advent of the pandemic, this became impossible. Organizing multiple campaigns on different institutions will be difficult since most of them don't have enough experience on adding references to an article. Conducting the online workshop seem to effectively work in training a number of interested participants from different institutions. Most of them are willing to participate again in the future campaigns.
The following report is a presentation of the outcome of this project on two campaigns.
May 2020 Campaign
Target outcome
Achieved outcome
Explanation
10-15 librarians & 10 event organizer
5 editors, 2 experienced Wikimedian, 1 organizer
The initial plan of the program was postponed because gathering in person is not yet recommended. Invitations to possible event organizers were cancelled. An online meet-up was conducted to invite librarians for the 2020 campaign. Unfortunately, only 5 editors responded to the call.
This project was proposed before the CoViD-19 pandemic. After more than a year of waiting, physical gathering is still being limited to a certain number of individuals.
Since the event was moved online, more librarians and library enthusiast were accommodated during the training.
10-20 new editors
13 new editors, 5 experienced Wikimedians
Despite the large number of participants during the live session, only 18 editors were able to actually create user accounts and add reference to articles during the workshop. There is an existing range IP blocking in the Philippines that hinders users to create user accounts on their own. Assistance from the international organizers of #1Lib1Ref campaign were also received but the problem exists locally.
Minimum of 30-40 articles
109 articles edited, 52 references
Fifty-two references were added during the entire campaign and 109 articles were edited.
Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:
What worked well?
Support from the International Team. I am very grateful to the international organizing team of this campaign. From the very beginning of the planning stage they have been extending help to ensure that the participants will have ease of access on Wikipedia during the training. They are all always available via email whenever I have some questions on how to run the event. This program will not be successful without their help.
Support from the local volunteers. Some of the local Wikipedia volunteers here in the Philippines became part of the core organizing committee of this project. The entire virtual kick-off program has been very easy on my part because they handled most of the back-end tasks like handling queries from participants, distributing evaluation forms and moderating the people on Zoom. They have also been very good in encouraging librarians to join the program.
Librarians from all over the Philippines. It is very unexpected that a number of librarians will be present during the program. The event was meant to invite librarians within the city and nearby municipalities. Even though we were not able able to conduct the event in-person, we were able to accommodate a wider audience via virtual platform.
What did not work so well?
IP Blocking. Because of the current status of IP blocking in the Philippines, some of the participants using their mobile phones were not able to contribute, some can't even create their own Wikipedia accounts. This issue has been going on for some time now especially in Tagalog Wikipedia. It is very unfortunate because majority of the participants only understands Tagalog.
Actual Training. Although the training went very well, I can say that it is not enough for the participants. This project was supposed to be an in-person training, in which we'll have ample time to train librarians to be able to conduct their own training for the campaign in their respective libraries. But, because of the pandemic, we are forced to move the event virtually. Because of this, the training that was supposed to run for hours was compressed in a 90-minute session. I don't think this is very effective especially that the participants that were present were new to the editing platform of Wikipedia.
What would you do differently next time?
Training and Training Materials. I think it is best to try to develop a simple training materials for this campaign for the Philippines. It is very unlikely that a situation like this pandemic will not happen again in the future. We should be resilient by making sure that trainings done online are as effective as the trainings done offline so that whatever the situation is we can still be able to achieve our desired targets. For the Philippines, I am planning to pursue the the training of trainers for this campaign. I will try to network with libraries to teach them how to conduct this campaign in their communities.
Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.
Yes. ₱596.00. I am planning to organize the same event for the #1Lib1Ref Campaign in 2022.
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