Grant stage: grant in progress

Grantee: Wikimedia Community Ireland

Amount granted: 45,000 EUR (48,000)

Funding period: ~~1 February 2017~~ 15 March 2017 to ~~31 January 2018~~ 14 March 2018

Final report due: 14 April 2018

Application[edit]

Background[edit]

These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.
10 Facts About Wikimedia Community Ireland and Survey of Wikimedia Users in Ireland
Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.
Promote Photo Contests learning Pattern

Link to these documents only if you have them.

Link to your organization's staffing plan. WCI Staffing Plan Google Document
Link to your annual plan. This organization does not have an annual plan.
Link to your strategic plan. This organization does not have a strategic plan.

Please add your global metrics to this sheet. Contact APG staff if you need access. Please visit this worksheet to add or view grants metrics targets and progress.

Programs[edit]

Competitions

WCI plans on running two photo competitions in 2017: Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. Below are the SMART goals for these contests. Wiki Loves Monuments 2017

Goal: to improve the coverage of Irish monuments on Wikipedia, Vicipéid and Wikimedia Commons. The 2017 contest will focus on monuments that currently have no image on Wikimedia Commons, approximately 42% of the listed monuments.

We will increase participation from 2016 by 25% to 150 with 20% returning participants. We will do this through targeting past participants and photography groups in Ireland.
Of the 967 monuments on our list, 559 (58%) currently have at least one image on Commons. We will increase this amount by 20% to 641 monuments photographed.
We will increase image usage to 10% by holding at least one event focused on the usage of WLM images on Wikipedia.
10% of participants will be active on Wikipedia, Vicipéid, or Commons 4 months after the end of the contest. We will keep in close contact with all of the participants via their talk pages.
To increase retention and participation in the contest we will conduct 2 photowalks outside of the contest period.

Contractor Goals (see Staffing Plan for specifics on contractor position)

The contractor will place all of our monument information on Wikipedia.
The contractor will create a unique alphanumeric identifier for each of the 967 monuments currently on our list.
The contractor will assess and prepare the data for upload to Wikidata.

Education

Education Outreach has been a focus of WCI for the past two years. We have run events in conjunction with three of the largest Universities in Ireland and have supported staff in running events in several additional universities. Our SMART goals for the Education Outreach Program are as follows:

Goal: to build on our current engagement with university students and staff in the three largest cities in Ireland: Dublin, Cork, and Galway.

Increase our outreach from one institution to three; increase from 1 course to 3 with approximately 200 students participating; facilitate student team work to improve or create 100 articles over the course of 2017.
10% of participants will be active on Wikipedia, Vicipéid, or Commons 4 months after the end each module. We will keep in close contact with all of the participants via their talk pages.
Promote the use of Wikimedia as an educational tool, both for written and visual assignments, working intensively with 4 university lecturers as they deliver relevant modules across 4 courses in 2017.
Engage with library and other teaching support staff in 3 universities, running workshops promoting the use of Wikipedia to deliver modules on citation, critical assessment skills, and writing styles. We will run a total of 6 workshops through 2017. At least 3 of these workshops will target the creation or improvement of articles relating to women.
Present workshops or talks at 2 educational conferences over the course of 2017 to find new audiences and partnerships.

Staff[edit]

Programme Coordinator

Please link to a detailed job description, which shows how this staff person will help your organization achieve its goals.
The Programme Coordinator job description can be found in the WCI Staffing Plan Google Document
How long is this staff person or contractor's planned engagement with your organization, and how many hours will they work over the course of this grant?
- The person is a regular staff person who will work 37.5 hours per week.
Use a percentage of that person's total hours to show how they will spend their time on different programs and activities.
Breakdown of staff time can be found in the WCI Staffing Plan Google Document

Details about both contractors, who will be engaged for a set period to work on specific projects are also included here, although these are not long term staff.

Wiki Loves Monuments Contractor

Please link to a detailed job description, which shows how this staff person will help your organization achieve its goals.
- The Wiki Loves Monuments Contractor job description can be found in the WCI Staffing Plan Google Document
How long is this staff person or contractor's planned engagement with your organization, and how many hours will they work over the course of this grant?
The person will be employed for a contract period lasting 8 weeks.
Use a percentage of that person's total hours to show how they will spend their time on different programs and activities.
Breakdown of contractor hours can be found in the WCI Staffing Plan Google Document

Budget and resource plan[edit]

Link to a detailed budget (that also includes a plan for raising the resources you need). WCI 2017 Budget Google Document

Midpoint report[edit]

This is a brief report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period: 15 March 2017 - 15 September 2017.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Here is the text you may use to add a story or link!

Vicipéid Story 2017 A key area of development in relation to our educational work has been the use of Vicipéid within the Irish speaking community in Ireland. We identified this as an area for growth both for our outreach activities to expand beyond English language Wikipedia, but also in volunteer recruitment as WCI had only two Irish speakers at the beginning of 2017. Both of these volunteers were restricted in the amount of time they could dedicate to the group’s work. This has posed a problem on a number of fronts, as we had no members who were already embedded within the Irish speaking community who could dedicate time to promoting the use of Vicipéid.

The journey began through contact with several Irish language groups to see how they see the Irish language growing within Wikipedia. The feedback we received was overwhelming and quickly snowballed into a vibrant movement.

At an editing workshop in conjunction with the library at Dublin City University (DCU), we were approached by several Irish speakers interested in conducting an editing workshop in the Irish language. Though we do have several native Irish speakers and several more that have basic Irish, we were concerned about our ability to conduct an entire workshop in Irish. The thought then occurred that we could train Irish speakers so they could run the workshop. The initial reaction to this proposal was for several volunteers to come forward looking for training.

While organisation for that training went forward, we held a workshop in DCU on editing Vicipéid for Irish speakers and academics, only the second Vicipéid editing workshop held in Ireland. Out of this even three academics in DCU (Teresa Lynn, Meghan Dowling and Abigail Walsh) and one in the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) (Michéal MacLochlainn) expressed an interest to work more intensively with Vicipéid.

The Celtic Knot Conference, organised by the Wikimedian in Residence in the University in Edinburgh, came at the perfect time to encourage the interest is editing Vicipéid. Meghan and Abigail attended the conference with our Programme Manager. The participants came back to Ireland after the conference inspired and highly motivated to increase participation in improving Vicipéid. Being part of the ADAPT Centre, which is an inter-institutional research centre with a focus on technologies and the Irish language, the potential for collaboration is very exciting.

Outreach into the Irish speaking community continued with contacts with Foras na Gaeilge, focussed on sources for data and Irish literature sources, and Conradh na Gaeilge, which focussed on outreach to student societies in third level institutions. We anticipate organising workshops with both groups in the coming year.

During the Vicipéid workshop it was noted that Vicipéid lacks some of the editing features of other language Wikipedias. In particular there is no Sandbox, which is of use to new or more hesitant editors. Other small language Wikipedias have faced the same issues, and we have identified this as an issue we want to resolve.

In increase our outreach into the Irish speaking community a new Twitter account was created for Vicipéid. The account now boasts over 125 followers including many prominent Irish speakers, activists, and institutions. It is helping to raise the profile of Vicipéid within the Irish speaking community.

After a meeting with visiting researcher and Wikidata developer Lucie-Aimee Kaffee, we plan to engage with the wider Vicipéid editing community to roll out a Sandbox (Irish: Clár Dubh) and ArticlePlaceholder. We hope to have both features live by the end of the year.

The train-the-trainer event for Irish speakers is scheduled for October, not only to increase editing on Vicipéid, but to allow for editing workshops to be delivered in Irish. This has been a key weakness of our group, and addressing this is a significant development within our working group and its activities. We started with no active volunteers/trainers with fluent Irish and now we have the potential for 5 or more. This has been an unexpected yet exciting development in the growth of our community.

Progress[edit]

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program progress. This should including reporting against each of the SMART objectives from your proposal.

Education Outreach

Increase our outreach from one institution to three; increase from 1 course to 3 with approximately 200 students participating; facilitate student team work to improve or create 100 articles over the course of 2017. We are currently working with lecturers in University College Dublin, National University of Ireland, Galway, University College Cork and Maynooth University on presenting modules on Wikipedia and Vicipéid. As this is the beginning of the academic year, these modules will commence in the coming months.
Engage with library and other teaching support staff in 3 universities, running workshops promoting the use of Wikipedia to deliver modules on citation, critical assessment skills, and writing styles. We will run a total of 6 workshops through 2017. At least 3 of these workshops will target the creation or improvement of articles relating to women. We have held 7 events in educational institutions focusing on editing Wikipedia and on copyright issues including 2 targeting the creating of article on women.

WLM Contractor

The contractor will place all of our monument information on Wikipedia. Our monument information has be collated and imported onto Wikipedia.
The contractor will create a unique alphanumeric identifier for each of the 967 monuments currently on our list. Our monuments now have unique identifiers.
The contractor will assess the data for upload to Wiki Data. Three new wiki data categories were created by our contractor which have allowed us to create maps for the 2017 Wiki Loves Monuments contest.

Competitions

Wiki Loves Monuments We are just wrapping up our WLM contest for this year, so we don’t have any update on that. Our contractor was successful in creating unique identifiers for our monuments and importing them to Wikipedia. He also created 3 new Wiki Data categories for Irish Monuments and imported the data onto Wikidata. We were able to use Wiki Data to create maps for the WLM contest. There are also templates in place to allow us to update the database with new monuments. Having the data in Wikidata will allow us to be able to target specific areas or monuments in future contests.

Other events

Partnerships Our Project Coordinator has made headway creating relationships with the Digital Repository of Ireland and the National Library of Ireland. She has run several workshops focussed on Creative Commons, Irish and European copyright law, orphan works, and mass uploads.
Workshops generally We have held 8 workshops in educational institutions with approximately 115 participants. These workshops have explored using Wikipedia in the classroom, uploading images to Commons, and EU copyright regulations. Two event specifically targeted improving/creating articles about women. We have held an additional 3 workshops open to the general public, including one during the Dublin Pride Festival.

Spending[edit]

Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending.

Total amount spent to date: 20534.08 EUR

Here is where your spending notes/explanations are.

Final report[edit]

This is the final report for your grant, describing your outcomes from the period 15 March 2017 - 14 March 2018.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Blog post by WCI member Dr Donna Alexander on the use of Wikipedia in university education

Learning story[edit]

Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

A case study for the GLAM toolkit detailing the Exploring Copyright events with the DRI and NLI.

Results[edit]

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

WCI metrics

Overall group growth

Whilst we did not include the core WCI growth as a program in 2017, we feel that it is important to mention it as part of the final report. At the being of 2017 we had 12 core members of WCI, with 6-7 of those actively engaged in the central work of the group. Since then we have grown to a group of 20, with at least 10 of those engaged in WCI activity consistently throughout the year. This represents a 66% growth in our group's growth, and has allowed WCI to achieve many of the new initiatives that are detailed below through the new diversity of skills, talents and professional connections the group now has.

Education Outreach

University partnerships

We are currently actively working with lecturers and other teaching staff in 6 such institutions. We have moved from having 1 course in UCD having Wikipedia as a learning component, to 6 courses across the 6 institutions. These courses have included information studies, medical students, translation students, and the digital humanities.

Over the past year WCI has worked with:

184 students in 6 institutions
Working on 103 articles on both EN and GA Wikipedia

Institutions currently engaged with WCI

Trinity College Dublin (TCD)
Dublin City University (DCU)
National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)
Maynooth University
University College Dublin (UCD)
University College Cork (UCC)

Within TCD, our collaboration has been with the Library, the staff, and interested students. We have held 3 workshops in the Library, on topics which are related to the Library's collections including the archives and early printed books. The staff attending are both those involved in caring for the collections and engaged in teaching and learning with the wider student community.

Academia and Wikipedia: Critical Perspectives in Education and Research

An active member of WCI, Dr Brian McKenzie, instigated the organisation of the first academic conference on Wikipedia to take place in Ireland. This event is taking place on 18 June 2018, with our Project Coordinator and other WCI members taking part in the assessment of submitted papers and will chair panels on the day. This conference marks an important shift in the understanding and use of Wikipedia within teaching in Ireland, and will see a number of international Wikimedians taking part in the proceedings.

Vicipéid in teaching

2018 has seen the first use of Vicipéid in a third level institution, using the Outreach Dashboard and with support from WCI. Meghan Dowling has been working with journalism students in DCU to improve or create articles on Vicipéid on a range of topics with poor or no previous coverage. The module saw 5 new articles created, and over 175 edits made. The use of the Dashboard was enhanced by the translation of the platform into Irish by those who took part in a Train the Trainer event we ran in NUIG, which was a demonstration of the Dashboard to Irish speaking staff.

Our work with Irish speaking communities has seen our active members with Irish increase from 2 to 4. It has also meant that we can begin to develop materials in both Irish and English (such as the stickers pictured below), to further engage with Irish speakers. This increase in Irish speakers, means that WCI's capacity to provide workshops through Irish is greatly increased. Rebecca, Meghan, and Abigail Walsh have also submitted a paper on the developments with the Irish community and Vicipéid to the Celtic Knot conference in July 2018. It is our hope that we will be able to gain technical support or help for some of the technical issues we are having with improving the editing experience on Vicipéid from this conference. The lack of Citoid in particular is an issue when attracting new, less experienced editors to contribute.

First bilingual stickers for promotion of Vicipéid

Insitutions that have expressed interest

University of Limerick
Institute of Technology Tallaght
Dublin Institute of Technology

As our activity has increased in third level institutions, and due to the upcoming conference in Maynooth, we have received emails or other enquiries for other institutions. These will be pursued in 2018/19. The availability of the Project Coordinator to facilitate editing workshops with students and staff during weekdays has been critical to the increases we have seen in the number of institutions, students and subjects engaging with Wikipedia through teaching and learning.

Library partnerships

Rudai 23

Our Project Coordinator was approached by the Library Association of Ireland in late 2017 to write a module for an initiative called Rudai 23. Rudai 23 is an online course for information professionals. The module written by Rebecca was focused on using Wikipedia in libraries, and how librarians can improve and assess Wikipedia articles. The module took place in January to coincide with #1lib1ref.

National Library of Ireland

At the request of the National Library of Ireland, our Project Coordinator gave a workshop on copyright and open licenses to the staff of the Library on 2 October 2017. 15 members of staff from the Library attended, from across various departments. The workshop covered topics such as the benefits of open licenses, how open licenses data and objects can be identified and reused, and how open licenses can increase the profile of heritage collections. During a roundtable discussion, topics such as orphan works, copyright law in Ireland, ancillary intellectual property rights, and Wikimedia GLAM case studies from around the world. It is hoped that there will be follow up events to this one in the future.

Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

To mark International Women's day 8 March 2018, the RCSI partnered with WCI to host an edit-a-thon celebrating the Female Firsts in medicine in Ireland. This event was part of the celebrations around the RCSI's Women on Walls intiative to increase awareness about the female pioneers in Irish medicine. The 9 participants had access to digital and physical resources, including items from the RCSI Library's special collections. Prizes were sponsored by RCSI, and were awarded for a new article created and for the most beneficial edits made to existing articles.

Dr Conor Malone, a long time Wikipedian and doctor, is part of the programme that will host Ireland's first Wikipedian in Residence. This position will see a doctor work part time to improve articles relating to their medical speciality, as well as promoting the use of Wikipedia more generally within the healthcare and related professions. It marks a huge step forward in the profile of Wikipedia in Ireland.

Female Firsts edit-a-thon at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Competitions

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 marks the 4th year of Ireland's participation in the contest. Unfortunately, 2017 saw a further drop in participation from previous years:

50 participants (down from 119 in 2016)
851 photos uploaded (up from 710 in 2016)
38 of the 50 participants remained active on Wikimedia 6 months later

There are a number of reasons that engagement with the competition has waned, and this has caused us to reflect on how we have framed and promoted the competition over the last two years. The main gain this year was the incorporation of all the data collected on monuments in Ireland into Wikidata by our contractor. Our inclusion in the Monumental platform appears to have improved the visibility of the Irish competition on an international level, which saw a number of the winning images coming from photographers who are not living in Ireland. The incorporation of the monument lists into Wikidata means that the work of volunteers on the data over the past 4 years has been preserved and is open for other use and reuse. It has also further highlighted the built heritage that is missing from our existing lists, which puts us in a strong position to work with the relevant agencies in Ireland to expand the list. It is anticipated that in the years to come, WLM in Ireland will focus on the monuments with no photographs, and on promoting the use of the images on Wikipedia and beyond.

Winning images from WLM Ireland 2018
Two of the winners of WLM Ireland 2018

Wiki Science

Following contact from Wikimedia Estonia, WCI undertook to host its first edition of the photo/image competition Wiki Science in Ireland. As this was not budgeted for within our Simple APG, all prizes were sourced through sponsorship and promotion through a partnership with the Science Gallery Dublin and their shop The Designist. The competition was run during November, and coincided with Science Week in Ireland.

25 participants
81 images uploaded

We were invited to unveil and exhibit the 6 winning images at the science communication conference SCI:COM. The winners were announced from the main stage, and resulted in a large number of attendees visiting our stand, and discussing how Wikimedia and Wikipedia could be integrated in other science communication initiatives in Ireland. Their was a keen interest in the competition being run again with 2018 now that science organisations in Ireland are aware of it.

Promotional materials for Ireland's first Wiki Science photo competition
Display of the winning images at SCI:COM

Other events

Cultural partnerships

Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI)

On 30 November 2017, WCI partnered with the DRI and the Library of TCD to mark the first International Digital Preservation Day. The Wikipedia editing workshop was part of a day of events to mark the day, along with a pop-up museum of technology and an evening of talks. The articles that were the focus of the event centred on forms of obsolete technology and organisations focused on digital preservation. The 16 participants came from institutional partners of the DRI and the staff of TCD.

Art+Feminism

On 8 March 2018, WCI partnered for the first time with the National Gallery of Ireland to host an Art+Feminism editing event for their staff. On 10 March, we also partnered with UCC to host a public Art+Feminism event. Both the NGI and UCC plan on partnering with WCI for more events in the future.

Between the two events:

19 participants
4 new articles created
21 articles improved

As well as having these 2 events, Art+Feminism and the other cultural partnerships have resulted in other institutions expressing interest in working with WCI.

Insitutions that have expressed interest

The Hunt Museum, Limerick
Dublin City Library and Archives

Meetups at TOG Hackerspace

Since August 2017, WCI has held a monthly editing event in the TOG Hackerspace. Attendance at the event fluctuates from 2-10 attendees, and appears to be a useful event for those with a more informal interest in Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Exploring CC Licences workshop at the Royal Irish Academy
International Preservation Day talks at the Library of Trinity College Dublin
Pop-up Muesum of Technology as part of International Preservation Day
Staff Art+Feminism edit-a-thon at the National Gallery of Ireland
Wiki Loves Pride edit-a-thon at the GAZE Film Festival 2017

Contributions to a global movement

WCI takes its place within the wider Wikimedia community very seriously, and feels that its input into the Wikimedia Movement Strategy and other initiatives at a local and international level is very important. In 2017, our Project Coordinator and other group members have attended or taken part in:

Wikimedia Conference
Celtic Knot Conference
Wikimedia Diversity Conference

Spending[edit]

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Detailed budget for 2017/18

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period.

41085.31 EUR spent (50,730.13 US Dollars)