Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/GLAM GHANA/Report

Hi Flixtey and Rberchie. Thank you for this report and all your work on the project. We know you faced a lot of challenges in getting started, but your persistence and dedication to the project is really impressive. Since I was not the main Program Officer working with you when the grant was approved I don't have all of the background, so some of my questions/comments may be redundant.

It sounds like the main challenges during the project had to do with level of engagement with the GLAM staff and that you believe having the institution being the one who recruits the WiR would help with this issue. Will you look for anything different in a partner next time?
It's great to hear that some of the staff of the National Archives are now contributing to Wikipedia and have participated in your events!
Now that the project is over, are their plans to continue working with PRAAD?
I understand that editathons were part of the original project plan that was approved. Can you let us know why they didn't happen and what are plans to support using the digitized content on the Wikimedia projects?
Is their a Commons category that was used for the project where we can see the digitized works?
Now that the User Group has a high quality scanner, are their plans to use it in the near future?
Typically we require signed documentation for honorariums. I understand this may be difficult to get at this point so please make sure to do so in future. A written statement saying the individual received the honorarium and for what purpose with a signature and date is all that is needed.
Did the WiR keep a log of their hours or have any other system for invoicing? Please send so we can document those expenses as well.

Thanks again, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 16 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Alex Wang (WMF),

Thanks for these rather important questions and sorry for the delay in responding to them. Like we said in an email, we have been working hard on deriving and making meaning out of the metadata of these documents as some the contents are in colonial languages which are not even understood by the GLAM partner. We have had to consult others from outside the country to arrive at some of these metadata.

Like you rightly mentioned the staff were very laid back towards providing requested documents and this was mainly due to lack of supervision on the part of the heads of the organisation. We intend to in future hand over the hiring and management of the WIR process because we believe that implicates the partner organisation in delivering on the agreed terms of the contract. Doing this will place a direct responsibility with repercussions if there is failure to meet the terms. Also with the experienced gathered, we will in future be hosting progress meetings with the director to inform him on achievements and deliverables, this will place a huge focus on whoever was tasked to execute a task, hence force them to deliver.
We are excited to further share that one of the staff has been actively contributing to our GA language Wikipedia in incubator.
We have had extensive talks and on our team is currently working on a presentation to be delivered on the 21st December 2018, to share the major highlights (successes, risks and failures) and how to mitigate these in future.
The editathons didn't happen because we underestimated the level of work involved in the digitisation process and even much more in a highly disadvantaged setting such as in PRAAD, where help was taken from sometimes outside to make sense of metadata. This delayed the whole process and as has affected even the rate of upload of content (still 104 items of maps, castles and customary materials to be uploaded). All uploads are certain to be completed by end of year and we will update this page once done. Also on the use some have already been used even though editathons have not been held, we have grouped these upload by themes and its our plan next year to pick a team to work on during our monthly meetings.
You will find all the current uploads in this category.
This question is very much in line with point 3 and as indicated in that point, we are already exploring better ways to collaborate to achieve the sole purpose of increasing Ghanaian contents online. So making use of the scanner is a definite priority for our community.
This is duly noted and will be handled appropriately in future.
We had the WIR generate invoices via (https://invoice-generator.com) and delivered to receive funds. I can scan these and send for your documentation purposes.

Thanks --Flixtey (talk) 10:01, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]