First steps: Find a local Wikimedia community to support you, look for a Wikimedian in Residence, create accounts, and prepare an on-wiki project page.

Contact and involve the local Wikimedia Community

Wikimedia projects are volunteer-driven and global. GLAM-Wiki projects around the world are mentored and supported by knowledgeable local Wikimedians who are passionate about art, culture, and heritage.

When planning a first GLAM-Wiki project, your first step is to get in touch with your local Wikimedia community. How can you find and contact them?

Check the list of Wikimedia affiliates around the world. Some affiliates cover an entire country, others focus on a region, or on a topic of interest. Each affiliate will have information online, listing people you can contact.
If your region or topic does not have an affiliate (yet), you can do the following:
- Get in touch with affiliates from neighbouring and/or friendly countries or regions, or related topics.
- Search for individual (local) Wikimedians who work on topics related to your organization. Go to your local-language Wikipedia, or Wikimedia Commons, find pages or media files with a close connection to your area of interest, and check the edit history of those pages and files to find the most prolific editors.
  - Wikipedia's main page about GLAM with links for contacts in your area (on Wikipedia in English)
  - Wikipedia's list of GLAM collaboration projects (on Wikipedia in English)
  - Contact us page with a list for GLAM-Wiki contributors per continent

Try finding a similar project or collection set on Wikidata or Commons to see how it has been done in the past.

See the newsletter This Month in GLAM for information on current GLAM events and projects.
Discover some model projects

Ask questions at the main Project chat on Wikidata or the Village Pump on Commons.

Look for a Wikimedian in Residence

Some types of paid and institutional activities on Wikimedia projects might not be allowed (see the section below). An exception is the Wikimedian in Residence position, also known as WiR or Wikipedian in Residence.

This position is one of the first and more useful ways of interaction between the Wikimedian community and cultural institutions. It works as a professional role for an organization that:

Shares its knowledge within the Wikimedia projects
Measures the impact of the same
Promotes Wikipedia through training, education, and edit-a-thons

Disclaimer: Wikimedians in Residence do not edit about their institution, but only share the knowledge contained within their institution.

On the other way around, the organization in which the residence occurs, such as universities, nonprofit organizations, NGOs, research institutes, as well as GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and other cultural institutions) may post information about Wikimedia and open knowledge to their websites and social media, in order to promote the integration of the Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedian in residence
Wikipedian in Residence (Outreach)
Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network
Wikipedian in residence (Wikipedia in English)

How to set up Wikimedia accounts

Shared, "institutional" accounts are permitted on Wikimedia Commons and on Wikidata, but other Wikimedia projects do not allow these.

Username policy

Check the up-to-date account policy on Wikimedia Commons at Username policy: Well-known names and names of organizations. Don't forget to check the policy on the project or Wikipedia language you plan to work it.

Conflict of interest

GLAMs and other cultural institutions need to understand and be aware of the conflict of interest (COI) they might undertake while editing Wikimedia projects. Sometimes, paid editing might be a type of conflict.

Conflict of interest editing
Conflict of interest (Wikipedia in English)
Transparency
Setting a good example

Paid editing

Paid editing might be allowed in some Wikimedia wikis, depending on the way it's done. Some cases are widely accepted (e.g., Wikimedians in Residence) and a few are controversial.

Types of paid editing allowed:

Archiving, organizing, and digitizing knowledge
Linking to archived and shared knowledge
Creating new summaries and material

To learn more about this subject, see the page for paid editing or, in relation to GLAMs, see this paid contributions amendment.

Set up a project page

Setting up a page for a GLAM-Wiki initiative might depend on the language or project in which the activities will take place. On Wikimedia Commons, a category for the initiative is enough.

Each Wikipedia language, for example, has a project template for institutions to use in order to set their initiative as a Wikipedia project. For reference, see the page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art GLAM-Wiki initiative on Wikipedia in English.

GLAM projects (Wikipedia in English)

Other Wikipedias, such as Wikipedia in Portuguese, use a specific template to create GLAM pages.

TGLAM (Wikipedia in Portuguese)
TGLAM (Wikipedia in English)

On Wikidata, for GLAM-Wiki projects that might also have a bigger set of activities on this platform, see the institution-specific GLAM pages.