GLAM/Newsletter/December 2022/Contents/Uganda report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue XII, December 2022

Uganda report

GLAM in Uganda 2022

February : 1Lib1Ref Cycle 1

As with previous years, we participated in the annual #1Lib1Ref campaign this time concentrating on English Wikipedia and Wikidata. The 44 participants were mainly librarians that had attended user group activities before in addition to other volunteers who were interested in making Wikipedia a more reliable resource.

Outcome

At the end of the campaign, the results were encouraging - collectively, we managed to make Wikipedia a more reliable resource 622 times more!!! The rest of the results can be accessed through this link.

Through feedback, participants expressed the need for the usergroup to engage in more thorough training in relation to evaluating local resources as they felt that their impact would be more with local content.

May : African Librarians Week

The African Librarians Week is an annual event in which African library and information professionals concertedly provide reliable and factual information to the world through Wikipedia as part of the global #1Lib1Ref campaign which run from 15th May - 5th June 2022. Under the theme “Strengthening Africa's Narratives on Wikipedia & sister projects“ the user group was able to support librarians from Ugandan to participate in the week-long virtual campaign thus enabling them to help fill key gaps in African content on Wikipedia by adding missing references to articles about Africa on the online encyclopedia.

May : International Museum Day 2022

Between 4th - 18 May, we supported local editors and activities in commemoration of International Museum Day 2022 to improve the presence of Ugandan museums on Wikidata, in collaboration with ICOM and various chapters.

Outcome

With emphasis on Wikidata, participants attended a series of trainings conducted by Wikimedia Austria who also provided excellent learning resources and as a result, 30 new Wikidata items were created.

Prizes were sponsored by Wikimedia Deutschland and if you follow this link, you will be able to see all the other winners too!

June - August : WikiUganda EduGLAM

This was a joint offering of the GLAM and Education departments of the usergroup. It was structured and delivered as a 6 week hybrid course for both secondary school teachers from Emmanuel College, Kazo and librarians from Uganda Christian University, Mukono and the East African School of Library Science (EASLIS). The emphasis was on basics of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Coomons, editing and how to incorporate Wikipedia into teaching as well as library work.

Outcome

At the end of 6 weeks, 10 individuals had been trained with each submitting a plan of action for a project that they can undertake with the community they serve. The user group hopes to sponsor these projects in the year 2023.

December : WikiSource in Uganda 2022

December was an exciting month for us as we finally got to interact with Wikisource. It was an introduction to many things such as the Wikisource Contest Tool and the wealth of content that is available on the site. We engaged students from the Literature Department of Makerere University in addition to interested volunteers.

With the guidance of Satdeep Gill, we were able to add 3 Luganda language books to Wikimedia Commons. In addition, one of the attendees offered us 5 source texts in the Luganda language and our only challenge is that we have no access to a scanner that can digitise the work.

Next steps

The event will end on 10th January and we will share the results then. In the next phase, we will use the momentum gained to delve deeper into various editing techniques on WikiSource and adding local language source texts to the project so that volunteers can contribute in a local language. We are also looking at mobilising resources that will enable us to digitise the available content that has been offered to us. The project has encouraged volunteers who gave feedback that it was a good opportunity to interact with other Wikimedia Foundation projects.

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