GLAM/Newsletter/December 2022/Contents/Nigeria report

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

Nigeria report

WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria:An initiative beyond 1Lib1Ref for Librarians in Nigeria

WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria

Wiki Loves Libraries Nigeria is an initiative led by Bukola James(WNUG) to bridge the content gap that exists on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikicommons about Libraries and notable librarians in Nigeria. This campaign which is the first implementation brought together Librarians, and Library students, from different library schools and library organisations in Nigeria to create visibility across the 3 selected Wikimedia projects. According to research carried out by Bukola James(WNUG) there are inadequate contents about the various types of Libraries in Nigeria on Wikipedia and the existing list of Libraries in Nigeria does not reflect the actual statistics of public, academic, national, private, research libraries in Nigeria with reference to a research conducted in 2019, and the existing nominal list of libraries published by the National Library of Nigeria in 2019. It is also discovered that there is an incomplete categorization of libraries, library associations, Nigerian librarians, and librarianship professors. Moreso, out of the 170 academic libraries identified on Wikipedia only a few have an article on Wikipedia. This is not different from the available list of notable librarians in Nigeria. In a query carried out on Wikidata query builder for notable Librarians in Nigeria, the result indicated only 124 and 478 libraries with a lot of missing statements that can assist researchers and readers. Hence, the purpose of this campaign is to improve and correct this data and make Librarians and Library students become content creators on Wikimedia projects other than being retrievers, disseminators, and verifiers of information online.

Recorded Impacts

The campaign commenced on the 29th November 2022, is expected to end on the 31st of December 2022 having held series of two (2) online trainings with 18 to 22 participants in attendance and recruited 61 editors to contribute to the project as seen on the dashboard with 96 Wikipedia articles created, and 68 Wikidata items as at 21st of December 2022. The camapign held 2 day in-person event at the National library of Nigeria Kwara State Branch with 30 participants in attnedance to further engage them in the art and act of contributing to Wikipedia, Wikicommons, and Wikidata to increase content relating to Libraries and notable Librarians in Nigeria. The training specifically exposed participants to the core content policies of Wikipedia, how to perform minor edits; add citations, info boxes, categories, and expand articles, how to upload media files on Wikicommons, and editing on Wikidata. at the end of the trainings, the participants engaged in an hour edithaton using the resource guide on the participants activities section to practice what they have learnt with one-on-one support from the project team. More pictures about the physical trainings can be found on WikiCommons.

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