GLAM/Newsletter/June 2026/Contents/New Zealand report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue VI, June 2026

New Zealand report

BAU at Auckland Museum, Otago Uni Library Life and the NZBSI WiR is complete

BAU at Auckland Museum

Despite the dark winter mornings, Auckland Museum librarians and Wikimedian in Residence have been meeting bright and early every week for Wiki Wednesday. This is a dedicated time, before library open hours, for the team to work on enriching and improving Wikipedia articles, contributing to the Women in Red project. SecretLibrarian, Pearlwhisper, Thewickerwoman and Winnieswikiworld also took part in the 1Lib1Ref Australasia 2026 campaign during June, doing their bit by adding references to pages about New Zealand women.

Library life at the University of Otago

Tamsin Braisher (User:DrThneed) wrote an article describing her outreach work at the University of Otago, which featured in the June 2026 issue of Library Life. Tamsin is based in the university library's engagement team, and has been working with staff and students at the university to understand how they can engage with Wikipedia and other Wiki projects.

A lot of Tamsin's work aims to improve the understanding of how Wikipedia is put together and how to use it properly. Alongside editing training and working with staff to improve Wikipedia pages directly, she has run polls to find out what teachers had told students about using Wikipedia, and made an activity where you have to sort Wikipedia features like neutral point of view or warning banners into whether those features increase trust or not. The article is freely readable online, check it out!.

Tamsin has also been working on Wikidata and Wikipedia pages relating to the anniversary of an important New Zealand institution, the Dunedin Teacher Training College, which was the first teacher training college in the country. The College is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

Completion of the Bioeconomy Science Institute Wikimedian in Residence

The Wikimedian in Residence undertaken by Siobhan Leachman Ambrosia10 came to an end on the 30th of June 2026. As part of this WiR an engagement strategy was published and submitted to the Bioeconomy Science Institute (BSI).

A final report summarising the work undertaken, the documentation produced and the training provided during this residency has also been submitted both to the Bioeconomy Science Institute and to Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand.

In summary WiR was very successful and met the aims given at the outset of this project. The BSI now has a clear strategic approach for contributing biodiversity data and media to Wikimedia platforms and understands the value of ongoing engagement.

The WiR developed and established sustainable workflows to integrate Wikimedia content creation into specimen digitisation and data mobilisation processes and created opportunities to improve the efficiency and support the ongoing publication of biodiversity data and images to Wikimedia platforms.

Finally the WiR helped foster staff capability and engagement with Wiki. Staff participated in targeted training and discussions that increased their understanding of the Wikimedia ecosystem, the value and impact of data reuse through Wikimedia platforms as well as the potential for Wikimedia to improve access to and reuse of BSI's expert knowledge as well as BSI's biodiversity collection images and data.