GLAM/Newsletter/May 2022/Contents/Australia report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue V, May 2022

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Australia report

Over 1000 references added in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand for #1Lib1Ref

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By Caddie Brain

Wikimedia Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Wikimedia Inc again joined forces for #1Lib1Ref offering six free drop-in sessions for librarians across the region, resulting in 762 citations.

The campaign which stands for One Librarian One Reference, encourages us to imagine a world where every librarian added one more reference to Wikipedia. Librarians around the world unite to add missing references to articles on Wikipedia to grow the accuracy and creditability of content.

The regional online sessions held every Monday and Wednesday during the three week campaign, offered training and support to add a citation to Wikipedia during the campaign which runs from Sunday 15 May to Sunday 5 June 2022. And additional session aimed at school librarians was also held.

Although held twice each year, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand participate in the mid-year #1Lib1Ref campaign, as the earlier campaign falls within a holiday period for both counties.

Wikimedians from both regions supported the two-hour sessions, which were attended by around 20 participants from libraries across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, some with some editing experience, others with none whatsoever. Attendance numbers were lower than expected, perhaps due to a saturation in online training in recent years and also an overlap with the national Australian library conference, but engagement was strong with some participants attending more than one session and participants from libraries that we have never engaged with before.

Registrations were taken for each session, to prevent any unwanted drop-ins (not that a guitar playing performance was entirely unwelcome last year!) and also to enable future contact with participants. This may also have provided a barrier to last minute participation. Growing the marketing of the campaign and direct engagement in libraries may grow participation numbers in future years.

At each session, participants were supported to create a login to Wikipedia, introduced to the basics of Wikipedia and the visual editor and shown the many methods of adding a citation to Wikipedia. They were then encouraged to have a go at adding a reference themselves, many sharing their screens to troubleshoot any issues they were having.

Some participants chose to add a reference from a pre-prepared list that session organisers created. While participants were also introduced to Citation Hunt, without any prior knowledge of some of the suggested pages, this proved a more difficult way to generate something to work on. The Bruce Myers category bot offered another way to explore references within expertise or interest areas.

The overall results of the the three week campaign were collected on the project Dashboard, which saw 762 references added from 26 participants, many of whom have continued to edit beyond the completion of the campaign.

Sincere thanks to Ann Reynolds, Kerry Raymond, Caddie Brain, Siobhan Leachman, Mike Dickison, Pru Mitchell, Alex Lum, Tamsin Braisher and Amanda Lawrence for their facilitation and support of these sessions.

State Library of Queensland and the University of Newcastle shine for #1Lib1Ref

Each year, the State Library of Queensland participates in the #1Lib1Ref recognising the potential it has to increase the discoverability of its content and collections. For the 2022 campaign, the library held three of their own drop-in sessions for staff, encouraging use any content from the State Library of Queensland to cite, from websites, catalogue records and blogs. All blogs are released under a creative commons license so can be used freely on Wikimedia platforms.

Fourteen staff collectively added 302 references collected in the project Dashboard. Perhaps more significantly that the number of references, is the impact of that contribution. The Dashboard shows that over the last three weeks the edits by staff were already seen by readers 147,000 times, a figure that will only grow.

Supporting Wikimedian Kerry Raymond says understand this link between collections and Wikimedia platforms in terms of public discoverability is where the opportunity lies for libraries participating in #1Lib1Ref into the future.

"The #1Lib1Ref programs should be designed to encourage librarians to contribute content arising from their programs or collections and, of course, citing their collections. This gets their information out there in Wikipedia articles and the citations back to their library driving up their web count hits."

"Wikipedia is a growing referrer and, unlike many other referrers, it is a referrer they can actively influence through engaging in #1Lib1Ref as an annual program, allowing staff are welcome to contribute in between times as well as part of their job," Kerry said.

The Wiki Warriors at the University of Newcastle Library also participated in the campaign this year, hosting two sessions as a way to grow their edit-a-thon facilitation skills and growing Wikipedia editing throughout the library.

Congratulations to Troy Keith, Tania Schafer, Kerry Raymond, Paige Wright and Jennifer Goh for coordinating these efforts.

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