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New Zealand report

Granny's Wonderful Chair, Preparing for Auckland Museum Wiki Summer Students and an the ASBS Introductory Wiki Webinar

International cross-wiki collaboration on a book of Irish fairytales, Granny's Wonderful Chair

Cover of 1890 edition of Granny's Wonderful Chair

An 1857 book of fairytales by Irish author Frances Browne, Granny's Wonderful Chair, is now fully digitised and freely available for anyone to read thanks to the efforts of Wikisource volunteers.

The transcription was prompted by Otago University Wikimedian in Residence Tamsin Braisher (DrThneed), after learning that academic staff member Thomas McLean would be attending an annual festival dedicated to Frances Browne in Ireland. During the festival, Thomas was running a workshop to create a Wikipedia article for the book. Wanting to help from afar, work began transcribing the book of fairy tales from 1857 on WikiSource, to create an accessible e-book.

Alongside Wikipedian at Large Mike Dickison (Giantflightlessbirds), the pair committed to getting the works published on Wikisource in time for the festival. This ambitious task was the perfect opportunity to train some new editors in digitising out-of-copyright works, with Tamsin recruiting some newbies to assist with the task while learning how to contribute to Wikisource.

Over on the other side of the world, Thomas utilised the collective knowledge of attendees at the Frances Browne Literary Festival to write a summary of each tale, while simultaneously introducing more people to Wikisource and the Wikimedia movement. The resulting Wikipedia page for the book has many beautiful illustrations from the various editions, uploaded by Mike Dickison.

After becoming blind following a smallpox infection as a young child, Frances Browne penned her first poem at age 7, and went on to write many more, along with essays, reviews, and stories. In her writings, Browne recalled how she used to bribe her siblings to read to her by doing their chores. Over 150 years later, many of Browne’s best known fairytales are now freely available to be enjoyed for many more years to come.


Preparing for Auckland Museum Wiki Summer Students

The 2025/26 Auckland Museum Wiki Summer Student cohort are set to arrive in mid November to commence the 10 week programme that will introduce them to the world of Wikimedia! As the Wiki programme enters its third year, we are excited to be expanding its scope to work with three other Auckland GLAMs; MOTAT, New Zealand Maritime Museum and The Fletcher Trust Archive.

In early October we held a student assessment day at Auckland Museum. Of the over 90 applicants to the Wiki programme, we interviewed 18 students and are excited to have accepted 6 students into the programme. There will be two students posted at Auckland Museum, two students at New Zealand Maritime Museum, one student at MOTAT and one student at The Fletcher Trust Archives.

2024/25 Wiki Summer Students working in the Museum library

The student’s progress will be recorded on our GLAM project page and monthly highlights will be shared here in the GLAM newsletter. We are excited to share more once the students arrive!

Batch Uploading Projects

Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira has uploaded their lantern slide collection from Clement Lindley Wragge, a colourful collection full of astrological interest and an insight into life in the late 19th / early 20th century.

ASBS Introductory Wiki for Botanists Webinar

Recording of the online webinar Wiki for Botanists 2025 (in English)

On the 14th of October Ambrosia10 and Stitchbird2 held an Introductory Wiki for Botanists Webinar aiming to teach participants to improve their digital outreach and communication skills by learning how to enrich Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Although this webinar was offered as part of the ASBS Conference WikiProject the organisers were keen to encourage anyone interested to sign up to attend.

The webinar had 63 people signing up to attend including 8 from the Bioeconomy Science Institute (the New Zealand Government research institution where Ambrosia10 is currently Wikimedian in Residence). Of those 63, 35 people attended the Webinar with 33 participants from NZ or Australia with one from the USA and one from Cuba.

As the presenters were aware that many of those who signed up were constrained from attending on the day (either because they were working or as a result of timezone issues), the webinar was recorded and was added to Youtube to facilitate sharing. The recording and the webinar slides were also added to Wikimedia Commons. All participants were sent a follow up email with links to the recording, slides and other editing resources. As at the end of October, the webinar video on Youtube has had 37 views.

Although this webinar focused on botanists and botanical examples, it is a great introduction to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons for anyone in the GLAM sector and beyond.

Ambrosia10 and Stitchbird2 are now looking forward to delivering a full day in person workshop at the Australasian Systematic Botany Society Conference.


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