By David J. Fred [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Tying the Celtic Knot. Pic by David J. Fred [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The first ‘Celtic Knot’ – Wikipedia Language Conference will take place Thursday 6 July 2017 at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Wikimedia UK. This Wikimedia event will focus on Celtic Languages and Indigenous Languages, showcasing innovative approaches to open education, open knowledge and open data that support and grow language communities.

CC-BY-SA (Own work)

CC-BY-SA (Own work)

To assist with seeing the connections and areas of commonality between your work and the Celtic Knot conference please read the below guide to the Wikimedia projects:

The Celtic Knot conference is jointly supported by the University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK.

Wikimedia UK logo

Wikimedia UK logo

Wikimedia UK is the registered charity that supports and promotes Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, and the volunteers who write, edit and curate the content of the projects.

Our mission is to help people and organisations create and preserve open knowledge and to provide easy access for all. We support the widest possible public access to, use of and contribution to open content of an encyclopaedic or educational nature.

  • Culture: We work closely with cultural institutions, including galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) to help them realise the potential of openly-licensed content for public benefit.
  • Education: Wikipedia is more than a reference work. All over the world people and institutions are exploring the ways that Wikipedia can be used as a formal education tool. It belongs in education.
  • Volunteers: The Wikimedia projects are written, edited and curated by volunteers who are just like you. There are many ways to get involved – there are activities to suit the interests of everybody. You can also become a member of the charity.
Wikimedia's family of Open Knowledge projects

Wikimedia’s family of Open Knowledge projects

 

Wikimedia’s family of Open Knowledge projects include:

  • Wikipedia: the free online encyclopaedia exists in each Celtic and Indigenous language and Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool allows articles to be translated easily between different language Wikipedias.
  • Wikimedia Commons: a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
  • Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects and many other sites and services beyond. Wikidata can connect other databases and collections of information, allowing computers and software to see connections between hundreds of data sources. GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) realise that their collections become more useful and reusable when they are deeply interlinked with other collections around the world. Creating open structured data for their collections increases their impact on the public.
  • WikisourceThe Free Library – is a multilingual project to create a growing free content library of OCR-ed source texts, as well as translations of source texts in any language including constitutional documents, court rulings, plays, poems, songs, novels, short stories, letters, travel writing, speeches, obituaries, news articles and more.
  • Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary.
  • Wikibooks is a multilingual project for collaboratively writing open-content textbooks that anyone can edit including textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals. These materials can be used in a traditional classroom, an accredited or respected institution, a home-school environment or for self-learning.
  • Wikivoyage—a multilingual, web-based project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide.

In addition, the Wiki Education Foundation connects secondary & higher education to the publishing power of Wikipedia. Bridging Wikipedia and academia creates opportunities for any learner to contribute to, and access, open knowledge. We cultivate deeper learning for students as they expand Wikipedia articles for course assignments. We work with libraries to expand the public’s access to their resources. We support academic associations as they expand and improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their field.

If you can see a clear commonality between your work and the projects above then we welcome diverse attendees and presenters working in Celtic and Indigenous languages ranging from Wikimedians, educators, researchers, information professionals, media professionals, linguists, translators, learning technologists and more coming together to share good practice and find fruitful new collaborations to support language communities as a result of the event.

Conference Themes

  • Building language confidence: participation, public engagement & social equality.
  • Putting our language on the map: preserving & opening up our cultural heritage.
  • Languages on the road to open: ongoing or new projects and initiatives in open knowledge, open education and open data.
  • The politics of language: Local, national, and international policy and practice; advocacy for funding, institutional and community support and investment
  • Hacking; making; sharing

The offical call for session proposals has now closed but email ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk if you would like to attend or have a session you would like to showcase.

NB: Abstracts have now been reviewed as of April 2017 and notifications sent out to speakers.