{"id":681,"date":"2018-03-22T22:19:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T22:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/?p=681"},"modified":"2018-03-23T14:55:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:55:32","slug":"libraries-literacies-learning-presentation-at-scurl-event-23-march-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/libraries-literacies-learning-presentation-at-scurl-event-23-march-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Libraries, Literacies & Learning – presentation at SCURL event 23 March 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

NB: You can find a page of resources for how to get started with Wikipedia and its sister projects here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Good afternoon, thanks for inviting me along today.<\/p>\n

My name is Ewan McAndrew and I have been working at the University of Edinburgh for just over two years now in this rather strange sounding role of Wikimedian in Residence.<\/p>\n

My background is in English and Media teaching where I worked closely with school librarian colleagues and I\u2019ve recently finished my Information Management MSc so libraries, literacy and learning<\/strong> is kind of my thing.<\/p>\n

But I struggled to think what I could tell you in my ten minute section here today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The reason being that there is a huge discussion right now. It needs to be. I\u2019ll not dwell on the whole Facebook and Cambridge Analytica issue because that\u2019s not what I\u2019m here to speak to you about today but it does speak to a larger issue on what value we place on information literacy<\/a> and media literacy<\/a>, what value we place on the transparency <\/em><\/strong>of knowledge sharing, what value we place on our students, our staff and members of the public being conversant with the digital intermediaries that govern our daily lives. Because I take the view that there is a huge & pivotal role for libraries to play in this discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201dThis challenge is not just for school librarians to prepare the next generation to be informed but for all<\/strong> librarians to assist the whole<\/strong> population.<\/em>\u201d (Abram, 2016)<\/h4>\n

So what can I tell you about the residency to date?<\/p>\n

I can tell you that it started, and has continued, with information literacy and digital skills at its heart<\/a>. Our IT director, Melissa Highton, was asked at the time what strategies could be employed to help better meet the information literacy and digital skills needs of our staff and students at the university, and how could we better meet our commitment to share the knowledge we share with the world?<\/p>\n

The residency also started with libraries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A timeline of Wikimedia residencies in Scotland (and Martin Poulter’s work at the University of Oxford).<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or 1 library in fact. Because we borrowed Ally Crockford, the first Wikimedian in Residence in Scotland, from the National Library of Scotland to help run our first editathon way back in February 2015 focused on Women in Science and Scottish History<\/a> missing from Wikipedia; and the Edinburgh Seve<\/a>n in particular, the first women ever to matriculate at a British university. Sara Thomas, here today, was also at that event.<\/p>\n

An editathon<\/a> for those who don\u2019t know, is just a Wikipedia editing event with a particular focus on a subject area to help create & improve certain Wikipedia pages. It can be done as in-person event with online resources, physical resources, t-shirts, stickers, cupcakes. But it can also be done as remote online event or can be done as translate-a-thon, image-a-thon, infobox-a-thon or more.<\/p>\n

Professor Allison Littlejohn came along to the event and what she discovered was that there was genuine formal and informal learning going on at these events and her research paper<\/a> has just been published with others to follow.<\/p>\n

So there was real merit in universities engaging with Wikipedia editing to surface the knowledge they were creating & curating because of these shared missions. This made the business case once we aligned it with our information literacy and digital skills strategy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So that\u2019s where I sit in that middle area between Wikimedia and the University of Edinburgh and I\u2019m supported on both sides by people passionate about Open Knowledge.<\/p>\n

Since then we have never looked back. While academia and Wikipedia have something of a chequered history, as soon as we started discussing the university taking an informed approach to Wikipedia and knowledge sharing, we found we had a lot to talk about.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what Wikipedia is about \u2013 making connections, wiki-linking from one subject to another, disappearing down the rabbit hole of knowledge. And that\u2019s what the residency has been about, delivering workshops and creating resources which allow colleagues across the whole university to see the connections between their work and the work of the Wikimedia projects. As such we have now created a network of Open Knowledge nodes<\/em><\/strong>. We find that when we work with a colleague in one discipline this can often lead to other colleagues being brought in and other disciplines. So far we have worked across all three teaching colleges with an ever-increasing number of disciplines.<\/p>\n

Of the in-curriculum work we have done in Reproductive Biology, World Christianity, Translation Studies (case studies<\/a>) \u2013 all<\/em><\/strong> of these courses have been repeated year-on-year because of the positive reactions of staff and students (compilation video of staff & student feedback<\/a>). And we\u2019re adding to these with workshops in Digital Sociology MSc, Global Health MSc, Data Science for Design MSc<\/a> (adding the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database and 3,219 accused witches to Wikidata) and we\u2019re now discussing which year group we should work with in the Law school because practising research skills and the ability to communicate laws in an accessible way is absolutely something we as a university should be looking to do, and help our students to do.<\/p>\n

So we need to talk about Wikipedia and how we engage with it.<\/p>\n

Not many people know, for instance, that Wikipedia has a strict conflict of interest policy \u2013 you shouldn\u2019t write about anything where you are too close to be impartial. That\u2019s why it was so good to see Glasgow Caledonian University Library recently create the Wikipedia page for Shetland Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Libraries should support one another.<\/p>\n

Paying it forward<\/em> for the common good is what Wikipedia is all about.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For instance, a University of Edinburgh Reproductive Biology student, Aine Kavanagh (fantastic video interview<\/a> with her – well worth watching), scrupulously researched an article on one of the most serious and most deadly forms of ovarian cancer, high grade serous carcinoma<\/a>, and it has now been viewed over 28,000 times<\/a> since September 2016, addressing a serious knowledge gap with scholarly research articles. She benefited from the practice academically and she enjoyed doing it personally. Because her scholarship lasted beyond the assignment and did something for the common good. Lots of the students see that as the main benefit of engaging with Wikipedia and are enthusiastic to help because of this.<\/p>\n

Now, for the first time, Wikimedia UK<\/a> is able to produce a booklet of case studies<\/a> of the Wikipedia in the Classroom<\/em> work being undertaken in the United Kingdom; which should be available soon and include mention of (among other coursework):<\/p>\n