Wikipedia:GLAM/Wellcome/3rd Month Report

This month, I designed a training programme to be used for introducing new editors to Wikipedia. This training ran on 25 July, and the editors (as of 6 Aug) have made 99 edits and added a total of 11308 bytes to Wikipedia. In particular, newly-trained editors focussed on images, and more than 40 images from the Wellcome bulk-upload have been added to articles.

File:Wellcome to Wikimedia Poster.png

Public outreach and advocacy were key focusses this month:

• I attended two national conferences (both coincidentally hosted in Canterbury): the biennial Society for the Social History of Medicine conference, and Science in Public. I discussed the residency with delegates and presented a poster at Science in Public (see right). I dispelled some concerns about article quality and some delegates expressed an interest in participating in training, expert evaluation of pages, and attending editathons.
• We continued our work to reach out to medical communities by speaking with the editor of The Lancet Psychiatry – more on this below.

There was also lots of training:

• The first editor-training session for Wellcome staff was a great success. The trainees came from a variety of roles at the Library. Most were women, which is a small but positive step towards addressing Gender bias on Wikipedia. Newly-trained editors added content, especially pictures. They have since suggested a Wiki-club to provide time, space, and community to edit.
• I attended [https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Training_the_Trainers/July_2016_event a Training the Trainers] session at Wikimedia UK headquarters. Not only did I learn a great deal, I’ve also met some excellent fellow Wikimedians who may help out with some future training/events.

This month’s collaborations and plans for collaborations included:

• A visit to the Hearing Library, where we discussed opportunities for putting their content online and for improving coverage of hearing loss on Wikiprojects.
• Several meetings to discuss training sessions for sixth-formers. We’re planning to have classes from one or two schools come to the Library for training on referencing and Wikipedia.
• Preliminary talks with Julie Anderson of the University of Kent about potentially running some Wikimedia training for history of medicine students.
• Discussions with Mira Vogel and Raya Sharbain from UCL about how to develop more opportunities to use Wikimedia in collaborative educational projects. This lead to connections with Thomas Kador (UCL Public and Cultural Engagement), Adam Smith (Honorary Secretary of the Royal Historical Society), and Henry Potts (UCL Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education).
• A follow-up meeting with Henry to discuss how UCL students might be involved in evaluating the residency’s efforts to get people editing.
• The British Society for the History of Science have asked about how to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the history of science – they are interested in updating the list of prominent figures, paying particular attention to how to diversify this list.

There are several upcoming events in the short-term as well as the plans for collaboration detailed above:

• More training will be delivered here at the Wellcome in August.
• Following on from a suggestion from the first cohort of newly trained editors, we’ll look into creating a Wiki-club at the Wellcome.
• We’ll be establishing timetables and issuing invitations to the first events to coincide with [http://wellcomecollection.org/bedlam Bedlam].
• Plans for a Women Engineers editathon in October will be fleshed-out.

Longer-term plans include a women in medicine editathon to be held in early 2017, and more Bedlam/mental health-related sessions.

On 6 July, I was interviewed by Niall Boyce, editor of The Lancet Psychiatry. Based on this session, on 22 July, the residency was featured in an article in The Lancet and on a Lancet Psychiatry Audio Feature.{{cite journal|last1=Teesdale|first1=Ellen|title=The wisdom of crowds|journal=The Lancet|date=July 2016|volume=388|issue=10042|page=321|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31130-8|url=http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2816%2931130-8/fulltext|accessdate=8 August 2016}} This was tweeted about 14 times, potentially reaching 49,670 Twitter users.{{cite web|title=Altmetric – The wisdom of crowds|url=https://elsevier.altmetric.com/details/9941455|website=elsevier.altmetric.com|accessdate=8 August 2016}} My own tweet about the article was actively engaged with 64 times. The Lancet article was also featured in two Wellcome intranet pieces and mentioned in a news summary sent to Wellcome Trust staff, publicising the project internally as well as externally.

On 25 July, the first training session was tweeted about by the Wellcome Library account – the tweet was retweeted 9 times and favourited 12 times.

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