Erin O’Neil and Sarah Severson

“ At Concordia, Kloda was not a Wikipedia editor and wanted to hire someone with experience in the Wikimedia ecosystem, so they could direct the position projects. Their library already had a successful Researcher-in-Residence program, so a residency model with someone from outside coming in was familiar to the library.
An alternative is to hire someone with more institutional experience and less Wikimedia experience and include a learning component in the position. Both Toronto and Alberta situated the WIR as a student role and were ready to invest in more time for training. ”

“ In terms of the impact on the individual, Jung said the WIR helped him develop his research and writing skills and honed “writing for the sake of documenting rather than in support of an argument” (personal communication, August 10, 2020) . Looking back at the experience, he was pleased at how his understanding of library services and collections expanded and how he had a new appreciation for the volume and scope of the collections. ”

“ Some WIRs focus on content creation using library resources, which could be editing Wikipedia articles or uploading digitized public domain content to Wikicommons. Other activities could include organizing events and training sessions to help facilitate contributions. These training sessions might cover Wikipedia editing generally or explore how information in Wikimedia projects is created, contested, and disseminated online. Having a Wikimedian who is familiar with the Wikipedia editorial processes can provide a range of opportunities on who to engage within the Wikimedia community. ”

“ Given the myriad of WIR examples, those new to the Wikimedia community can find it difficult to understand which one might be the best model for a specific institution. At the University of Alberta Library, when we first proposed the position, we were fortunate enough to be able to reach out to our colleagues at the University of Toronto Libraries and Concordia Library to learn from them about how best to set up the position. ”

“ This was helpful to get the community thinking about Wikipedia but also provided something Berson could reference back to when talking about the importance of understanding Wikipedia in our modern context. Berson had plans for two projects that are not yet completed: creating resources about sourcing and citation for journalism students and developing a peer-edited feminist best-practice manual for Wikipedia. The WIR program wound down when COVID-19 lockdowns began in the last two months of Berson’s contract, and she hopes to return to the unfinished work at a later date. ”

“ One recurring debate is if WIR should be required to go through the Article for Creation (AFC) process, which means that any new pages must be submitted as drafts and then reviewed by experienced editors. ”