Wikipedian-in-Residence program led the way in open social scholarship
Image from a digital slide promoting Dr. Constance Crompton's lecture on April 3, 2019.
Engaging the community in social knowledge creation
When distinguished UVic professor Ray Siemens first arrived at the University of Victoria, he saw the digital future and embraced its erudite possibilities. In his 2004-2015 role as Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, he became a difference-maker in the burgeoning field of digital humanities.
In the age of abundance, the ability to curate information has emerged as a key 21st century skill. In 2001, Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by community volunteers known as Wikipedians, began its first edition.
Partnering with UVic Libraries in 2014, Siemens created the Wikipedian-in-Residence program with a focus on bridging academic and non-academic communities by consulting on Wikipedia pages, presenting lectures, and leading Wikipedia edit-a-thons; other partners included Faculty of Humanities, the SSHRC-supported Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership, and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
After focusing on the creation of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) and the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership, Siemens partnered with UVic University Librarian Jonathan Bengtson along with librarian Matt Huculak to deliver a unique program that filled a gap in mobilizing knowledge. Over 11 years, the program featured notable Honorary Resident Wikipedians such as Christian Vandendorpe, Constance Crompton, Silvia Gutiérrez de la Torre, Erin Glass, and other global scholars.
“As a public university, UVic has an obligation to mobilize our research for the use of policy makers, educators, and Canadian communities. The Wikipedian program has been a great opportunity to imagine ways to make scholarship more accessible and usable for a non-expert audience,” says Lisa Goddard, Associate University Librarian, Advanced Research Services.
As the inaugural Honorary Resident Wikipedian in 2015, Vandendorpe, a widely respected scholar of semiotics, reflected on the “ethical imperative” and importance of Wikipedia as a meeting place for scholars and instructors to ensure the information presented on its pages is as accurate and comprehensive as possible.
“What we were looking at mostly in 2004 was the future of text and its electronic format,” says Siemens. “Very quickly along the way we realized that there was a confluence at UVic Libraries—who are leaders in this area—but also across Canada, of people who are very interested, not only in text and electronic form, but how that form influences knowledge structures via how that knowledge is created, shared, and engaged electronically.” The Wikipedian-in-Residence program came directly from that starting point.
Impact and evolution
Since the inaugural event, the Wikipedian-in-Residence program has increased awareness of open scholarship principles, leading to the development of experts and demonstrated impact, emphasizing open social scholarship, and broadening the academic community’s understanding of Wikipedia's role in knowledge sharing. Siemens explains that open social scholarship allows scholars to work in an environment that is open access, open source, and open contribution.
Over the course of the program, the seven Honorary Resident Wikipedians have each contributed in different ways to open and shared knowledge. For example, Crompton’s work focused on data sets and wiki data, while Glass continued her work in a contemporary social context. The program has also raised awareness and engaged the community with noteworthy impact from Crompton's work with the Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada.
“It was out of this partnership group, with the library's leadership and support right from the start, that we collectively recognized Wikipedia at the time as the major platform on which this open and social scholarship—this knowledge structuring, sharing and construction—was going on,” explains Siemens. “We wanted to hear more. We wanted to know more. And so, we worked together to create this honorary position to ensure that at least twice a year we were having focused discussions on what was important about the knowledge platforms generally, but also about Wikipedia in particular.”
Challenges and successes
In the last decade, some of the Honorary Resident Wikipedians have become experts in their chosen field, like Nastasia Herold (language and culture) and Amanda Lawrence (social knowledge spaces). Crompton, then a professor at UBC, Okanagan, has used their wiki data as a foundation to become a Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa.
But Siemens raises an interesting aspect to the work as it relates to the question of impact. While that can be measured by how many times a scholar’s work is cited, he reflects on the difficulty to track the social impact of their work.
“One thing I can say for sure is we had people talking. Whether you were in favour of this kind of work or not, rarely ever were you indifferent. So, the value of a discussion and awareness raising is hard to measure,” says Siemens. However, the well-attended Wikipedia lectures and library hosted Wikipedia-a-thons created the perfect milieu for spin-off discussions with supplementary speakers and have led to transformative projects in the field.
New initiatives
Now with the sun setting on the Wikipedian-in-Residence program, Siemens announces its transition to the Future Knowledge Fellowship Program. Set to begin in the fall, this program aims to explore new platforms and knowledge structures, including misinformation and social knowledge spaces, and will feature Huculak as one of its first speakers. The burgeoning initiative will continue the legacy of the Wikipedian-in-Residence program, emphasizing collaboration and partnership.
“I talked with Jonathan, and we realized that Wikipedia was not the only place where these types of things were happening as social spaces, and it was time to look a little bit further beyond Wikipedia alone,” says Siemens.
As the university’s main hub, libraries are at the centre of digital transformation, providing physical and digital spaces, expertise, access to knowledge, and have the power to accelerate transdisciplinary research and build intellectual community.
“Wikipedia is an enormously important source of free information globally, receiving almost 10,000 page views every second. Program like ours help to enrich this global knowledge base, ensuring accurate information and increasing the representation of diverse voices,” says Goddard.
With the official launch of UVic Libraries’ Kula: Library Futures Academy set for September 15, the time is right for building on the importance of community engagement and the impact of open social knowledge platforms in our society.