Wikipedia:GLAM/Yorkshire Network Project/Report2

Institution	Resident's Name	Period Covered	Date of Report
Yorkshire Network Project hosted by York Museums Trust	PatHadley (talk)	16 August - 9 October 2014	23 October 2014

Overview

Raising awareness and making contact with museums has dominated this period of the project. Contact has been made with a good number of museums in group talks and there have been a number of one-to-one meetings. This means that we are ready to progress to image donations and training with several key museums. The understanding of the diversity of museums and their needs has also improved through research and contact. This has also led to the identification of potential obstacles and challenges to GLAMwiki work.

Meetings and workshops

During this period I presented at three regional museums forums and attended an ICOM workshop for networking opportunities. I also had individual meetings with staff at six museums or museum services. This has helped raise awareness of the project and led to a number of tangential contacts (eg, the Football Museum) that may or may not develop further. Several museums responded immediately to the talks/contact this has led to the individual meetings (with more upcoming). These meetings gave the chance to explore the initial steps of a partnership and the scope for working with Wikipedia given the specific collections, digital capacity and resources of each organisation. Developing these relationships and finding more will be the next stage of the project. These sessions were also useful as they gave insight into the diversity of the region's museums and their respective capacity and needs. Firstly, it was worth noting that National Trust and English Heritage representatives were absent from the meetings - possibly worth further exploration. Trends were also notable in the fact that there was more enthusiasm from Local Government museums than expected - though a promising contact with Kirklees has not yet borne fruit. Many of the smallest museums tend to be run by older staff and volunteers and have very little digital capacity or understanding. However, there was a diversity of attitudes to digital engagement, with some seeing digital as a priority for their expansion while others were paranoid about security and loss of control. The majority were somewhere in between, admitting that they lacked skills but understandably naive about how much more there was to learn. A further challenge particular to small organisations seemed to relate to the internal politics and isolation from the larger museum sector. As many were run through the good will of local people rather than museum professionals they were prone to a narrowness of view and territoriality that would make digital outreach and openness very difficult.

August 2014

26 - Meeting York Art Gallery team regarding future work, York
27 - Initial Meeting with York Minster, York
29 - Initial Meeting with Craven MDC Museums Services, Skipton

September 2014

22 - Museum Development Yorkshire - East Yorkshire Forum, Sewerby Hall, near Bridlington

Attendees:

- Baysgarth House Museum/North Lincs
- East Riding of Yorkshire Museums
- Epworth Old Rectory
- Hedon Museum
- Hornsea Museum
- Hull Museums
- North East Lincs Museums
- North Frodingham History Museum
- Ropewalk Museum
- Southburn Archaeological Museum
- The Stewart Museum, Burnby Hall Gardens
- Wilderspin National School
- Yorkshire Waterways Museum/YH Fed

24 - Working Internationally Regional Project Workshop (North) Workshop, Leeds

Contact with:

- National Football Museum, Manchester
- Tullie House, Carlisle
26 - Yorkshire Museum Researcher Night Talk, York
30 - Initial meeting with Harrogate Museums Services, Harrogate

October 2014

2 - Museum Development Yorkshire - North Yorkshire Forum, Kiplin Hall, near Richmond

Attendees:

- Thirsk Museum
- Bedale Museum
- Dales Countryside Museum
- Richmond Museums Service
- Richmondshire Museum
- Kiplin Hall
- Gayle Mill
- Shandy Hall
6 - Initial meeting with Barnsley Museums Service, Barnsley
7 - Museum Development Yorkshire - North Yorkshire Forum, Whitby Museum, Whitby

Attendees:

- North Yorkshire Moors Railway
- Whitby Museum
- Pannett Art Gallery
- Scarborough Museums Trust
- Captain Cook Memorial Museum
- Malton Museum
- Beck Isle Museum of Rural Life

At the museums forums I presented on 10 ways for your museum to get started with Wikipedia and provided attendees with a page of useful links.

Building relationships

Six institutions have had individual meetings. All were enthusiastic about building a partnership with Wikimedia through this project but there are individual challenges to each relationship.

York Museums Trust - 26 August

This brief meeting with a new member of the Art Gallery team was held to bring them up to speed with Wikipedia opportunities in advance of the Art Gallery reopening in Spring 2015. It is hoped that this will lead to a programme involving Art Gallery volunteers.

York Minster - 27 August

York Minster provides a unique opportunity as it has historic collections of objects and rare texts in addition to the building (which is already well photographed on Commons). However, the bureaucracy of a Church of England institution may provide too large a challenge to a partnership. This initial meeting with a member of the education team was encouraging but has not led to any further developments so far.

Craven Museums - 29 August

Craven Museum is a small, eclectic museum with excellent collections and community engagement, despite huge pressures from local government funders. The team are keen to improve and open up their digital offer but feel that they need to lay some foundations in terms of digital cataloguing and risk management before engaging further with Wikimedia.

Harrogate Museums - 30 September

Harrogate offers several high-quality museums with large collections under local government control. There are particular strengths in Egyptology and Fine Art. The museum service has sufficient independence to embark on a Wikimedia partnership without too many management obstacles but has big challenges with providing metadata accompanying images.

Barnsley Museums - 6 November

Barnsley's museums service has a range of sites with wide-ranging collections and particularly strong community engagement. They hope to provide an image donation and bring Wikipedia work into their volunteering programme but have significant obstacles to overcome with the council's management and IT policies.

Event proposals

Plans are coming together for a training session hosted by YMT and one at Craven Museum in December. The plans for a cross-museum edit-a-thon in the New Year are on hold as too few museums have made a commitment to partnerships.

Informal contact is being made (via twitter etc) with the developer/hacker community in anticipation of plans for the hack-a-thon event in Summer 2015.

Upcoming plans

October 2014

10 - Initial meeting with Shandy Hall, Coxwold
16 - Initial meeting with Burnby Hall, Pocklington
23 - Yorkshire MA Tweet-up, Sheffield
29 - Initial meeting, National Media Museum, Bradford

November 2014

3 - Training day at York Museums Trust, York
5 - Training day at Craven MDC Museums Services, Skipton
7 - UKMW14: Museums Beyond the Web Conference, London (TBC)
17 - Going Digital - Collections Trust Converence, Newcastle
21 - Initial Meeting Ripon Museums Trust, Ripon