Wikipedians in Residence: a recap

To my great surprise, I got named in a BBC story today. The article is about the upcoming Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland; it’s really pleasing that as my own work at the British Library is coming to an end, there’ll be someone else taking up the work at an equally interesting organisation.

NLS is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Here is a list of all the current and past Wikimedians in Residence, and below is a list of everyone who is currently looking for a Wikipedian (or Wikimedian) in Residence that I’ve heard about – please let me know if I’ve missed any!

  • The National Library of Scotland (paid)

    Four-month residency working with the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to help disseminate the Library’s content to Wikipedia, and work with librarians to help encourage understanding and use of the projects.

  • JISC “Wikimedia Ambassador” residency (paid)

    Nine-month program looking to build skills and expertise engaging with Wikimedia projects among JISC-funded research programs, and to help disseminate knowledge from that research. (In many ways, this fits very neatly with some of the work I was doing for AHRC…).

  • ZDF Television (Germany) (paid)

    Short-term program (until mid-October) to liaise between the organisation and Wikipedia contributors on – I love this – a project to fact-check political claims during the months before the 2013 federal election in September.

  • Smithsonian Institution (paid)

    Internship (with stipend), aiming to build on and sustain the existing partnership programs with the Smithsonian.

  • Swiss Federal Archives (paid)

    Three to six month program with a particular focus on digitising WWI-related photographs.

  • METRO (New York) Open Data Fellowship (paid)

    An interesting two-track program; an eight-week fellowship working as a Wikipedian in Residence for a consortium of cultural institutions, and also as an advisor on open data/licensing/etc. US only, students preferred.

  • Olympia Timberland Library (US) (volunteer)

    The library is looking for a “Wiki-Ninja” (now there’s something to put on a job description) to help build and sustain a local-history editing program among the local community.

And, of course, there’s plenty more institutions which are setting up similar volunteer programs without going through a formal recruitment process – it only tends to be needed when money gets involved. If you’re a Wikipedia volunteer thinking of what you could do with a local institution, now is as good a time as any to approach them…

4 thoughts on “Wikipedians in Residence: a recap”

  1. Nice list, thanks. One correction: the position at the Swiss Federal Archives is paid, too.

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