Wikimedia and Public Libraries

I’m not a regular Wikipedian (yet). Most of my efforts to open up ICT for Education (ICTE) are focused on OER projects such as OE4BW, DH-OER, Creative Commons or mLiteracy. But last year, Paul West passed on an invitation to attend the Wikimedia strategic retreat at the Constitutional Court and attend the annual AGM as the Creative Commons representative.

At the risk of stating the obvious…

Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Through various projects, chapters, and the support structure of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia strives to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

I joined the South African chapter of Wikimedia and assisted them with their thinking about their 5 year planning. I found it fascinating to be thrown into about the inner decision making body of this largely unfamiliar organization. Through Creative Commons and Open Life Sciences, I have been introduced to a code of conduct for remote meetings. But here, we had an in person meeting with a code of conduct. Many of my academic friends could learn from that.

In South Africa, under the leadership of Bobby Shabangu, Wikimedia have been doing amazing work on projects an number of projects. I’m going to highlight two

1. The promotion and preservation of indigenous languages by means of digital technologies (SWIP)
2. A campaign to introduce librarians to Wikipedia and encourage collaboration between the two.

SWiP Project

I am particularly interested in this collaborative initiative to preserve indigenous languages by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR); the free encyclopaedia (Wikipedia) and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). Wikipedia aims for a world where every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. But at present Wikipedia is mainly available in dominant languages. Wikimedia South Africa are promoting the growth of Wikipedia in all of the languages of Southern Africa.

Wikipedia loves Libraries

Then because of my work with City of Johannesburg (COJ) and the mliteracy work I have been doing in public libraries, I have also been pleased to participate in their Wikipedia loves Libraries campaign. Since the Strategic Planning Event in November 2023, we have held one mLibrarians and Wikipedians event at the Randburg Library

It has become increasingly clear to me, as an open educator and a critical ed techie, that the devices that we hold in our hands and the information that is shared via networks and platforms can be used to share the sum of all knowledge in my own home language (English). However, there’s so much more work to be done on making this true for other language groups in this country and on this continent. Public librarians, I think, hold the key to making this possible.