Wiki Loves Librarians, Kaduna – Nigeria

This project created awareness among librarians, students and academics in Kaduna state on the importance of Wikimedia projects especially as tools for library services in 21 century digital literacy skills with main aim of training new and existing editors to gain new active members for Wikimedia Kaduna network.

The campaign showed librarians how to use Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons in Library services. This project is one of the monthly activities of Wikimedia Kaduna Network that is always supported with micro funding from Wikimedia User Group Nigeria with valuable assistance from experienced facilitators like Ramatu A. Haliru inyor4mr, Ismail Atiba Atibrarian, Friday Musa and Zainab Mu’azu Zmu’az4Z as the team of Wikimedia Kaduna network.

This campaign focused on improving existing articles by add sections and citations in Wikipedia articles of Nigeria Higher institutions. also uploading images about academic environment within the Nigeria context.

Projects Objectives

1. To provide new and existing editors (Librarians, Students) with better understanding of Wikipedia articles and best practices on how they can use wikipedia articles as reference sources.
2. To provide participants with necessary skills and tools needed to contribute quality images and content to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.
3. To established a hub for knowledge sharing among members of the networks, individual or organization who are willing to share knowledge.

Steps developed to achieved the project Objectives

The planning for this campaign started 3rd – 8 of Janurary 2024. By identifying the main approaches needed to developed for achieving success during the project. we adopted method of sharing information on the platform and serious of online sessions and in-person session. which are as follows:

1. Three Online sessions
2. One In-person sessions

During the planning stage we draft the proposals, receiving funds, creating e-flyers and sharing them in different social media to call for participants. also creating the Meta-wiki page, outreach dashboard and creating whatup app group for communication with participants among others.

Implementation (11th January – 10th February, 2024)

The Implementation starting from the Whatup app group by encouraging participants to create their Wikimedia account before training and using Google forms to identify the types of participants on the project. with the form we understand the new editors and existing editors.

1. First Online training was one 11th of January, 2024 as onboarding session which the team of facilitators introduce participants to the main project such as importance of wikimedia Outreach dashboard, documentation page which the metapage for the wiki Loves Librarians. the Participants where guide on how to join the Outreach dashboard and participants section of the Metagpage. at the end of the sections many participant were able to joined.

2. Second Online Training was on the 16th of January, 2024 which introduce participants to concepts of Wikipedia, Wikipedia info box. how to add citations and section to existing articles, Creative Commons licensing, the five pillars of Wikipedia and the notability policy. Then a general introduction again to the campaign showing them how to participate with provisions for data reimbursement and one-on-one support. The participants contribution was monitored on the dashboard with daily updates sent to the group to encourage participants through the communication channels.

3. The Physical Training session was held on 18th, January, 2024 at the Ahmadu Bello University Library complex known as Kashim Ibrahim Library, Kaduna state. the session provide participants with an in-person training experience and questions on issues affecting participants were all answered. The training ended with shared refreshments and photographies.

4. Third Online was on 23rd January, 2024 Training was a follow up training to check and monitor about how the participants are contributing with a question and answer sessions.

Learning Outcomes

1. 40% are new editors, as a result of previous project. The 60% were familiar with Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. however, the new editors we exposed to ways of adding image to Wikimedia Commons and adding section with citation to existing articles and adding image to Wikipedia page, making sentence correction with adding links to Wikipedia articles.
2. The outreach dashboard and metapage was most effective metrics for identifying participants contribution during the campaign.
3. The campaign improved the content gabs in teams of adding Library as a section to articles of Nigeria Institutions with adding citations for more accuracy of those articles.
4. based on the record on dashboard, this campaign met its targets expectation such as 77 wikipedia articles were improved with over 100 references added.

Challenges and Recommendation

Our major challenged for this project was IP Address black during our physical Meet-up , most new editors were very interesting in learning but due to IP address black they were discourage, as team we created a follow up training to put them through. we recommended that during training such range should not be black for effective learning.