R@/Bibliothécaires II: Promoting documentation professionals in the Wikimedia movement

After a successful first phase last year, the R@/Bibliothécaires project has entered Phase II with renewed energy. This initiative aims to strengthen the presence of documentation and archive professionals within Wikimedia projects, offering them the tools and training they need to better organize, preserve and share knowledge.

A commitment to better representation

In French-speaking West Africa, and particularly in Benin, the participation of librarians and archivists in Wikimedia projects is still limited. Phase II of the project was therefore designed to fill this gap by training a new generation of contributors from the world of documentation.

We worked with 10 former participants already familiar with Wikimedia platforms, and recruited 10 new professionals via an awareness campaign in the press and in reading centers. The training sessions alternated between face-to-face workshops and online coaching, with a collaborative learning approach: the old hands guided the new ones in mastering the tools and carrying out practical group exercises.

Outside input to enrich the experience

To give greater depth to the discussions and fully integrate participants into the Wikimedia movement, several outside volunteers provided valuable support by sharing their expertise and offering fresh perspectives on collaborative projects.

Among them, Nanour and Nicolas, members of the Wikisource Community User Group, highlighted the fundamental role played by documentation professionals in enriching free content. They stressed the importance of their know-how in organizing, structuring and validating sources, which are essential skills for improving the quality and reliability of Wikimedia projects. In their presentations, they explained how Wikisource, a platform dedicated to the digitization and publication of free texts, can benefit from the work of librarians. Through concrete examples, they demonstrated how these professionals can find, restore and enhance public domain works by making them accessible to all via Wikimedia.

As part of the project, we had the opportunity to benefit from the online assistance of Fabricio, librarian and professional administrator on French Wikipedia. He shared with participants his background, experiences and strategies for combining his responsibilities as a librarian with his active involvement in Wikimedia projects.

His talk highlighted the many points in common between the missions of librarians and those of Wikimedia contributors. As information professionals, their role is to manage, organize and disseminate knowledge – essential skills that are perfectly transposable to Wikimedia’s collaborative projects. He demonstrated how librarians can add value to their expertise by contributing to projects, in particular by providing reliable sources and facilitating the structuring of content.

Overview of contributions made during the activity

During this period, we worked on two 260-page books on Wikisource, improved or created 500 items on Wikidata, added 398 multimedia files on Wikimedia Commons and made several contributions to Wikipedia. The latter mainly involved adding sources, inserting images into articles and creating a few sample articles.

With R@/Bibliothécaires II, we have reached a new milestone in the integration of librarians and archivists into open contribution. The commitment and motivation of the participants testify to a growing interest in the valorization of knowledge in the French-speaking West African region. This project marks the beginning of a lasting involvement, and we look forward to seeing these professionals play an even more active role within the Wikimedia movement.