Building Long-Term Wikimedia Engagement in African Libraries Beyond Campaigns

Findings and insights from AfLIA’s survey and regional conversations on integrating Wikimedia into African library routines.

Strong connections have been established between library and information science institutions and Wikimedia projects especially Wikipedia. With the introduction of the African Librarians Week in 2020 as an integral part of the 1Lib1Ref campaign, and with funding support from the Wikimedia Foundation, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) has run the Wikipedia in African Libraries course (an adaptation of OCLC’s Wikipedia + Libraries: Better Together!) curriculum. It has also gone further to introduce African librarians to Wikidata through Promoting Open Knowledge practices in African Libraries through WikiData course (2022). These activities brought African library and information professionals into the Wikimedia movement.

However, it was observed that these professionals are majorly interested in short-lived campaigns and edit-athons without investigating how Wikimedia projects could be embedded into their daily work routines to serve their user communities better or how their libraries and other institutions within the sector could collaborate with the Wikimedia movement in Africa for wider and more sustainable impact. This has led to low editor retention among African library professionals, as well as an estimated below average utilization of Wikimedia projects in libraries across the continent.

As part of the “Integrating Wikimedia Projects into African Libraries Ecosystem” project funded by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Knowledge Equity Fund, AfLIA conducted a fact-finding survey and organized a series of virtual conversations to bring together professionals from the African library and allied institutions sector with members of the Wikimedia movement across the continent. These virtual conversations took place in six sessions, covering the five regions of Africa.

The sessions for North Africa and French-speaking West Africa were conducted in French, while the Central Africa session was bilingual (English and French). Sessions for West Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa were held in English. Each conversation was moderated by experienced African Wikimedians, with panels comprising both African librarians and Wikimedians to ensure a balanced and informed exchange of perspectives.

The purpose of these activities was threefold:

• Seek to understand how professionals in libraries and allied institutions in Africa across the continent engage with Wikimedia projects, their level of dexterity in Wikimedia skills, and usage, while gathering practical suggestions on how Wikimedia communities can actively support these professionals to acquire more of these skills.
• Explore how libraries and allied institutions can better integrate Wikimedia activities into their resources/materials processing routines and information delivery services
• Identify points and opportunities for collaboration, possible barriers to formal and/or informal partnerships between the two sides and steps that can be taken to accelerate action on creating a working relationship between the two sides in various African communities.

The findings from Virtual Conversations and the fact-finding survey were revealing.

• Wikipedia, Wikidata and WikiCommons are the Wikimedia projects that African library and allied institutions professionals engage most with.
• The level of Wikimedia skills of African librarians and allied professionals could not be considered ‘deep enough’ as the survey results and the virtual conversations indicate that they need to learn more.
• Wikimedia projects could be integrated into libraries, archives, and museums through the following broad pathways:
  
  • Use of Wikidata for processing information resources, metadata enrichment, and enhancing the discoverability of library databases.
  • Adding the extra step of openly licensing digital media in the holdings of libraries, archives, and museums for uploading to WikiCommons as the choice platform for digital media preservation.
  • Use of Wikibase for cloud-based storage and linked data infrastructure.
  • Embedding Wikipedia articles into library websites or integrating API services for real-time content display.
  • Establishing Wikimedia fan clubs in libraries with monthly activities within libraries.
    
• Both sides (African Library and Wikimedia communities) welcomed the idea of collaborations and suggested that:
  
  • Wikimedians could use library, museum, and archive spaces for their activities as well as their resources and repositories.
  • The impartation of basic, intermediate, and advanced Wikimedia skills to librarians is needed. On the other hand, librarians could assist Wikimedians with information retrieval, information literacy and fact-checking skills. These skill exchange could be tackled if both sides work together.
  • Joint research and documentation projects could be carried out by both sides.
  • The two sides are fitted to work together on issues that require advocacy such as increasing the awareness of Open knowledge in Africa with Wikimedia projects as good examples, copyright and intellectual property issues, curricula changes that would bring learning about Wikimedia projects, skills and tools into library/information science and archival education across the continent.

Other findings include the need for a framework or a template for collaborations between the two sectors. This could be in the form of a ‘non-formal’ connector that can broker collaborators between the two sectors and/or a network of African librarians and allied professionals that can evolve into an African Librarians Wikimedia user group to serve as a vehicle to bring in more librarians into the Wikimedia movement, open up libraries for Wikimedia communities and be intentional about up-skilling librarians as well as integrating Wikimedia projects into the routines and services of African libraries of all types.

The survey report can be accessed here, while a summation of the virtual conversations, including details about the moderators, panelists, and when each session was held, is available here. An openly licensed toolkit that guided the virtual conversations can also be found here.