Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland Museum/2023SummerStudents

From November 2023 to February 2024, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira hosted four summer Wikipedia interns, who focused on writing local history content. See their progress on the summer interns dashboard here.

Students focused on developing articles based on what they felt passionate about, including queer history, Te Ao Māori, South Auckland and migrant communities, as well as some natural history, church and park pages. Project highlights include Phomen Singh, the first article to be featured as a Did You Know item on the main page, which received 9,858 views in a single day, List of parks in Papatoetoe (the largest article published by the students), Leilani Tominiko, the most organically popular article (1,822 views in one month) and Maraetai Mission Station, the first article in the project to receive a B-class rating.

By the end of the ten week programme, the four students had developed 33 articles (primarily new articles), added 72,500 words to Wikipedia and 861 new references. In total, pages the students had edited were viewed over 249,000 times by the end date of the project (16 February). The students also planned and lead their own edit-a-thon, which was held in January at Auckland Museum. The students also wrote pieces for the Wikimedia Diff blog:

Week 1

Our students began their week with a mihi whakatau, welcoming them to the museum space. Over the first week, they worked their way through two training programmes: Wiki Education's Student Training Modules and the Wiki-GLAMR Training Program developed by Mike Dickison for Wikimedia Australia. Together, the cohort discussed issues surrounding Wikipedia, including notability and copyright, and the students made their first edits to pages.

Workshops and tours: Collection Care and Conservation Workshop

Milestones:
- Set up accounts Y
- Make first edits Y
- Upload a photo Y
- First new article Y

Week 2

Students continued developing ideas for their projects while working on new articles. By the end of week two, seven new articles had been created. The students held their first planning meeting for the student-led edit-a-thon, currently planned for early 2024.

Workshops and tours:
- Tāmaki Herenga Waka gallery tour. Toured Tāmaki Herenga Waka Stories of Auckland, the new gallery space dedicated to local stories. Discussed factors that go into planning exhibitions, including considering audience engagement.
- Teu le Vā. A talk by Olivia Taouma discussing the Pacific dimension of the museum, and the importance of Pasifika stories and perspectives in Tāmaki Makaurau
Guest speakers:
- Dr. Mark Sheehan, history education specialist, curriculum developer and senior lecturer at the School of Education at Victoria University of Wellington. Mark worked together with Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira on the Wikipedia, Auckland Museum and the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum report, which investigated secondary school teachers' attitudes on using Wikipedia as a resource for teaching the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories (ANZH) curriculum. Mark discussed his background developing the history curriculum, and his thoughts on the benefits of Wikipedia as a teaching resource for history students. Students felt that this brought a lot of context to why editing local history pages is important.

Milestones:
- Total of seven new articles Y
- First planning session for edit-a-thon Y

Week 3

Workshops and tours: reading room research workshop, Documentary Heritage tour
Guest speakers:
- Sophia Coghini‎, who first trained as a Wikipedia editor as a part of Pasifika Arts Aotearoa 2022. Sophia recently attended Wikimania 2023, and is currently developing projects to work on improving Pasifika coverage and representation on Wikimedia.
- Dr. Lucy Mackintosh, senior research fellow at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Lucy has worked as the history curator for the museum, and in 2021 published Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, which focused on three important historic sites in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Milestones:
- Total of 13 new or improved articles Y

Week 4

Workshops and tours: Human History tour
Guest speakers:
- Lucy Moore, UK Wikimedian of the Year 2022; advocate for WikiProject Women in Red and project curator at Leeds Museums & Galleries

Milestones:
- First project goal met: 300 references added Y
- Second project goal met: 40 articles edited and improved Y

Week 5 and 6

Students had a break between 18 December and 7 January. Discuss Did You Know articles and getting content to the main page, potential for themed Wikipedia books based on articles. Students spoke with 2023 Wikimedia Laureate Siobhan Leachman, and met Susan Tolich, who in 2017 became New Zealand's first Wikimedian in Residence.

Weeks 7 and 8

Students spoke with Wikimedian at Large Mike Dickison, Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand president Victoria Leachman, organiser of the NZ Thesis Project, Tamsin Braisher and held their first edit-a-thon on 27 January. Trailblazers of Tāmaki Makaurau (Commons) was an event focused on helping new editors learn how to edit Wikipedia, focusing on figures from Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland and beyond. 21 people attended the event at the Auckland Museum Library Te Pātaka Mātāpuna, which was entirely organised and led by the four summer students. In total seven articles were updated, and three new draft articles were created by the participants.

Summer student Harry Bird presenting during the event
Summer students introducing Wikipedia editing to participants
Participants editing articles
Participants editing articles

Weeks 9 and 10

Students spoke with Lucy Schrader, Digital Channels Outreach Manager at Te Papa, who works on Wikimedia-focused projects for Te Papa, and Heidi Meudt, Botanist for Te Papa, who focuses on developing pages on native forget-me-not species. Students presented their project to the museum staff, and spent time developing blog posts for the museum website and Wikimedia platforms.

Progress

87.5% Article goal: 40 new or greatly improved articles

100% Editing goal: 40 articles edited and improved

100% Reference goal: 300 references added

69% Image goal: 100 images added

100% Edit-a-thon goal: one event hosted by the students

100% Blog goal: blog post on the Auckland Museum website, where students discuss their experiences

New and improved articles

Cumulative weekly progress tracked by the dashboard
Week	Articles Created	Articles Edited	Total Edits	Words added	References added	Article views	Commons uploads
Week 1	1	9	42	2.68K	23	3.32K	5
Week 2	7	22	181	14.9K	151	10.4K	20
Week 3	13	32	303	28.7K	280	23.7K	29
Week 4	18	47	388	40.3K	442	39.7K	32
	18	47	388	40.3K	442	57K	32
	18	47	388	40.3K	442	71.7K	32
	18	47	388	40.3K	442	87.9K	32
Week 5	21	53	450	44.5K	517	103K	34
Week 6	25	63	512	49.5K	595	121K	43
Week 7	29	78	586	57.6K	704	139K	47
Week 8	30	81	646	60.1K	739	172K	61
Week 9	33	87	713	71.1K	850	193K	69
Week 10	33	89	728	72.5K	861	249K	69

Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland Museum/2023SummerStudents

Contents

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5 and 6

Weeks 7 and 8

Weeks 9 and 10

Progress

New and improved articles

Natural history

Queer history

Te Ao Māori

Churches and temples

Parks

Migrant figures in Tāmaki Makaurau

South Asian communities and figures in Tāmaki Makaurau