Dear Australian Wikimedian and Cultural Partnerships teams, I'm extremely pleased to announce that this week I started as Wikipedian-in-Residence at the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Library_of_New_South_Wales>), which is our oldest library and has a collection of global importance, including significant rare books, manuscripts and objects. It is a place to which almost every Australian scholar would pay homage. This is the first time there has been a Wikipedian-in-Residence in an Australian cultural institution and it has it has taken some time to work through the administrative processes to establish the position. As some of you know, Wikimedia Australia has been doing a lot of work with libraries locally. Most recently we were the major sponsors at the annual librarians conference and over the last couple of years we have been travelling to regional areas to deliver training to the local librarians (in partnership with several of the State Libraries). SLNSW also has a partnership with the National Library in Canberra, which is digitising Australian newspapers and linking the records back to the respective Wikipedia articles (example<http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/title/35>). Most significantly is that the SLNSW has been been building up a strong relationship with us recently and myself and other local Wikimedians have been delivered several training workshops to an in-house team of librarians who are contributing references and content to Wikipedia as part of their day-to-day work (project page<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/SLNSW>). You can see there that a lot of the content we've been targeting for the team to write is the articles about the newspapers that have now been digitised.
My WiR position reports to the Leader of the library's Innovation Project (Mylee Joseph, cc'd here), who is the instigator of that team. Since my term as WiR is for one day a week over 14 weeks, and the scope of work is excitingly ambitious, it is this team that will make it possible to achieve what one part time Resident could not. They are a keen and capable group. The Residency has been established to provide training, coaching, guidance, specialist advice to staff, evaluation of related projects as well as assistance with process mapping and benchmarking so that other Australian libraries can benefit from SLNSW's experience. In terms of content, as well as the newspapers, my Residency is likely to be involved in work on articles on the The 100 Objects Exhibition<http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/2010/onehundred/100-objects/>, indigenous and original materials, convict women, convict artists, the crossing of the Blue Mountains<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Blaxland#Blue_Mountains_expedition>and Australia's involvement in World War I. I am glad this group has paved the way and am very excited about the possibilities before us! I will post updates here and in the "This Month in GLAM" report. I will also probably come here to ask questions and seek feedback and help. I hope that the process mapping and benchmarking would also be useful to similar projects elsewhere. Whiteghost.ink
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