If an AGM and members day doesn’t sound too exciting an exciting an event, in this case you’d be wrong. Last week I was in Aberystwyth for a conference on the History of Medicine in Wales at the National Library, and having noticed that the CILIP Cymru Wales event was taking place the day before I thought I might as well travel up a day earlier and attend both events. If nothing else the chocolate brownie at lunch time made it worth it 😉
The day included a selection of talks in the morning and a workshop in the afternoon (which I will talk about in a different post). The overall impression I gained of the talks was of the importance of images and of good metadata.
The morning began with Jason Evans (@Wiki_NLW )from the National Library of Wales talking about “Libraries and Wikipedia: an unlikely partnership”. He noted that the mission statement for the National Library included “Giving access” – but it didn’t state where this had to be. As we are probably all aware (and are all guilty of) Wikipedia is the place where people tend to go for information. Libraries have a responsibility for helping to provide information, and therefore should engage with Wipipedia to help ensure this information is accurate.
Jason Evans
The National Library have shared 17,000 digital images to Wikipedia Commons, and when last checked this had lead to 720 million views of NLW pages. These images have been used for presentations, blogs, websites, and also in books, exhibitions, and articles. As they are freely available there is no obligation to ask for permission but people often do resulting in communication and further visits to the NLW site.
National Library of Wales [Public domain] – example from their contributions to Wikipedia Commons
But it is not just about images, there has been involvement with Wikidata : Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.
A machine readable linked database, with opportunities to enrich data. To understand how it works check out the introductory page.
Linked data and images in action (from Jason Evans’ slides)
It can be used to act as a central hub for cultural institutions, joining them and their collections together. For example the timeline on the Dictionary of Welsh Biography is based on Wikidata, and once completed it will be possible to perform queries without using SPARQL. In addition the Welsh Libraries Wikimap is built using Wikidata.
As Jason emphasised we should engage with the places that people go for information, and Wikipedia is where they go!
Next up was Juanita Foster-Jones: “Professional registration – what’s changed” basically providing an update on changes to CILIP’s professional registration procedures. I felt slightly guilty listening to Juanita as a year ago I attended a workshop she ran on professional registration, and it has been on my mind for a couple of years that I should move towards taking Chartership. Still haven’t started! She advised me to start writing up reflective pieces about the cpd I was doing in preparation for when I did register (hence this blogpost), and warned she would be checking up on me next time she saw me! 😉
Next up were three colleagues from the People’s Collection Wales talking about “Digitisation & libraries at People’s Collection Wales”. PCW is a platform funded by the Welsh Government run in collaboration by the National Library of Wales, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and National Museum Wales. Their pages state: We provide a website for you to upload photographs, recordings and documents that hold stories about Wales and its people.
They also help libraries and communities digitise large collections of photos, and they talked today about one project based in Newtown. This was about a collection of photos taken by David Pugh, a historian who was very active in local groups and activities in Newtown. His photographic collection was given to the local library and the project involved firstly digitising the images and then crowdsourcing descriptions. Although basic metadata could be included at the start (place, time, creator) they needed a lot of local knowledge to get more specific details added. Training was given to volunteers.
It is possible for anyone to add metadata to images on the People’s Collection Wales, and to add further photos; they welcome everyone’s involvement.
After a break we were back to hear from Hywel Lloyd on “Materiality in special collections: a day at CILIP’s Rare Books study conference”. Hywel received a bursary from CILIP Cymru Wales to attend this conference (do look out for when they offer bursaries!). He reflected on several of the sessions he had attended and how interesting he had found it. I myself attended the conference – although only one day of it as I became ill and had to miss the rest, so it was good to hear about some of the other sessions. A practical workshop on constructing cardboard supports for books and exhibits sounded extremely useful.
The morning finished with Gwyneth Davies talking about “The living memory scheme”. Whilst working with older volunteers at the National Library she realised that photos would often bring back memories from the childhood or younger lives which they would then talk about. It was decided to run a pilot to consider the effectiveness of photos and archive films to help people with Dementia. Together with the volunteers who looked for suitable images they created packs consisting of three items – hard copies of photos in a folder, a DVD containing a photo show, and images on an ipad for people to scroll through. These packs were tried out at two institutions and different feedback was received. One institution thought that playing music alongside the DVD was helpful but the other institution preferred not to have music in order to have more chance to chat. It seemed that the different formats suited different people and situations so having a combination in the packages was useful.
As the project was a success it has been rolled out with workshops held across Wales introducing the concept. 92 organisations have been involved so far. The packages are a starting point for conversations and memories; over 200 packages have so far been distributed. The workshops have also enabled staff to find images online to create packages tailored specifically to individuals in their care.
The talks in this morning session showed me a great interaction between libraries and people via images. Whether through specifically curated packages to aid memory, interaction with community images, or the utilisation of images for personal use. Once again demonstrating that libraries aren’t just about books, but about communities and so much more.
Thank you @CILIPinWales for this informative day.
If nothing else I’ll be looking out for a chance to join in an editathon at some point in the future.
Cake from Aberystwyth Arts Centre
dark-side-of-the-catalogue 