CEE/Newsletter/June 2018/Contents/Bulgaria report

Bulgaria report: Providing librarians with trainings in media literacy and Wikipedia

By Justine.toms (talk) 08:03, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia training for librarians in the Regional library in Haskovo

For this training, one of the WMF staffers, Christel Steigenberger, participated in the opening session and greeted the librarians

Brainstorming session "Five things we (do not) like about Wikipedia, with input from the audience

In 2018, several Bulgarian Wikipedians are partnering with the "Global Libraries - Bulgaria" Foundation, and provide regional libraries around the country with a total number of 28 2- or 3-day trainings on Wikipedia and on Media literacy (which also includes Wikipedia as a subtopic). The wiki team includes Vassia, Spasimir, Plamen and Justine.

While the whole training period comprises the months from April to October, in May, June and first week of July the majority of the training sessions took place in more than the half of the biggest Bulgarian towns that are also provincial centres.

In each training we educate 15 librarians from the respective province. Although we are four distinct lecturers in Wikipedia, the trainings follow more or less the same model and scenario. The training is 12-hour long, and comprises a wide variety of topics, motivational stories about Wikipedia/Wikimedia experiences, personal examples. The second day includes the practical work of editing, so that in the end of the first day the listeners can create their Wikipedia accounts at home, and thus overcome the problem with the 6 accounts per IP per day.

• Day 1 (6 hours)
  • Brainstorming: Things we (don’t) like about Wikipedia? (and what can / cannot be done about that)
  • Lecture and Questions-and-Answers (principles, rules, free licenses)
  • Showcase of good practices of Wikipedia + GLAMs and Wikipedia + Education
  • Brainstorming: How can libraries benefit from Wikipedia?
• Day 2 (6 hours)
  • Orientation and navigation within the wiki
  • Editing and creating new articles
  • Upload and usage of illustrative content
  • Brainstorming: How can libraries contribute to Wikipedia?

The training not only aims to answer to the multiple questions and concerns librarians have about Wikipedia, but it is also done in a relatex and fun way. It also creates value as during the training we also create or edit Wikipedia articles, and we let librarians experience to join of leaving their own trace in Wikipedia. The positive feedback which we have received as a results, encourages us that this kind of the training will remain in the schedule of the "Global Libraries Bulgaria" Foundation and we will retain at least some of the trained librarians as regular wikipedians in the future, as well.

From mid July to the end of August we have a summer break, and will restart the trainings in September.