Education/News/Drafts/Auckland Museum Wikipedia Students Making Progress

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Auckland Museum Wikipedia Students Making Progress

Summary: Auckland Museum's Wikipedia students are making great progress on their research projects to enrich Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland histories on Wikipedia.

The Auckland Museum Wikipedia summer students are nearly half way through their 10 week programme and are making great progress. The students were briefed with an ongoing project, Understanding our past- using Wikipedia as a tool to support local history in Tāmaki Makaurau, aiming to produce content to support the new Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum which has a focus on local histories.

Our students have had the opportunity to learn from local and international Wikpedians as well as museum professionals to support and guide their research interests and article outputs.

Students were joined by the Auckland Museum Image Permissions manager to learn about copyright and cultural permissions. At Auckland Museum and other cultural institutions across Aotearoa New Zealand, care is taken in the distribution of Māori and Pacific subjects and content. These practices are in place to respect and protect Māori and Pacific cultural values. These are important considerations for the students to make when working within an open access model, and understanding and practicing cultural awareness when uploading (or choosing not to upload) images to Wikimedia Commons.

The Online Cenotaph and Enquiry Services manager taught the students how to utilise the Museum's collections in their research. This helps in making knowledge held within the Museum more accessible to a wider audience. Our Museum Librarians then took the students through the reading room to help them find reliable published sources for their research.

The students have also been joined by a number of guest speakers. History education specialist and curriculum developer, Dr. Mark Sheehan, discussed his role in developing a report with Auckland Museum about the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum. This report investigated secondary school teachers' attitudes on using Wikipedia as a resource for teaching the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum. This helped the students understand the importance of Wikipedia in providing accessible and diverse knowledge to teachers and school students.

Curator and Historian, Lucy Mackintosh, discussed her motivation to move away from national histories and focus on deep local histories in her book, Shifting Grounds: History, Memory and Materiality in Auckland Landscapes c.1350–2018. This provided students with insight into the importance of education and story telling at a local level.

UK based Wikimedian, Historian and Curator, Lucy Moore, spoke to the students about her contributions to Women in Red and her motivation to close gender, geographic and ethnic gaps in Wikipedia content. Fellow Wikipedian and Curator, Susan Tolich, spoke to students about her Women in Red project, creating biography pages for New Zealand women artists. Susan is also an avid edit-a-thon organiser, sharing her tips and tricks with the students as they gear up to host their own event in January. The students will become the teachers, inviting new Wikipedia users to edit and enhance stub articles related to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland histories.

Alongisde training sessions and meetings with guest speakers, students have been diligently creating and enhancing Wikipedia articles.

Created articles:

Enhanced articles:

The contributions made by our students are not only important in distributing local histories but within a bigger picture of making educational resources free and accessible. Ka Pai (well done) to our students! To follow along their progress visit the Auckland Museum 2024-2025 Summer Student project page.