GLAMTLV2018/Submissions/WikiBotevgrad - the first wikitown in Bulgaria
 | This is an Open submission for GLAM TLV Conference 2018 that has not yet been reviewed by the members of the Program Committee. |
- Submission no. 84
- Title of the submission
- WikiBotevgrad - the first wikitown in Bulgaria
- Author(s) of the submission
- E-mail address
- spasimir.v.pilev
gmail
com
- Country of origin
- Bulgaria
- Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
- Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group
- Type of session
- Length of session
- 30 minutes
- Ideal number of attendees
- n/a
- Abstract
In October 2017, the small Bulgarian town and municipal centre Botevgrad accepted the challenge and responsibility to become the first wikitown in Bulgaria. The innovative project is a result of a collaboration between the Botevgrad Municipality and a group of Bulgarian Wikimedians, and it aims at the improvement of the Wikipedia articles about the town and the region for the benefit of both its citizens and guests.
The initiative which will finish in May, was organized in three stages, and involved article creation, editing and translation, upload of photos and multimedia, as well as creation of physical plates with QR codes placed next to local places of interest, linking to the respective articles in Wikipedia. Thanks to the project, very positive contacts and collaboration was established with the local History Museum and Ivan Vazov Library, being the leading GLAM institutions in the region. Several training sessions were organized: for the GLAM staffers, teachers, and for the general audience, as well as three public edit-a-thons in the Library and a photo marathon in the Museum.
Apart of the GLAM partnership, the project offered the Bulgarian wiki community with the opportunity to cooperate for the first time with a state institution on municipal level. This wikitown initiative further relied on the established long-term cooperation between local Wikimedians and the Bulgarian Archives State Agency in Sofia, from where digitized content was utilized for illustration of articles about Botevgrad and the region.
During the presentation we will present the lessons learnt from this project, and will discuss the successes and challenges which we faced during its implementation. We will discuss issues like article topic selection, institutional and GLAM contacts, event organization, and participants' motivation. We will thus seek to inspire other communities to "build" their own wikitowns, taking advantage of our experience.
- What will attendees take away from this session?
- Ideas how to organize wikitown project in their country: do's and dont's, best practices.
- Slides or further information
- See also: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/October_2017/Contents/Bulgaria_report
- Slides: File:WikiBotevgrad presentation - GLAM WIKI Tel Aviv 2018.pdf
- Special requests
Interested attendees
[edit]If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest.