Wikipedia in African Libraries/African Librarians Week 2021

A F L I B W K 2.0

Starting 17th-24th May, 2021, AfLIA will launch the second African Librarians Week, an exciting period where African library and information professionals concertedly provide reliable and factual information to the world through Wikipedia as part of the global #1Lib1Ref campaign which is expected to run from the 15th May – 5th June, 2021.

The week-long virtual campaign engages the African library community to help fill key gaps in African content on Wikipedia by adding missing references to articles about Africa on the online encyclopedia. #AfLibWk sets in motion a major iterative opportunity for all African librarians to share knowledge, insights and perspectives that represent African voices, cultures, philosophies and other information that are worthy of being open and integrated into the global body of knowledge.

This year, we focus on the theme; “Learning in Africa“. As Africans we recognise that learning takes place within classroom walls and within community created systems and networks that pass on information from one generation to another. The theme encompasses;

• Formal learning Institutions at different levels of education in Africa
• African libraries as learning spaces
• Informal learning through apprenticeship schemes and customary rites of some ethnic groups
• Learning systems and infrastructure including those that enable physical and digital learning
• Architecture of learning in Africa

Events and participation

A number of activities have been planned to prepare all existing and potential editors for full participation. This includes; language- based training sessions (English and French) and office hours, live editing sessions, competitions and an open pre-conference. The training sessions will run be hosted on the Zoom platform on the following days at 1200GMT as follows:

Programme

Date & Time	Activity + Topic	Link to recording
Monday 10 May (English)	Creating an account & user page on Wikipedia Anatomy of a Wikipedia article Reliable sources for Wikipedia Basic editing – Adding, correcting grammar, adding citations, updating a citation, adding a citation needed tag, reusing citations. Manually entering citations – how to reference different sources e.g a book, published report, website, article, journal/research paper etc	Virtual training for #AfLibWk 2.0 #1Lib1Ref
Tuesday 11 May (French)	Same as a above
Wednesday 12 May (English)	Identifying articles that needs citations (Citation hunt tool and customizing the citation hunt tool) How to add/create a section on an existing article. Adding External links and See Also section Uploading images to Wikimedia Commons
Thursday 13 May (French)	Same as above
Friday 14 May	Office hour
Monday 17 May	Official launch of African Librarians Week (AfLibWk 2.0)

Get started

5 minutes

Step 1: Create Wikipedia account or Log in to Wikipedia Step 2: Join the Outreach Dashboard Step 3: Assign your self article on the Dashboard

Choose one of the activities

	Improve and expand an article	Help make improvements to articles on Wikipedia.	20 minutes
	Improve with a reference	Improve articles and other content with citations.	20 minutes
	Create a new Wikipedia article	Choose a person or thing you want to write a new Wikipedia article about.	60 minutes

Extra activities

	Share!	Share your contribution in social media. Use #AfLibWk and #1Lib1Ref as hashtag.	5 minutes
	Upload to Commons!	Upload your event photos under a free license on Wikimedia Commons.	10 minutes