All this we have managed so far with just volunteers. But now we want to employ a Part Time Office Manager to provide administrative support to our activities. We hope this will improve our capacity to run events and engage our volunteers in the things that interest and inspire them.

The post will pay £10 per hour for 8-12 hours per week and will be for an initial term of six months, starting as soon as possible.  Standard holidays are paid in addition along with the necessary expenses for the role, including internet costs, telephone calls and stationery. The ideal candidate will be IT literate with a number of years of administrative and bookkeeping experience, ideally in a non-profit context.

Full details of the position are on the Wikimedia UK wiki.  If you are interested in applying or would like further details you can email the chair of Wikimedia UK, Andrew Turvey or call him on 07754 881 562.

The deadline for applications has been extended to Saturday 4th September.  To apply please email your CV and covering letter detailing your skills and experience in this area.

Please share these details with anyone else you think may be interested. No agencies please.

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Is there a rare book you need for your Wikipedia article research? A location that you need to get to for a vital piece of information, or to do some outreach? An essential piece of equipment that will help your Wikimedia activites? Wikimedia UK might be able to help.

Microgrants are grants of between £5 and £100 that help improve or facilitate your editing or outreach activities on any Wikimedia project. Microgrants schemes have been successfully run by several other Wikimedia chapters; we’re delighted to be able to bring them to the UK, starting immediately!

We aim to fund at least a dozen microgrants in the 2010-2011 financial year. You need to be a member of Wikimedia UK to apply for a microgrant – but if you’re not one already, then it’s easy to join. Once you’ve applied, then the Microgrants Committee—currently Thomas Dalton and Mike Peel—will give you feedback on your application and will let you know whether it’s successful or not. Once approved, you’ll be able to either spend the money and claim it back, or ask us to spend it directly for you. After the completion of the grant, you’ll need to report back to let us know how it went.

The microgrants process is designed to be very easy to use. While we do require you to write a grant application before getting the grant and a report after you’ve finished the activity the grant is for, there is no need for those to take a long time. A couple of paragraphs for each should be absolutely fine.

We’ve made some microgrant examples available to give you some ideas. Please, check out the rules and then send in your application!

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Each year the Wikimedia Commons community picks out the best “Picture of the Year“, based on the images that have passed through its Featured Picture process during the course of the year. 890 pictures became Featured Pictures in 2009; of these, 38 made it into the final round. On 19 June 2010, the 2009 winner was announced — “Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in India“, taken by Wikimedian Paul Rudd.

The Featured Pictures considered in this competition can be from anywhere – entries are eligible regardless of whether they were taken by a Wikimedian or released by the creator under a free license elsewhere and then uploaded by someone else to Wikimedia Commons. Of the top 10 positions (held by 13 images), eight were created by Wikimedians, two were from Flickr, two from the US military (all US government works are in the public domain) and one was from the European Southern Observatory.

If you want to enter your photographs into the 2010 competition, all you need to do is upload it under a free license to Wikimedia Commons — and then get it past the grueling Featured picture candidacy process.

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Following from the successful Backstage Pass event held at the British Museum on 4 June, attended by around 40 Wikipedians and resulting in the creation of a number of new articles, the British Museum have announced a competition for the creation of Featured Articles related to the British Museum’s collections!

The competition page gives the following summary:

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Wikimedia UK and the British Museum would like to invite all Wikipedians to a very special event taking place from 11am on Friday 4 June – a “Backstage Pass” to the British Museum!

“You may have heard of the British Museum’s exciting initiative, a Wikipedian-in-Residence, with Liam Wyatt joining us in June to work with museum staff and Wikipedia editors to encourage mutual understanding and improve the encyclopaedia in areas relevant to the Museum’s collection. In order to kick off the residency, I’d like to invite you to join us at the British Museum Wikipedia Backstage Pass Day, on Friday 4 June.”

“In the morning we have arranged a number of behind-the-scenes and gallery tours for Wikipedians. Then, after lunch together in the staff canteen, we will get together in the Clore Education Centre to talk about collaboration, have a question and answer sessions, hear pitches for adding notable objects and developing featured articles, and hopefully also forming some relationships for future working, during and beyond Liam’s residency. I hope you can come; there’s a lot of interest here at the Museum about it.”

“I look forward to welcoming you to the Museum. Matthew Cock, Head of Web at the British Museum.”

This will be an exciting, incredibly important, and – most of all – fun event, so we encourage you to attend if you are able to. You can find out more information about what will be happening, and sign up to say that you are coming, at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Backstage_Pass

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From Friday 14th to Sunday 16th May 2010, Wikimedia UK will host Wikimedia delegates from across the world as they meet in Bristol.

This meeting is a three-day summit to discuss technical and strategic issues that cover the work the global Wikimedia Foundation and its national chapters do in relation to the worldwide fundraising effort for the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects, including the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. The summit will be attended by delegates from the Wikimedia Foundation’s office in San Francisco and various chapters from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and Australia.

It is the first time that Wikimedia UK, the chapter responsible for supporting the work and goals of the Wikimedia projects in the UK, has hosted an event of this importance to the global movement. It recognises the growing importance of this Chapter, now entering its second full year since its creation.

Wikimedia UK would like to recognise that the event has been made possible by the generosity of both HP, which is donating the costs of room hire, entertainment and lunches, and the Watershed, where some of the meetings will be held.

Although delegates are here mainly on business, there will be an opportunity on both Friday and Saturday evenings for Wikimedia delegates to mix with and learn more about Bristol and its plans to build on its growing reputation as a thriving regional hub for media and digital expertise.

Editor’s notes and contact details for this announcement

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At this year’s conference, Wikimedia UK will be supporting and organising a track dedicated to the projects and communities central to Wikimedia.

We need your help to create an exciting and interesting track that will inspire and challenge Wikimedians and others alike. Could you give a presentation or host a discussion on a Wikimedia theme? Any subject relevant to the Wikimedia communities, free content or Wikimedia UK are welcome.

Timeline

• February 25 (Thursday): Submissions will open
• March 28 (Sunday) 23:59 UTC: Closure of submission dates
• April 7 (Wednesday): Notification of acceptance of submission
• April 24 (Saturday): Open Knowledge Conference 2010

If you wish to participate but with good reason cannot meet one of the above deadlines please email conferenceswikimedia.org.uk before the deadline as it may be possible to accomodate late submissions

Themes

Submissions should address one or more of the following themes:

• Wikimedia Communities – Interesting projects and characteristics within the communities; policy creation; conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity; multilingualism, languages and cultures; the development of Wikimedia UK.

• Free Content – Open access to information; ways to gather and distribute free knowledge, usage of the Wikimedia projects in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality and usability; copyright laws and their interaction with Wikimedia projects.

• Culture and Heritage – Ideas for potential partnerships, building on previous partnerships and the legal, technical and resource issues that are barriers to such partnerships.

• Technical infrastructure – Issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; the Toolserver; the Usability Project; new ideas for development (including Usability case studies from other wikis or similar projects).

Submission Guidelines

Please email submissions to conferenceswikimedia.org.uk.

Please email the following details, all in English:

• Title:
• Theme: Closest category from above for your submission.
• Abstract: 50-100 words summarising the topic
• Summary: Detailed description of the topic – 300 words or more. May contain a link to a more details.
• Contact information: Email/Telephone and whether we may publish these details
• Additional Information:

• 1-3 sentence biography of the author(s).
• any special requirements (e.g. flipchart; OHP. A digital presentation will be assumed as standard)
• whether you will attend the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference (a) definitely, (b) probably, (c) only if your submission is accepted.

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The deadline for proposals is the end of this month (i.e. 0:00 UTC on 1 March 2010). You can submit proposals on our wiki.

The information we need to know is:
- What the project would be, in a paragraph of two
- What the benefits would be, again in a paragraph or two
- What requirements it has, in terms of a financial budget and any other resources. The budget should give a rough breakdown of what the money would be spent on.
- What volunteer time it requires, and how much time you can spend on the project. You would be expected to take an active role in implementing the project.
- Contact details – you should have a registered account on our wiki that we can send emails to (note that single-user login is enabled, so your wikipedia account will work).

You do not have to be a member of Wikimedia UK to submit a proposal, although that would be preferable (membership is open to all, so you can always join – particularly if your proposal goes forward. ). Preference will also be given to active Wikimedians, although that is not a requirement.

We plan to set aside a budget for smaller grants (<£100), which we will be calling for proposals for later this year.

Please get in touch if you have any questions, and please share this with anyone else that you think might be interested.

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Join Wikipedia in photographing and celebrating Britain’s cultural heritage in museums, galleries and archives nationwide

29 January 2010, UK: ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ is a month-long competition and series of events to be held in participating museums nationwide from 31 January 2010. People from all ages, backgrounds and communities can take part in the competition, which encourages the public to photograph the treasures of our nation’s museums and galleries, actively involving them in digitally recording the collections. All of the photos entered into the ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ competition will be made available under a free license on Wikimedia Commons, and can then be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Chief Executive Roy Clare said, “‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ provides a stimulating opportunity for museums and Wikipedia to work more closely together for the benefit of the public. This new collaboration enables museums to bring their collections, scholarship and expertise even closer to audiences in digital environments. Wikipedia provides a vivid forum for engaging public interest in the stories within collections held in museums across the country. MLA is very pleased to support this initiative and welcomes the development of partnerships between museums and Wikimedia.”

Chair of Wikimedia UK, Michael Peel, said, “Museum collections hold a vast range of objects that have great cultural significance and enhance our knowledge of our origins but are not as well covered on Wikipedia as they deserve to be. With ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’, we hope to increase the number of photographs on Wikipedia for the world to share, enjoy and learn from.”

The celebration begins at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on Sunday 31st January from 11.00 am to 4.00 pm in the Sackler Centre; everyone is welcome to come along and take part. Short talks from the Victoria and Albert Museum, Wikimedia UK and the Collections Trust will take place at 11.30 am, accompanied by free tea, coffee, and refreshments, with plenty of time in the afternoon to explore the museum and photograph its collections!

Gail Durbin, Head of Online Museum at the Victoria and Albert Museum, said, “Britain Loves Wikipedia is an innovative way for amateur (or professional) photographers to make things in museums accessible to more people. We are delighted to be hosting Britain’s photography community at the kickoff event and look forward to seeing creative new images of our objects.”

Britain Loves Wikipedia then continues with:

• On the 6th/7th February, the Museum of Army Flying in Hampshire will be offering free entry to photographers as well as free tea or coffee, and will be allowing flash and tripod photography.
• Nottingham Natural History Museum is hosting a “Britain Loves Wikipedia Day” on 11 February, where they will be bringing out a selection of biological and geological objects from their stores and making them available for photography in the museum’s Great Hall (situated in the main Wollaton Hall building.) Objects will include examples of taxidermy (reptiles, birds, mammals) skeletal material, and invertebrates from the biology collections, and various rocks, minerals and fossils from the geology collections. Booking is essential.
• The Manchester Museum is running “Darwin’s 201st Birthday Bash Big Saturday” on 13 February (book ahead or on the day); as part of this they will be making objects from their zoology, palaeontology, entomology, botany and geology collections available for photography in the Museum’s Resource Centre on the 3rd floor gallery.
• John Muir’s Birthplace and Preston Grange Museum will strike a romantic note for Valentines Day, hosting “East Lothian Photographers LOVE Wikipedia!” These host museums are opening up specially for photographers, and are providing a warm Scottish welcome with free tea and coffee to all participants, as well as tours and guides around the museums.
• Mill Green Museum will be running “Mill Green Loves Wikipedia” on the afternoon of 16 February – come along to explore the range of, and changes in, the working days of local people.
• Bedford Museum will be giving photographers the opportunity to see behind the scenes at thir stores on the 18 February, including a sneak preview their upcoming exhibition ‘Clocking-In’, an exhibition of the working day. Places are limited; booking is essential.
• On the 20th February, The British Postal Museum & Archive will open the doors of its Museum Store in Debden, Essex to photographers. The British Postal Museum Store houses a variety of objects including letterboxes, telephone kiosks, postal vehicles, sorting machinery and the desk of Sir Rowland Hill (founder of the penny post). Refreshments will be available to participants and flash photography and tripods are welcome.

Throughout February, you can visit the following museums to take part in the Britain Loves Wikipedia competition:

• Astley Hall, Chorley
• Caithness Horizons, Thurso, Scotland
• Ceredigion Museum, Wales
• Horniman Museum, London
• Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland
• Museum of Army Flying, Stockbridge, Hampshire
• National Football Museum, Preston
• Old Operating Theatre, London
• Royal Air Force Museum, London and Cosford.
• Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• Working Class Movement Library, Salford

Prizes include a WikiReader – a copy of the entire English Wikipedia in your pocket. The best photograph from each RAF Museum site will receive £100 worth of goods from the Museum’s shop. The best photograph taken at The British Postal Museum & Archive’s Museum Store will receive a trio of DVD box sets celebrating the work of the acclaimed GPO Film Unit, valued at £75. More prizes will be announced at the launch event on the 31st January.

Britain Loves Wikipedia is organized by Wikimedia UK in collaboration with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Collections Trust, Culture 24 and Museums Galleries Scotland. Full information is available at http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/. An initial event in February 2009 at the Victoria and Albert created over 300 photographs now available on Wikipedia. In June 2009, Wiki Loves Art in The Netherlands created over 10,000 photographs taken at 46 Dutch museums.

EDITORS’ NOTES

About Wikimedia UK:

Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

About Wikimedia Commons:

Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 7 September 2004, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It currently contains over 5.5 million freely licensed images and media files.

About the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world’s 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

Further information:

• Britain Loves Wikipedia: http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/
• Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
• East Lothian Photographers LOVE Wikipedia: http://www.eastlothianmuseums.org/content/pages/events-and-activities/el-loves-wikipedia.php
• Britain Loves Wikipedia at The British Postal Museum & Archive’s Museum Store: http://postalheritage.org.uk/events_archive/blw

Contact details:

Michael Peel, Chair, Wikimedia UK

• Email: michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk
• Phone: +44 (0)7988 013 646

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