The below abstract was submitted to the Wikimania 2024 organising committee but unfortunately was not selected for presentation. However an information meeting of the GLAMwiki community is meeting the day before the start of the Wikimania 2024 conference and I may have an opportunity to deliver an informal presentation to this community.
### BHL-Wiki Working group
Session type: Lecture (25 minutes)
What program track best fits your session?: GLAM
Language. What is the primary language of your session? English
Abstract. A brief description of your session. (Limit 100 words)
The BHL-Wiki working group formally convened in December of 2023. This session will present on the history behind the formation of the working group, including the white paper published by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) outlining BHL’s strategy of engagement with the Wikimedia movement. It will highlight contributions made by participants in this working group and give examples of how this collaboration is enriching both BHL and the Wikimedia movement as well as improving access to open biodiversity knowledge. Finally this presentation will focus on the future goals of this working group.
Description. A full description of your session, including aims and objectives. (limit 500 words)
The BHL-Wiki working group represents an initiative that emerged from collaborative efforts of multiple contributors to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and the Wikimedia movement. The group has a commitment to address biodiversity loss and climate change through open knowledge efforts. This session will provide information on the history of the collaboration, the types of contributions currently being made, and the future aims of the BHL-Wiki working group. It will discuss how both the Wikimedia movement and BHL are benefiting from this collaboration and the wider effect this can have on open biodiversity knowledge.
Guided by the recommendations outlined in the 2023 whitepaper entitled "Unifying Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet," the BHL-Wiki working group aims to maximise the accessibility and interoperability of the biodiversity knowledge and data contained in the BHL corpus. In doing so the group hopes to help address the global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change and strengthen user engagement with both BHL and the Wikimedia movement.
By leveraging the group's multidisciplinary nature and pooled resources, the BHL-Wiki working group aims to bridge knowledge gaps to make biodiversity knowledge actionable and accessible to researchers, policymakers, and the broader public. Through adherence to open knowledge principles the BHL-WIKI working group is attempting to break down knowledge silos and realise the transformative potential of collaborative partnerships in addressing the pressing global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change.
The aims of this session are to update the wider wiki community on this collaboration, explain the range of contributions being worked on by the current members of the working group, and to encourage other contributors to the Wikimedia movement to become actively involved with the BHL-Wiki working group.
How does your session relate to the event themes: Collaboration of the Open?
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. It is hosted at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives and is made up of a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries. BHL makes biodiversity literature and its associated data openly available and reusable for anyone in the world with an internet connection. This session will discuss the collaboration between Wiki contributors and BHL staff and affiliates that is the BHL-Wiki working group, and how this collaborative partnership is leveraging open knowledge principles to address pressing global challenges. In particular this presentation will cover the actions the working group is undertaking to improve cooperation between these two communities to better everyone’s access to and ability to reuse open biodiversity knowledge.
What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below.This will be shown publicly.
Campaigns
Events
Grants
Capacity building
Collaboration
Affiliates
Edit-a-thons
Conferences
Product development
Storytelling
Other
Collaboration, capacity building
Are there any other tags that you would like to associate with your proposal?
GLAM, biodiversity, open knowledge, open data
Tell us a bit about yourself and your experience in relation to this submission.
I am the chairperson of the BHL-Wiki working group and prior to the formation of this working group have been contributing to the collaboration between BHL and Wiki. In particular I have been working with and on BHL content in various Wiki projects, including English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, since prior to 2018.
Do you have any experience in public speaking, leading workshops or trainings, participating on a panel or delivering sessions? If yes, please describe.
Yes. I have given multiple public presentations including in person keynote speaking engagements at the 2020 VALA Libraries, Technology and the Future Inc. conference and the Australian Citizen Science Association Conference 2023 . To see videos of some of my presentations that have been recorded and placed on youtube see https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Siobhan+Leachman For other presentations see my ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-7721
What would the desired time for your session be?
No preference.
What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
How do you plan to deliver this session? You will be asked to confirm this closer to the date in case of changes to the format.
Onsite in Katowice
Have you presented on this topic before or do you have any related references? If yes, please share a link.
Although I have previously presented on BHL content and adjacent projects before, I have not presented on the BHL-Wiki working group before. I will be presenting to the BHL Annual Meeting in Chicago in May 2024 on the formation of this working group, the progress being made and the aims in the future for the group.
Are there any other needs or requests for your session not mentioned elsewhere in this application (all rooms have microphones and projectors but, for example, will you need a flip chart, markers, post-its etc)?
No
**Should your session be selected for the program, do you consent to having your session and supporting materials released on-wiki and on the eventyay platform under CC BY-SA 4.0? If you selected “Do not record this session” your session will not be filmed and no video will appear online.***
Yes. I am extremely happy for the recorded session to be released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. It is my normal practice to release my slides and script under a CC0 licence and I am happy to upload the same into Wikimedia Commons under that more generous reuse licence.
Speaker image. Please upload an image from Wikimedia Commons. This will be shown publicly in your speaker profile on eventyay.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Siobhan_conference_headshot_2022.jpgImage attribution. Please provide the author name and image license info.
Author: Siobhan Leachman Licence: CC0
Image attribution: Please provide the image credit URL from Wikimedia Commons.
Siobhan Leachman, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Name or username. Please enter the name you wish to be displayed publicly. This name will be used for all events you are participating in on this server.
Siobhan Leachman User:Ambrosia10
Biography. Please provide a brief personal biography with information about your past involvement in the Wikimedia movement. This will be shown publicly in your user profile on eventyay.
Hi I'm User:Ambrosia10, also known as Siobhan Leachman. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I co-organise both the Wikipedians in Wellington Meetup as well as the virtual Aotearoa New Zealand Online Wiki meetup, both of which are held monthly. For my contributions to various WikiProjects see https://wikidata.wikiscan.org/user/Ambrosia10 . I'm interested in New Zealand, natural history, the OpenGLAM movement, supporting GLAM engagement with WikiProjects, and increasing the participation with and the generation of content in English Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. I am keen supporter of Women in Red, WikiCite, events such as #1Lib1Ref, as well as Wikidata WikiProject Biodiversity and Wikidata WikiProject Research Expeditions. I am the chairperson of the BHL-Wiki working group and was awarded the Wikimedia Laureate award in 2023. More detail on my other contributions to the Wiki-verse can be seen on my ORCID profile https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-7721.
The below abstract was submitted to the Wikimania 2024 organising committee but unfortunately was not selected for presentation. However an information meeting of the GLAMwiki community is meeting the day before the start of the Wikimania 2024 conference and I may have an opportunity to deliver an informal presentation to this community.
### BHL-Wiki Working group
Session type: Lecture (25 minutes)
What program track best fits your session?: GLAM
Language. What is the primary language of your session? English
Abstract. A brief description of your session. (Limit 100 words) The BHL-Wiki working group formally convened in December of 2023. This session will present on the history behind the formation of the working group, including the white paper published by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) outlining BHL’s strategy of engagement with the Wikimedia movement. It will highlight contributions made by participants in this working group and give examples of how this collaboration is enriching both BHL and the Wikimedia movement as well as improving access to open biodiversity knowledge. Finally this presentation will focus on the future goals of this working group.
Description. A full description of your session, including aims and objectives. (limit 500 words)
The BHL-Wiki working group represents an initiative that emerged from collaborative efforts of multiple contributors to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and the Wikimedia movement. The group has a commitment to address biodiversity loss and climate change through open knowledge efforts. This session will provide information on the history of the collaboration, the types of contributions currently being made, and the future aims of the BHL-Wiki working group. It will discuss how both the Wikimedia movement and BHL are benefiting from this collaboration and the wider effect this can have on open biodiversity knowledge.
Guided by the recommendations outlined in the 2023 whitepaper entitled "Unifying Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet," the BHL-Wiki working group aims to maximise the accessibility and interoperability of the biodiversity knowledge and data contained in the BHL corpus. In doing so the group hopes to help address the global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change and strengthen user engagement with both BHL and the Wikimedia movement.
By leveraging the group's multidisciplinary nature and pooled resources, the BHL-Wiki working group aims to bridge knowledge gaps to make biodiversity knowledge actionable and accessible to researchers, policymakers, and the broader public. Through adherence to open knowledge principles the BHL-WIKI working group is attempting to break down knowledge silos and realise the transformative potential of collaborative partnerships in addressing the pressing global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change.
The aims of this session are to update the wider wiki community on this collaboration, explain the range of contributions being worked on by the current members of the working group, and to encourage other contributors to the Wikimedia movement to become actively involved with the BHL-Wiki working group.
How does your session relate to the event themes: Collaboration of the Open?
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. It is hosted at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives and is made up of a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries. BHL makes biodiversity literature and its associated data openly available and reusable for anyone in the world with an internet connection. This session will discuss the collaboration between Wiki contributors and BHL staff and affiliates that is the BHL-Wiki working group, and how this collaborative partnership is leveraging open knowledge principles to address pressing global challenges. In particular this presentation will cover the actions the working group is undertaking to improve cooperation between these two communities to better everyone’s access to and ability to reuse open biodiversity knowledge.
What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below.This will be shown publicly. Campaigns Events Grants Capacity building Collaboration Affiliates Edit-a-thons Conferences Product development Storytelling Other Collaboration, capacity building
Are there any other tags that you would like to associate with your proposal?
GLAM, biodiversity, open knowledge, open data
Tell us a bit about yourself and your experience in relation to this submission.
I am the chairperson of the BHL-Wiki working group and prior to the formation of this working group have been contributing to the collaboration between BHL and Wiki. In particular I have been working with and on BHL content in various Wiki projects, including English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, since prior to 2018.
Do you have any experience in public speaking, leading workshops or trainings, participating on a panel or delivering sessions? If yes, please describe. Yes. I have given multiple public presentations including in person keynote speaking engagements at the 2020 VALA Libraries, Technology and the Future Inc. conference and the Australian Citizen Science Association Conference 2023 . To see videos of some of my presentations that have been recorded and placed on youtube see https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Siobhan+Leachman For other presentations see my ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-7721
What would the desired time for your session be? No preference.
What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session? Everyone can participate in this session
How do you plan to deliver this session? You will be asked to confirm this closer to the date in case of changes to the format. Onsite in Katowice
Have you presented on this topic before or do you have any related references? If yes, please share a link.
Although I have previously presented on BHL content and adjacent projects before, I have not presented on the BHL-Wiki working group before. I will be presenting to the BHL Annual Meeting in Chicago in May 2024 on the formation of this working group, the progress being made and the aims in the future for the group.
Are there any other needs or requests for your session not mentioned elsewhere in this application (all rooms have microphones and projectors but, for example, will you need a flip chart, markers, post-its etc)? No
**Should your session be selected for the program, do you consent to having your session and supporting materials released on-wiki and on the eventyay platform under CC BY-SA 4.0? If you selected “Do not record this session” your session will not be filmed and no video will appear online.*** Yes. I am extremely happy for the recorded session to be released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. It is my normal practice to release my slides and script under a CC0 licence and I am happy to upload the same into Wikimedia Commons under that more generous reuse licence.
Speaker image. Please upload an image from Wikimedia Commons. This will be shown publicly in your speaker profile on eventyay. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Siobhan_conference_headshot_2022.jpg Image attribution. Please provide the author name and image license info. Author: Siobhan Leachman Licence: CC0 Image attribution: Please provide the image credit URL from Wikimedia Commons. Siobhan Leachman, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Name or username. Please enter the name you wish to be displayed publicly. This name will be used for all events you are participating in on this server. Siobhan Leachman User:Ambrosia10 Biography. Please provide a brief personal biography with information about your past involvement in the Wikimedia movement. This will be shown publicly in your user profile on eventyay. Hi I'm User:Ambrosia10, also known as Siobhan Leachman. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I co-organise both the Wikipedians in Wellington Meetup as well as the virtual Aotearoa New Zealand Online Wiki meetup, both of which are held monthly. For my contributions to various WikiProjects see https://wikidata.wikiscan.org/user/Ambrosia10 . I'm interested in New Zealand, natural history, the OpenGLAM movement, supporting GLAM engagement with WikiProjects, and increasing the participation with and the generation of content in English Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. I am keen supporter of Women in Red, WikiCite, events such as #1Lib1Ref, as well as Wikidata WikiProject Biodiversity and Wikidata WikiProject Research Expeditions. I am the chairperson of the BHL-Wiki working group and was awarded the Wikimedia Laureate award in 2023. More detail on my other contributions to the Wiki-verse can be seen on my ORCID profile https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-7721.
Co-author: JJ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4783-382X Acknowledgement: Colleen Funkhouser