Presentation by Matthew Cock, Head of Web at the British Museum, at GLAM WIKI conference, British Museum, 26-27 November 2010

1. Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia
Finding the common ground
#GLAM-WIKI

2. mcock@britishmuseum.org
@matthewcock
#GLAM-WIKI

3.  Belief that despite some mistrust and prejudice
(on both sides) we share some common goals.
 Because we need each other.
 From the Museum’s p.o.v. because we can’t
ignoreWP
 In October 2009, the Rosetta Stone article in
britishmuseum.org was viewed 18,358 times. In the
same period, the Rosetta Stone article onWikipedia
was viewed over five times more frequently (92,565
times) in the English language version alone.

7.  Similarities
 ‘Wikipedia is a community that shares a goal - to
build a resource that is made available to all the
people of the world for free.’
 The British Museum has been free to the public since
1753
 Wikipedia is a multi-lingual project and one that has
roots in communities across the world.
 The British Museum is a ‘museum of the world, for the
world.’

8.  Training and capacity building
 Fieldwork, research projects
 International exhibitions
Africa, China, Middle East

9.  Talking Objects
 The world in our city
 Supplementary and
community schools

10. OK, so working with the community of WP
editors is just an extension of our community
programme…. And together we improve the
encyclopaedia for the benefit of the world….
But what are the risks? What could go
wrong…?

11.  Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. We strive for
articles that advocate no single point of view.
Sometimes this requires representing multiple points
of view, presenting each point of view accurately and
in context, and not presenting any point of view as
"the truth" or "the best view".
 All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy:
unreferenced material may be removed, so please
provide references. Editors' personal experiences,
interpretations, or opinions do not belong here.That
means citing verifiable, authoritative sources…

12. The difference between:
the consensus view (WP)
and
individual scholarship (BM)

13. What emerged over time on
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
was:
‘a collection of statements that everyone could
agree represented as neutral a depiction of Israel
as was likely to emerge’
(Cory Doctorow, Content: Selected Essays onTechnology,
Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future)

14. Controversial subjects show up howWikipedia
works more clearly –
It emerges over time (always a work in progress)
It is a consensus
It is a compromise

15. The Museum wants scholarship to inform and
influence accepted established knowledge
(consensus)
If both GLAMs andWP learn about the
processes of their respective , we can speed
that process and get to balanced, accurate
information online, based on and citing up-to-
date and thorough scholarship.

16.  Wikipedian-in-Residence
 ‘Backstage Pass’ day
 Feature Article Prize
 Presentations to departments (Asia, GR, P&D, P&E, PAS)
 One-to-one collaborations
▪ Wikipedians seeking curators
▪ Curators seeking Wikipedians
 The ‘Hoxne Challenge’

17.  1 Wikipedians seeking curators
 1.2 Cyrus Cylinder
 1.3 Cycladic art
 1.4 Rosetta Stone
 1.5 Daniel Solander
 1.6 HarpyTomb
 1.7 Royal Gold Cup
 1.8 Gebelein predynastic mummies
 1.9 Papyrus of Ani
 1.10 Lindow Man
 1.11 Ormside bowl
 1.12 Feathered Helmet
 2 Curators seeking Wikipedians
 2.1 HolyThorn Reliquary
 2.2 Admonitions Scroll
 2.3 Isabella Brant (drawing)

18. Challenge: take theWikipedia article on the Hoxne Hoard to ‘Feature article’ quality
in one day.
 Sackler Studio, Friday 25 June 2010
 Preceded by public gallery talk and showing of items / coins not on display
 WiFi, projector, whiteboard, tea/coffee
 BM experts - curators (from Prehistory Dept, and Coins Dept,Treasure Dept),
archaeologists, conservation experts, scientists etc.
 Wikipedians
Why Hoxne Hoard?
 most of the scholarly resources about it were produced by museum staff.
 A lot of staff could contribute
 Important objects, with good popular awareness, recent published sources and
readily available experts at the BM
 Very low quality article onWikipedia , despite being one of the highest individual
referral articles to the BM website
 Featured in both OurTopTenTreasures and #AHOW

19.  Article itself
 Learning
 key differences between communities
 Choose object wisely
 Give it time and space

24.  Engage with theWikipedia community
 Improve mutual understanding BM:WP
 Reach new audiences / increase
engagement with the BM collection
 Avoid bad press (get good press)
 Get some referrals to our site

25. Press and comment
positive

26. “What is depicted is a model for institutions on
how to deal with the internet revolution. It’s
clever, it costs them nothing, it gains the
institution respect and traction on the
internet… there is, in truth, no downside.”
Roger Pearse
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=4451

27. 08-09 09-10
June
2010
July
2010
Aug
2010
Sept
2010
Oct
2010
Referrals from
Wikipedia (all
languages) 107,330 110,448 10,566 10,114 9,369 11,081 11,826
of total
pageviews 1.64% 1.49% 1.82% 1.72% 1.63% 1.64% 1.50%
EnglishWikipedia
links 1,799 1,846 1,909
EnglishWikipedia
pages 732 740 783

28.  I asked other museums and cultural orgs
 16 UK 10 North American (all Eng-language primarily)
 One month (September) across 2008, 2009 and 2010.
 Total visits, total referrals fromWikipedia (all languages)
 Promised anonymity

30. Range: 7,000 – 3.3m visits
Average:580,000 visits
26 respondents
Month of September 2010

31. Referrals fromWP (all langs)
as %age of total visits:
Range: 0.07% - 3.33%
Aggregate: 0.82% *
*skewed by some of the orgs with the largest visit numbers having the
lowest number of referrals.

33. So, what about everyone else?
 British Museum were #6 at 1.64%
 No correlation between size and referrals
 8 out of the top ten were UK-based
GLAM: WIKI UK

34. So, are referrals on the increase?
 On aggregate:- down from 0.96% to 0.82%
 17 showed increase
 8 showed a decrease

35. Because, in the end, we really were doing it to
reach audiences where they hang out.
And we know lots of people get their
knowledge from Wikipedia.
Getting them to our site isn’t the primary
aim.

38. www.britishmuseum.org
mcock@britishmuseum.org
@matthewcock
#GLAM-WIKI