Linked Pasts 11 Activity – Promoting Collaboration, Linking Communities

Building Pelagios connections through the Digital Classicist Wiki

In this Linked Pasts 11 activity, led by Tom Gheldof (CLARIAH-VL+, KU Leuven) and Sarah Middle (Archaeology Data Service, University of York), we aimed to increase the visibility of Pelagios Partners in the Digital Classicist Wiki, by hosting two themed editing sprints and encouraging further asynchronous activity.

The Digital Classicist Wiki (DC Wiki) is a community-authored resource describing digital projects, organisations and tools, relating to the global ancient world. Pages in the Wiki are grouped by thematic categories to facilitate discoverability and serendipity, as well as forging connections. Contributions are made by volunteers on an ongoing basis, with monthly topic-based sprints being a particular catalyst for activity. While many Pelagios Network Partners already appear in the DC Wiki, some pages are out of date and, prior to our Linked Pasts activity, there were few links in the Wiki between them and the Pelagios Network itself.

In this sprint, we aimed to improve this situation by:

• Enhancing existing content: updating pages with current information and applying the ‘Pelagios Network members’ category to create a means of easily grouping and accessing all Pelagios Partner entries;

• Adding new content: updating the existing ‘To do list’ to highlight Pelagios Partners who do not yet have a DC Wiki page and prioritising them for creation.

This was also a good opportunity to edit existing entries for Pelagios Partners, to ensure that the information held about them in the DC Wiki was current and accurate.

For those new to the Wiki, we provided links to tutorials (including our newly created tutorial) and documentation, as well as providing support during two synchronous sessions, to optimise coverage for multiple timezones:

• Monday 1 December, 3.30-5pm GMT
• Monday 8 December, 8.30-10am GMT

During the sessions themselves, 11 participants joined to carry out the above tasks in a friendly and relaxed environment, where they were able to ask questions and learn more about the DC Wiki. Others took part asynchronously, resulting in lively email discussion throughout the duration of Linked Pasts, and a total of 13 new DC Wiki accounts created during the event. In addition to attracting new members, our event also revitalised interest among existing members, prompting them to revisit their content. Together, we made updates to 12 existing DC Wiki pages and added 41 new ones, leading to a more cohesive representation of the Pelagios Network.

As well as enhancing content on the Wiki, participants also enjoyed the event, leading to the following comments that demonstrate enthusiasm for both this and future sprints:

“Thank you for making me access to the DC Wiki, so that I could add our project page. It is really great initiative and I am happy I could contribute at least a little… Please, let me know if you plan to do more events like this in the future, I’d like to attend.”

“Thank you very much for the info and the links… I am glad to participate!”

“Thank you very much for this. We’ll be very interested in participating in this, especially since we are very keen on contributing to the DC Wiki and, moreover, we do not have a Wiki page for the project yet (but we aim to do so).”

Holding a sprint for so many new DC Wiki members, as well as those who had not contributed in a while and needed a refresher, meant that we were able to evaluate our new tutorial. Some of the questions that were asked during the event, as well as a review of the new content that was added, have given us a list of possible changes we could make (with the editorial board) to ensure that all the information is clear and accessible to new members.

This activity not only enriched the quality and connectivity of the DC Wiki, but showcased the diverse projects and institutions affiliated to Pelagios, making their information more discoverable, reliable and current. We additionally hope that this activity has resulted in the extension of the DC Wiki community and has inspired participants to attend future sprints.

We’re planning on holding a similar sprint – this time on enhancing the ‘Linked open data’ category – in mid-July, so please join the Digital Classicist mailing list if you’d like to hear more nearer the time.