The University of Edinburgh is pleased to continue their collaboration with local organisation, Access to Industry, hosting digitisation workshops for Access to Industry’s service users. The workshops are designed to provide participants with a foundational understanding of how Wikipedia works and equip them with the skills needed to create their own articles. These skills are essential in today's digital job market. The workshop takes place in St Cecilia’s Hall, Scotland’s oldest purpose built concert hall and where the University’s musical instrument collection is housed. In addition to the workshop, those who take part in the workshop have the opportunity to volunteer with the University of Edinburgh’s libraries, helping with library digitisation. St Cecilia's Hall Volunteering with the University's libraries allows participants of the scheme to gain valuable experience in an office environment, develop their teamwork skills, and further expand their employability skillset. The volunteer work is flexible, and participants can find their own area of interest in digitisation. Previous volunteers have worked on impressive Wikipedia pages, such as Fiona’s Celtic Psalter page and the gallery of images added to the Album amicorum page by Ian. It’s been a pleasure working with the volunteers, especially watching them grow in confidence and ability: we’ve been really impressed by their progress and the quality of their work. We’re looking forward to them progressing to the next stage of the volunteer programme, where they’ll use their newfound skills to make a range of books and texts available for all to read on the Wikisource Platform. Laura Beattie, Community Outreach Officer at The University of Edinburgh The University plans to launch a Digital Collections Wikisource Volunteer programme soon. This programme will allow participants to identify and upload digitised heritage collections to Wikisource, providing them with skills in managing digital documents and learning about OCR (how computers can make digital documents searchable) and transcription. More information St Cecilia's Hall Access to Industry This article was published on 2024-07-22
