Your chance to help RAMM enrich Exeter’s history online

Published: 19 April 2023

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) is looking for people with a passion for Devon’s history and a desire to volunteer from home.

RAMM is calling for history enthusiasts to help create a community of local Wikipedians, aimed at enriching the online presence of Devon’s history, notable people and historical events on Wikipedia.

In partnership with the University of Exeter’s GLAM-E Lab project and Wikimedia UK, RAMM is working on a series of initiatives to make Exeter’s local history more accessible and available to all.

The Wikipedian volunteers will initially be managed by a member of the RAMM team, who will establish a local Wikipedia community and organise regular edit-a-thon events. Eventually, the community will become self-led.

Applicants aged 15 and over are welcome to join the project, with a minimum time commitment of one hour per week for at least 12 weeks.

While the role is primarily remote, volunteers may be encouraged to attend regular Wikipedia edit-a-thons once every six weeks.

Ideal candidates should have good written communication and research skills, an interest in local history, and the ability to work independently as well as part of a community. No coding skills are required, but volunteers will be trained in Wikitext, Wikimedia’s markup language.

Successful applicants will be invited to a 30 minute online group introductory session on Zoom and will then complete a series of online training sessions on creating a Wikipedia account, uploading content to Wikimedia Commons, and editing and creating Wikipedia pages.

Applications can be made on the website.

The initial application deadline is 6pm on Wednesday 10 May, followed by ongoing ad-hoc recruitment to continue growing the team.