Wikimedia projects are made by volunteers. Here in Ireland, the community is at the heart of all that we do.
This National Volunteering Week, we are celebrating all of the volunteers who contribute to Wikimedia Projects, enhance information about Irish heritage and culture and help increase content available as Gaeilge online. When more people can access and contribute to free knowledge, the better that knowledge reflects the world. We are committed to helping grow and sustain a healthy community.
To celebrate Sae Kitamura, who was a Wikimedian in residence at Trinity College Dublin this past year, shares her experience as a volunteer Wikimedian during her time here in Ireland.
My Residency as a Wikimedian in Residence at the Library of Trinity College Dublin
My day job is Shakespearean: I teach British and Irish theatre at Musashi University, Tokyo. From April 2024 to March 2025, however, I took a sabbatical and became a visiting fellow at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). My side hustle is Wikimedian: I have been active in Japanese Wikipedia for about fifteen years, have incorporated Wikipedia editing into my English classes and have organised various Wikipedia-related events, especially in the gender and GLAM fields.
When I was accepted by TCD as a visiting fellow, I tried to do something related to my side hustle in Dublin. I contacted Wikimedia Community Ireland to seek a library or museum which would hire me as a Wikimedian in Residence. Fortunately, the Library of TCD accepted me in that role. The job is an unpaid, part-time post, but I was very happy to become a Wikimedian in Residence. I started my residency in June 2024 and prepared project pages for the English and Japanese versions of Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Foundation (Q180), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
My residency, however, started in a thick fog. Because I have never worked as a Wikimedian in Residence and was the first person to hold this post from the Japanese Wikimedia community, I did not have enough knowledge to do what a Wikimedian in Residence should do. Likewise, the Library of TCD had never hired a Wikimedian in Residence. The fact that my position was unpaid and part-time with no specific contract made the situation more complicated. No one knew how many hours I should work or what kind of professional functions I should perform.
The librarians and I discussed what we could do. We decided to hold a few Wikipedia teaching sessions for librarians and interns. The participants edited various articles. Because they were new editors, their edits sometimes caused conflict-of-interest problems, but the results were mostly decent.
In addition to the teaching sessions, I set myself a personal challenge to create at least one Ireland-related article a month for Japanese Wikipedia by translating English articles and using resources available at the Library of TCD. I translated fifteen English articles about Ireland or its culture into Japanese, such as [[Kneecap (band)]] and [[Kellie Harrington]], and I wrote two Japanese articles about Ireland from scratch. I also translated four Japanese articles about Ireland into English. The article [[Irish Museum of Time]], which I created in Japanese and then translated into English, became my first ‘Did you know…?’ article for English Wikipedia.
Museum of Time, Waterford さえぼー, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
I also edited for Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons by adding various images pertaining to Irish culture. The original photo at the top of the article [[Boxty]] was unpopular because it did not represent a typical boxty dish. I took a better photo of boxty at Bewley’s Grafton Street, uploaded it to Wikimedia Commons, and changed the image in the article.
As a newcomer Wikimedian in Residence, I attended Wikimania 2024 and Celtic Knot 2024 in Waterford. These events were very interesting but also very discouraging—especially after Wikimania, I felt slightly depressed. Before the opening of Wikimania, I worked as a programme reviewer for Wikimania, and I wrote my first diff entry about this experience. At the conference, I met various brilliant and highly experienced Wikimedians in Residence, and I noticed that I had been so unskilled. They had completed remarkable GLAM-related projects by utilising cool tools – I had never heard of most of the tools they mentioned! I started losing my confidence. Although I was inexperienced and ignorant, however, the Wikimedians in Residence at Wikimania were kind and helpful to me. We shared our challenges at the GLAM-related sessions, and I found that other experienced Wikimedians also struggled with various problems in their workplaces. The network, which I was able to access through the two conferences I attended, was invaluable to me, and without it I could not have completed my residency.
Towards the end of my residency, the Library at TCD and Wikimedia Community Ireland held an Art+Feminism editathon on 5 March as part of the Women in Research Week at TCD. I worked as the editathon organiser. Seven people participated in it, and we created four new articles and edited ten articles in four languages. Despite being a small group, the results were good. Although I had organised multilingual editathons in Japan a few times, this was the first editathon that I had organised outside Japan, and I was surprised at how EU it was: seven Wikimedians gathered and wrote in four languages, which could rarely happen in Japan, the mostly monolingual environment. The EU is so multilingual!
Sae presenting at an Edit-a-thon at Trinity Library
I enjoyed my residency very much, but I also have many regrets. The first and most important regret relates to my lack of experience. Everything was new to me in my residency—I thought I had had a decent career in my side hustle, but becoming a Wikimedian in Residence in a world-renowned library was something completely different from merely organising editathons or writing articles. I should have studied more about other previous GLAM projects and related tools. Sometimes I feel that my residency was fruitful, but other times I feel that I did nothing useful.
After the residency, I came to believe that TCD needs a highly experienced, full-time, paid, long-term, and preferably multilingual Wikimedian in Residence. The enormous library requires an enormous residency. I was too small to accommodate that, but maybe someone else could.
I also added a few future projects to my Wikimedia to-do list during my residency. The top priority is increasing the amount of Irish-related content in Wikimedia. I knew that Wikimedia had been criticised for being English-language-centric, but I had not previously noticed how obsessed Wikimedia is with the United States and, to a certain degree, with the United Kingdom. The Irish culture is underrepresented in Wikimedia—it did not even have a proper image of boxty! Waterford, where Celtic Knot was held in 2024, has nice new museums which could be easily notable, but few of them have their own articles in the English Wikipedia.
“I knew that Wikimedia had been criticised for being English-language-centric, but I had not previously noticed how obsessed Wikimedia is with the United States and, to a certain degree, with the United Kingdom. The Irish culture is underrepresented in Wikimedia”
In Japanese Wikipedia, the situation is worse. It has no articles about [[Partition of Ireland]], [[Irish republicanism]] or [[Young Ireland]]. Maybe I should write more Ireland-related articles and organise Ireland-focused editathons. For example, Bakebake, a TV series featuring fictionalised versions of Lafcadio Hearn—the most famous Irishman in Japan (who is very obscure in Ireland)—and his wife, Setsu, will be aired by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation in the latter half of 2025. This may be a good opportunity for me to organise something.
Rafesmar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I love Dublin, and I personally think that it is the most wonderful place in the world. Apart from the high living cost typified by the exorbitant rents, its culture focuses on the priceless, such as literature, art and history, rather than things that money can buy, which is very similar to the Wikimedia spirit. Dublin has the nation’s oldest university at the very centre of the capital, which I envy greatly compared to the money-obsessed city of Tokyo.
During my stay in Dublin, I published two peer-reviewed papers in English and two books in Japanese (one of which was a revised edition of my previous work). Three more Japanese books are underway, one of which will be my memoir about my life in Dublin, including my Wikimedia activities.
Surprisingly, I received an Honourable Mention for the UK Wikimedian of the Year in 2024. I hope to continue my contributions to the Wikimedian Movement to live up to that Honourable Mention. I would like to thank everyone at the library at Trinity College Dublin, the Wikimedia Community Ireland, and Wikimedia UK.
Collage of images from Wikimedia Commons, by Katie Crampton (WMUK) CC BY-SA 4.0
Feeling inspired? We are always looking for new people who are passionate about sharing knowledge to join our community of volunteers. Reach out to get involved!
