Story Courtesy of Times of Zambia
THE National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA), which is the oldest institution of higher learning in Zambia, has continued to be a strategic facility in the country.
Recently, NIPA partnered with Wikipedia, a global free online encyclopaedia which ranks amongst the most consulted sites, to ensure the site has large, relevant and accurate information. This is owing to fact that academicians do not take Wikipedia as a credible source of verifiable information for academic referencing. Proper academic referencing is cardinal as it mitigates plagiarism and other forms of cheating by students. Therefore, as part of the partnership, NIPA librarians and assistant librarians have been enlisted as WIKI editors to electronically edit and update content on Wikipedia. Communications Officer, Ms Mwiinga Shimilimo said the partnership with Wikipedia would assist the Institute and the country at large to provide reliable, dependable and usable information for academic referring.
“Zambia can only develop if it has quality and credible information to contribute to its welfare and development,” Ms Shimilimo said.
NIPA Librarian Mutinta Mweemba Nabuyanda said members of Africa Library and Information Associations Institutions (AfLIA) met electronically during the African Librarians Week to explore issues of editing content on Wikipedia.
The African Librarians Week was held from May 24 to 30, 2020, under the theme “Promoting African Scholars to the World” and its key campaign was to add citations to articles on Wikipedia. Interested library specialists in Africa, including those from NIPA, registered as WIKI editors and were first taken through training for two weeks prior to African Librarians Week. African librarians updated articles about Africa and African scholars in all disciplines with references, citations and further readings thus contributing to creation of reliable content on Africa on Wikipedia for the benefit of global readers. The first 50 African WIKI editors, who would do more editing on Wikipedia, are expected to be awarded to motivate them in their work. For Zambian participants, the first 10 WIKI editors are going to be awarded during the AfLIA conference next year.
“We were asked to look at Wikipedia postings of African content and make such postings credible. For NIPA, we had five librarians who participated in the exercise,” Ms Nabuyanda said. After the exercise, four NIPA librarians were among the African WIKI editors who edited more content on Wikipedia than any other library personnel in the continent.
Library and Information Association of Zambia (LIAZ) also decided to award the first 10 librarians in Zambia who participated in the exercise by giving them tokens of appreciation. Of the first 10 awarded by LIAZ, four were from NIPA, thereby representing 40 per cent of the Zambian participants. Ms Nabuyanda said the first 10 WIKI editors who are going to be sponsored by AfLIA, were told to prepare action plans to train other librarians.
“I partnered with a colleague from LIAZ, Velenasi Mwale Munsanje and the action plan we did came out as number one. My award is helping to put NIPA on the African continent. Already, we are actualising the training we proposed. AfLIA will sponsor everything,” she said.
Ms Nabuyanda said her team wanted to train public librarians so that they also train and sensitise their members in conjunction with LIAZ.
“As NIPA, we are introducing unique and diverse courses which will entail growing the capacity of our libraries,” she said Ms Nabuyanda said there is misinformation, disinformation and disinfordemics circulating on social media especially with the coming of COVID. As a result, it is prudent for libraries to reposition themselves.
“People are just posting anything, whether the data is verified or unverified. As information managers, we have to mitigate this problem by providing credible and reliable information,” she said.
NIPA Library Assistant Hope Nakapite edited Zambian articles on COVID-19 on Wikipedia. Ms Nakapite, who is also an assistant coordinator at the American Corner Library within NIPA, said her participation as one of the WIKI editors had enhanced her career. COVID-19 information already existed on Wikipedia but she edited the data to make it authentic in line with the Zambian situation. As a result, Ms Nakapite came out as number eight of top performers from 50 African WIKI editors.
“I edited existing information by backing it with authentic Zambian links so that people get the correct information. This is an achievement for me as well as NIPA and Zambia at large,” she said.
NIPA’s partnership with Wikipedia is timely as it will assist to provide verifiable, relevant and accurate information on a global online platform which ranks amongst the most consulted sites. It will also enhance the learning experience and provide students with reliable information for academic referencing.
