Freedom to Read, Skills to Edit: The Ukrainian Experience of Bringing Students to Wikisource
Speakers
I live in Kharkiv, a frontline city in Ukraine. I have been editing Wikipedia since 2022 and have continued contributing during the full-scale war. Alongside online work, I run trainings and workshops even while hostilities continue near my city and Kharkiv remains under regular shelling.
I am a member of the Board of Wikimedia Ukraine. I hold administrator rights on the Ukrainian and Russian Wikipedias, and I also serve on the Arbitration Committee on the Ukrainian Wikipedia. Within Wikimedia Ukraine, I lead the content enrichment direction, supporting quality improvement work, organizing writing and photo contests, and addressing topical gaps. I also work on communication and partnerships with institutions in Ukraine, including GLAM collaborations.
Abstract
Ukrainian Wikisource has been expanding for several years through volunteer work and regular community activity. Since 2025, Wikimedia Ukraine has also engaged a dedicated contractor who supports Wikisource projects. We involve students through university collaborations in which tasks align with their field of study and reading lists, so the work feels connected to coursework rather than a separate volunteer experiment. Students proofread texts relevant to their studies, and they learn Wikisource routines through real pages with visible results.
This lightning talk presents several student collaborations from 2025 and early 2026 and focuses on what made them workable in practice. We ran an introductory session for Oriental Studies students and followed it with proofreading tasks aligned with their academic interests. We then worked with a student pedagogical community, where participants tried proofreading after basic onboarding and showed what kinds of guidance beginners need to stay active. We also collaborated with a lecturer who teaches a textology course, in which third-year philology students proofread a range of publications as part of their academic work. We later repeated the collaboration with education students during the winter period, with a small core of active participants and a clear wrap-up.
Additional information
Freedom. Students help turn public-domain books into readable online texts that anyone can access at Wikisourses. The project also remains open to new contributors, so students can join by carefully working with sources, even if they have never edited Wikimedia projects before. Equity. Entry is organized through university courses and student communities, where participants already have a reason to care about texts that makes the first steps less intimidating. We offer materials aligned with their field of study, and we keep the first assignments limited and well-explained so that beginners can complete real work within the rhythm of a course. Reliability here is that students provide an authoritative primary source. What previously existed only in print and was available to a limited circle of readers becomes a digital copy with open access. As a result, no one can take the word for it; they can open the text and independently verify the necessary fact in the source.
This session is for Wikisource volunteers, university lecturers, and students who work with texts. Volunteers will see a practical model of student onboarding that brings new proofreaders into the project and produces finished pages within a course timeline. Lecturers will see how Wikisource proofreading can be integrated into courses in philology, textology, Oriental Studies, and education with minimal setup while giving students a clear, assessable task. Students will see a realistic entry path into Wikisource, understand what the work looks like in practice, and learn how their proofreading turns printed sources into openly accessible texts that anyone can read and verify.
Everyone can participate in this session