Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon for Women in STEM: Resources and Results

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Reading up on women in STEM.

Last Wednesday at Bryn Mawr Special Collections we hosted an evening dedicated to improving Wikipedia entries on women in science, technology, engineering and math. Reflecting our commitment to countering the skewed gender imbalance on Wikipedia, the event was the second Wikipedia edit-a-thon sponsored by the Greenfield Digital Center and built on the success of the #7SistersWiki gathering held in March 2014 for Women’s History Month.

Mary Mark Ockerbloom introduces key concepts.

Mary Mark Ockerbloom introduces key concepts.

The edit-a-thon drew a group of nineteen, including faculty, staff, and students from four local institutions. Nine participants had never edited the site before. We were joined by Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Wikipedian in Residence at Philadelphia’s Chemical Heritage Foundation, who opened the session with a lecture that proved useful to experienced and novice editors alike. Mary shared her best practices for writing and editing entries, reminding us that “people don’t want something new in Wikipedia, they want what is known.”

Slides and video from Mary’s talk can be viewed with the following links:

  • What is Wikipedia? A guide to Wikipedia culture and best practices
  • How to Edit: A guide to setting up an account and getting started as an editor

Attendees created one new article on physicist Elaine Surick Oran (Bryn Mawr College Class of 1966), which has been nominated to appear in the “Did you know” section (DYK) on the Wikipedia Main Page. Additionally, we began several other new entries for important Mawrters, including WWII cryptographer Julia Ward (Bryn Mawr College Class of 1926) and mathematician Marguerite Lehr (Bryn Mawr College Ph.D. 1923). Other participants edited existing records to reflect Bryn Mawr connections and archival collections.

The group prepares to edit.

The group prepares to edit (must haves: laptop chargers, snacks).

To follow the conversation on campus, we captured tweets from the event in a TAGSexplorer visualization tracking the hashtag #BMCwiki, and in a Storify. We were also excited to see our tweets intersect with the work of #GWWI 3, The Global Women Wikipedia Write-In organized by Postcolonial Digital Humanities during the week of October 20.

The Greenfield Digital Center looks forward to hosting our next edit-a-thon during Spring 2015, as part of the Art + Feminism Wikipedia event collective. Stay tuned for details!

Additional Resources

This Wednesday: Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon for Women in STEM

Wednesday, October 22nd
Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College

4:00pm Introduction to Wikipedia
5:00 – 7:30pm Editing Session

Learn how to write articles, add images, and update citations on Wikipedia.
(Or come for the snacks.)

Bring a laptop to Canaday Room 205 this Wednesday for a Wikipedia editing session and an instructional lecture from Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Wikipedian in Residence at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. We will be working on articles related to women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, in honor of the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. You are also free to edit based on your own projects and interests–but we’re especially interested in adding more women’s history to Wikipedia.

See our previous blog post for more background information. Further details of the event and potential article projects can be found on the Wikipedia event page.

No experience necessary!

Snacks will be provided!

Bring a laptop!

Questions/RSVP to GreenfieldHWE@brynmawr.edu

New Ada