Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Mudd Library

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by: Q Miceli
A group of six­teen enthu­si­as­tic vol­un­teers, includ­ing Prince­ton under­grad­u­ates, Prince­ton com­mu­nity mem­bers, Wikipedi­ans from the Wikimedia-New York City, and Mudd Library staff, gath­ered in the Wiess Lounge on Sat­ur­day, 18 Feb­ru­ary 2012, to write and update Prince­to­ni­ana Wikipedia articles.
Princeton_editathon_Get_the_food_1st
In July 2011, I par­tic­i­pated in an edit-a-thon about the Armory Show at the Archives of Amer­i­can Art in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. A Wikipedia edit-a-thon is a gath­er­ing of indi­vid­u­als cre­at­ing Wikipedia arti­cles and upload­ing media related to a theme, events, sub­jects, or places. Once I saw first­hand how GLAM (Gal­leries, Libraries, Archives, and Muse­ums) insti­tu­tions and Wikipedia can ben­e­fit one another, I returned to Prince­ton and my stu­dent job at the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives inspired to act on this expe­ri­ence. After dis­cussing the idea with Uni­ver­sity Archivist Dan Linke, we decided to host an edit-a-thon in Feb­ru­ary with the theme of “A Valen­tine for Prince­ton.” The goal was to have par­tic­i­pants update pages on Princeton’s pres­i­dents and other Prince­to­ni­ana materials.
Mudd_Library_Edit-a-thon_participants
On the day of the event, after intro­duc­tions over pizza and Indian food, I gave a brief Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion describ­ing basic prin­ci­ples of Wikipedia arti­cles: nota­bil­ity, neu­tral point of view, reli­able sources, and indi­vid­ual account­abil­ity. Ref­er­ence Archivist Christie Peter­son intro­duced the ref­er­ence room and the sources avail­able for par­tic­i­pants to browse. After that, we were off!
Choosing_Topics

Choos­ing topics.
Discussing_the_finer_points_of_Wikipedia

Dis­cussing the finer points of Wikipedia.
While writ­ing arti­cles about top­ics such as See­ley G. Mudd Library to the Put­nam Col­lec­tion of Sculp­ture to the East Asian Stud­ies Depart­ment, and updat­ing arti­cles about the Log Col­lege, the Two Dick­in­son Street Co-op, and the Joseph Henry House, we used ref­er­ence room pub­li­ca­tions and online resources to increase the num­ber and reli­a­bil­ity of Wikipedia arti­cles about Prince­ton University.
RefRoomWriters

Prince­ton res­i­dent Mimi Omiecin­ski said about the event, “My fam­ily was so impressed that I was doing this today.” Wiki­me­dian Pete took pho­tos of the nearby eat­ing clubs to update their pages. A Free Cul­ture Cho­rus recorded a ren­di­tion of “Old Nas­sau”, and both the pic­tures and the record­ing are avail­able on the Wiki­me­dia Com­mons web­site for the event: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editathon,_Princeton_University. We chal­lenge any Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity a cap­pella group to upload an ani­moso ver­sion of “Old Nassau.”

By the num­bers, we had:

16 atten­dees
6 user­names cre­ated
4 arti­cles cre­ated
9 arti­cles expanded

We look for­ward to hold­ing more edit-a-thons in the future!

For more infor­ma­tion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Princeton_University_Edit-a-thon

9 thoughts on “Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Mudd Library”

  1. Pingback: The Mudd Manuscript Library Hosts its Third Edit-a-thon on October 19 | Mudd Manuscript Library Blog

  2. We are plan­ning another Edit-a-thon for May 19, 2012.

    The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives is host­ing a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on the theme of Women at Princeton!

    She roars. We record.

    WHO: Inter­ested Uni­ver­sity com­mu­nity mem­bers (stu­dents, grad­u­ate stu­dents, pro­fes­sors, staff, com­mu­nity). Lim­ited to 15 par­tic­i­pants; please RSVP before Wednes­day, 16 May 2012.

    WHAT: Cre­at­ing and expand­ing exist­ing Wikipedia pages about the his­tory of women at Prince­ton as fac­ulty mem­bers, wives, vis­i­tors, and stu­dents; and on the his­tory of coed­u­ca­tion at Prince­ton. Par­tic­i­pants will set up indi­vid­ual Wikipedia accounts, learn how to write an arti­cle, and then use Uni­ver­sity Archives resources to write and edit articles.

    WHEN: Sat­ur­day, 19 May 2012, 12:30 P.M.-4:00 P.M. Lunch and snacks will be provided.

    WHERE: Wiess Lounge, See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library (next to Sher­rerd Hall and across from the Friend Center).

    WHY: To increase the num­ber of pages on Wikipedia about the his­tory and roles of women at Prince­ton and to help close the Wikipedia Gen­der Gap.

    OTHER: Please bring your lap­top since you will be asked to cre­ate a Wikipedia account (if you do not already have one; you are not required to have an account before participating).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Women_at_Princeton_Edit-a-thon#Yes

  3. Sounds like an amaz­ing meet­ing, I am sure it was very pro­duc­tive way!

  4. Great writeup of what sounds like a great event! Thanks for car­ry­ing this for­ward, Q. Wish I could have been there to be part of this work! And yes, thanks for tak­ing the time to write up the how-to as well — I think it will be tremen­dously valu­able to me and many others.

  7. Hey Guarav,

    I’m writ­ing an edit-a-thon how-to that will link from the /GLAM page on Wikipedia out­reach. I’ll post a link to it from the meetup page for this event. I hope to have the guide writ­ten by next week!

    Q

  9. This sounds fan­tas­tic! Do you have any tips on orga­niz­ing a suc­cess­ful edi­tathon? I’d love to orga­nize some­thing like this at CU Boul­der someday.

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