Tag Archives: wikipedia

Bingham Center, Events, Featured, News and Features, University Archives, Workshops

Women at Duke Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Time: 10:00 AM-2:00 PM
Location: Edge Workshop Room, Bostock Library
Contact: Kelly Wooten, kelly.wooten@duke.edu or 919-660-5967

Two Women in front of the Washington Duke statue, ca. 1900s. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.
Two Women in front of the Washington Duke statue, ca. 1900s. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.

Join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for an opportunity to learn how to edit Wikipedia articles, learn more about the rich history of women at Duke University, and then put that knowledge into action by creating and editing entries that document the lives and contributions of women alumnae, faculty, staff, and community members.

This edit-a-thon is part of a worldwide movement to increase the percentage of women editors and woman-focused articles within Wikipedia.

If you’re planning to attend, create a Wikipedia account in advance and sign up on the edit-a-thon’s meetup page (where you’ll also find a list of proposed Wikipedia articles that you can work on). Bring your laptop to the edit-a-thon if you can. You can also participate from anywhere in the world!

Looking for more information about the edit-a-thon? Read Duke Today’s article or listen to this “State of Things” discussion with local edit-a-thon organizers, including the Bingham Center’s Kelly Wooten!

The edit-a-thon is co-sponsored with the Duke University Archives and the Duke Women’s Center.

Digital Collections, Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Students and Interns, Technical Stuff

Bringing the Rubenstein to Wikipedia

Wikipedia—love it or hate it, it’s a hallmark of Internet culture. It’s also one of the most common ways students and scholars begin a research project. That’s why, as a field experience student in the Rubenstein this semester, I’ve begun a project to incorporate content from the Rubenstein into Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Adding a link to an archival finding aid in a Wikipedia article can direct readers to more information on a subject, and it can serve as a reference for adding new content to an existing article.

I’ve been editing Wikipedia in two main ways. The most straightforward edit is to find a biographical article on Wikipedia and link from the article to the finding aid for that person’s papers on the Rubenstein’s finding aids site. For example, I’ve linked finding aids for many of the prominent economists’ papers housed at the Rubenstein, notably Nobel Prize winners such as Kenneth Arrow and this year’s Nobel Prize-winner Alvin E. Roth.

If the Rubenstein holds someone’s personal papers and they don’t yet have a Wikipedia article, that’s a perfect opportunity to create one. This was the case with economist and journalist Leonard Silk and North Carolina filmmaker Herbert Lee Waters.

A visitor to the Wikipedia article on Alvin Roth, 2012 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, will also find a link to the finding aid for his papers at the Rubenstein.

The other main type of contribution I have been making has been uploading selected photos from Duke’s Digital Collections to Wikimedia Commons and then using those photos to enhance Wikipedia articles. My favorite contribution so far has been adding a photo from the Sidney Gamble Collection to the gallery in the Wikipedia article on Tiananmen Square. I can’t say why the people in the photo are gathered, but it illustrates (as photos do so well!) the historical importance of the square as a place for public demonstration.

Sidney Gamble’s photo of a student protest in Tiananmen Square, ca. 1917-1919

This project has been a great way to get familiar with the treasure trove of collections held by the Rubenstein, but there are many more ways to highlight archival collections in Wikipedia. If you’ve used the Rubenstein’s collections and found something you want to share with the world, why not include it in Wikipedia?

Kristi Krueger is a field experience student from UNC’s SILS working in the Rubenstein Technical Services Dept.