Submissions:2018/Making HerStory OurStory-Building a Wikipedia Presence on Campus
- Title
- Making HerStory Our Story-Building a Wikipedia Presence on Campus
- Theme (optional)
- Relationship Building & Support, Inclusion & Diversity
- Type of submission
- Presentation
- Author
- Samantha Dodd
- E-mail address
- Samantha Dodd
samantha.dodd@uta.edu
- Wikimedia username
- Doddsam09
- Affiliation(s) (optional)
- University of Texas at Arlington
- Abstract
- In an effort to provide increased access to library materials and to provide students with the necessary skills to evaluate and contribute to the digital information landscape, staff at UT Arlington libraries designed and implemented a program to incorporate Wikipedia into classrooms and events on campus.
Staff began by participating the Wikipedia + Libraries Better Together[1] program and building an in house training regimen to learn to edit and engage with the Wikipedia community. The libraries developed outreach activities on campus to gauge the interest of faculty relating Wikipedia. During Open Access week, the libraries hosted a Wikimedian-in-residence who walked attendees through his 11 Years as a Wikipedian. Following his presentation, a panel of faculty from across the Dallas-Fort Worth area discussed using Wikipedia based assignments in the classroom, and how their projects affected student learning. Faculty from campus engaged in a discussion over the merits, problems, and opportunities Wikipedia offers students. Four faculty members from the Women’s and Gender Studies program agreed to participate in a pilot program incorporating a Wikipedia based assignments into their spring courses. The libraries provided the resources, training material, and support for the students during the semester and hosted an edit-a-thon called HerStory-Incorporating Her back into History.[2]
HerStory offered students, staff and the community the opportunity to contribute content to overlooked and marginalized groups on Wikipedia. With over 60 editors contributing to HerStory, the edit-a-thon shattered expectations.[3] With 3 articles created, 74 edited, 63 editors added 12.7K words resulting in 3.15M article views to date. As Wikipedia offers libraries a way to serve 21st-century information needs, UT Arlington Libraries is continuing to build off of the success of HerStory, harnessing Wikipedia to improve access to knowledge, teach digital literacy, and to empower our students.
- Length of presentation
- 15-30 min. for presentations
- Special requests
- require projector and screen
- Preferred room size
- small-medium
- Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?
- No
- If you will be incorporating a slidedeck during your presentation, do you agree to upload it to Commons before your session, with a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, including suitable attribution in the slidedeck for any images used?
- Yes
- Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?
- Yes
Interested attendees
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- Add your username here.
- Mosterbur (talk) 15:24, 13 August 2018 (UTC)Mosterbur
- Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 20:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)