Submissions:2018/Students Who Care: Documenting Police Brutality in New York City in the La Guardia & Wagner Archives Wikipedia Project

This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2018.

Title

Students Who Care: Documenting Police Brutality in New York City in the La Guardia & Wagner Archives Wikipedia Project

Theme (optional)

Relationship Building & Support

Academic Peer Review option

Yes

Type of submission

presentation

Author

Ann Matsuuchi, Ximena Gallardo C., Ashley Singleton, and Terence Chan

E-mail address

amatsuuchi@lagcc.cuny.edu

Wikimedia username

User:Mozucat, User:Dr. X, User:Beautylovenature, User:Taikage

Affiliation(s) (optional)

LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

Abstract

In March 2015, news about how Wikipedia entries on the New York Police Department (NYPD) and cases of police brutality were edited from NYPD locations for several years was widely reported. Some sections on police misconduct and the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) were removed in what appeared to be acts of censorship. (see: Weill, Kelly. “Edits to Wikipedia Pages on Bell, Garner, Diallo Traced to 1 Police Plaza.” Politico PRO, Politico, 13 Mar. 2015 [1]; [2] ; [3]) Despite the headlines that suggested otherwise, these edits did not go unnoticed by the Wikipedia community.

In this presentation, LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) students and Wikipedia community members will discuss their experiences working on an ongoing GLAM project at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives where they conducted a year-long independent research project designed to help address this important area of New York City history where . This is the third year of this collaborative project, which began in 2016, which involved archivists, librarians and faculty, as well as the continued support of the Wikimedia NYC chapter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/La_Guardia_and_Wagner_Archives. The objective was to both increase online visibility of archival holdings while effectively introducing students to the process of archival research. This project also sought to involve them in establishing unwritten historical narratives that are crucial towards building a more inclusive public history of activism and our cities. This year’s student researcher team contributed to the entries related to NYPD cases of police brutality, police officer reform groups, and public relations and the CCRB. Their work highlighted the importance of archival collections to researching histories not well covered in secondary sources. There is an urgent need for historical work on the NYPD and on brutality cases past and present. We would also like to foster discussion of questions like: How can we foster connections with other archives, museums, colleges and activist groups in order to make these kinds of Wikipedia projects more visible? How do we negotiate the issues relating to usage of primary sources when facilitating GLAM projects?

Length of presentation

15-20 min.

Special requests

Preferred room size

15

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?

We have presented on previous iterations of this GLAM project at WikiConferences in DC, San Diego and Montreal

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?

Y

Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?

not sure

Interested attendees

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1. Gamaliel (talk) 22:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
2. Samantha (Wiki Education) (talk) 17:07, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
3. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:53, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
4. Slowking3 (talk)
5. James Hare (talk) 19:32, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
6. Kkhemet (talk) 05:27, 21 August 2018 (UTC)