Hello all!
I was involved in planning an edit-a-thon earlier this month with library
school students & faculty, and wanted to share this event with y'all.
Working with an LIS community was rewarding and provided great
opportunities to think about literacy and open access. Below is a little
write up of our event.
-Gina Shelton
Librarians@Pratt: A Wikipedia edit-a-thon
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Librarians@Pratt> took
place on Saturday, November 1, 2014. The event was hosted by Pratt
Institute’s School of Information and Library Science Student Association
(SILSSA) and the Beta-Phi-Mu Theta Chapter, with support from the
Metropolitan New York Library Council. Megan Wacha, Performing Arts
Librarian at Barnard College, gave a workshop on the basics of Wikipedia
editing. Following the workshop, 12 attendees edited several biographical
articles about influential librarians with a connection to Pratt Institute.
Primary and secondary sources, gathered from the circulating and archival
collections from Pratt Institute Libraries and Pratt’s School of
Information and Library Science (SILS), were consulted. During two hours of
open editing, attendees edited 10 articles and made 73 total edits, plus 62254
bytes were contributed. Four images were added to Wikimedia Commons. The
event was successful at building a community of editors within Pratt SILS
and connecting them to local NYC Wikipedians.