Hello,<br><br>I'm Lori, a stay at home mom and museum studies graduate student in Indianapolis who has quickly become known as "the Wikipedia girl" in my grad program. I'm a project leader for WikiProject:Public Art, along with Sarah Stierch (thank you for the kind words, Sarah!). I'm also the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and I've developed some Wikipedia-related programming for the Indianapolis Museum of Art.<br>
<br>Nina made some great points about the Mommy blogger world and the Wikipedia world. I am of both "worlds" and feel that they really should be brought together. Stay at home moms especially utilize technology to feel more connected to the outside world; being a stay at home mom can feel very alienating otherwise. So many moms are extremely well educated and have left their careers to stay home, only to begin to feel restless (*raising hand*). It's very true that if this group was more aware of the altruistic nature of sharing knowledge on Wikipedia, they would jump at the chance to join such a community. I've had many of my fellow Mommy bloggers curiously ask about what I do. There's real interest there. They're also very interested in Wikipedia's role as an educational tool, which is something I'm very interested in too.<br>
<br>This is not all about SAHM's but felt that I should expound on that point, because it's a great one! I also want to reiterate the American Association of Museum (AAM)'s Future of Museum's tweet yesterday that brought together the points of the NYTimes article and Nina Simon's<a href="http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/want-to-get-your-content-out-there-put.html"> recent post</a> that museum's should put their content on Wikipedia. They made the point that the museum world is very much a female majority, and Wikipedia is a female minority - it makes sense that the cultural sector has been so slow to warm up to sharing content on Wikipedia. I hope to help change that through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM">Wikimedia GLAM initiative </a>. <br>
<br>This year I intend to complete an Independent Study to research & write a (hopefully substantial) article regarding the role of Wikipedia in museum programming in order to teach 21st century research/technology/collaborative skills to our communities while also sharing museum research and increasing accessibility to collections. I think that the gender gap issue is an important factor to consider in this.<br>
<br>This is certainly an important topic and I look forward to learning & sharing more! As Sarah said - we'll hopefully make a big splash at Wikimania! :)<br><br>Lori<br><br>-- <br>Lori Byrd Phillips<br><font size="1">|</font> <font size="1"><a href="http://hstryqt.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Museums & Motherhood</a></font><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nina.wikipedia@gmail.com">nina.wikipedia@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.<div><br></div>
<div>Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.</div>
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<div><div>Nina </div><div><a href="mailto:nina.wikipedia@gmail.com" target="_blank">nina.wikipedia@gmail.com</a></div><div><br></div></div><br><br>
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<br><div><div>Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><div></div><div class="h5"><p>Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. </p>
<p>My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.</p><p>Sydney. Poore<br>
(FloNight)<br>
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