Hello Lori and Sarah,
I'm very interested in following the work that the two of you are doing.
My children are grown now (25, 27, 29) but definitely remember the years that I spend mostly as an at home mom and agree that these women SHOULD be a good source of volunteers for WMF.
Currently I live in St. Augustine FL most of the time so also see many older women with loads of free time on their hands who looking for volunteer work that interests them. There are community organizations of primarily women who are involved with saving the cultures jewels in St. Augustine (the oldest city in the United States). It would be great if we could find a way to get them working with WMF.
Sydney
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Lori Byrd Phillips hstryqt@gmail.comwrote:
Hello,
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.
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.
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 recent posthttp://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/want-to-get-your-content-out-there-put.htmlthat 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 Wikimedia GLAM initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM.
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.
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! :)
Lori
-- Lori Byrd Phillips | Museums & Motherhood http://hstryqt.tumblr.com/
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia nina.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
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.
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.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
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.
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