Hi all,
Last week, I announced a Wikipedia Loves Library event at Harvard.
Currently 65 Harvard community members including at least 50 librarians
have RSVP-ed saying that they will attend. Some details of the event are
available on-wiki [1], but in a nutshell it would be great to have local
Wikipedians who can help run the editing workshop that is scheduled for
5:30 pm (on Thursday November 17). Pizza will be served at 5pm, and it
should be a fun opportunity to teach the ways of Wikipedia to an interested
audience. Let me know by email or on-wiki if you can make it.
christian
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:WLL_at_Harvard
I'm a Harvard undergrad and Wikipedian who decided about a week ago that I
wanted to do something at Harvard for "Wikipedia Loves Libraries". I didn't
know of this list at the time, and I reached out to the Harvard library
community over internal lists. My proposal was a two-part "Intro to
Wikipedia" event to be held at one of Harvard's libraries. There would be a
brief presentation on the internal workings of Wikipedia followed by an
editing workshop. There's enormous interest in Wikipedia among the Harvard
community (students, professors, library staff, etc.) but very little
understanding of how it works behind-the-scenes and how an individual or
group can contribute to the project. I wanted to tap into this interest.
The Harvard library community has responded very positively to my proposal.
Since broadcasting the idea, I've received excited emails from 16 different
librarians, many of whom view this event as a stepping stone towards future
collaborations with Wikipedia. I'm very excited by this interest. I want to
make the event go ahead as planned, and I want to help every interested
librarian find a way to contribute to the project.
I would love to get local Wikipedians on-board with this. The first order of
business is running the event. The date is up in the air, but it will be
happening either late afternoon on a weekday (4:30pm +, pizza will be
served) or in the afternoon on a Saturday (the former is better for library
staff, the latter is probably better for undergrads). In my mind, it will be
happening sometime in early November. The more boots on the ground, the
better. Any Wikipedian who wants to be involved can get guest access to the
host library. The event is being planned on a public mailing list that I
have created for the purpose of furthering collaboration between the
Wikipedia and Harvard communities:
https://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia
On the topic of this mailing list: I created this list yesterday and there
are now ~30 Harvard librarians subscribed to it. Subscription is open to the
public. Please subscribe! This list will be an ideal place for Wikipedians
to reach out to the Harvard community and vice-versa. I think the first
step, for Wikipedia, is to host this intro event and talk face-to-face with
the Harvard community. But the list is there for anyone who wants to use it.
christian