Hullo hullo!

On 19 Nov, 2013, at 7:14 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:
> At DYK. My suggestion for a hook is:
>
> Did you know that the first branch of the Boulder Public Library (pictured) was built in 1906 for $15,000 from a donation by Andrew Carnegie?
>
> Any other ideas?

I think there's a link between the original funding of the BPL and Mary Rippon, possibly the first woman to ever teach in a state university (http://boulderhistory.org/rippon.asp). There was something about that in one of the books at the last meetup, but I unfortunately didn't start the BPL article until Starbucks. Another reason to meet again at the BPL, I guess!

> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, we're about 300 characters away from getting the Boulder Public Library article on the main page DYK. :) If anyone can suggest some more references, I'll try to get it over 1500 and submitted.

Woah! We'll be famous!

> If we do end up doing the museum one I can bring two. My wife has said she's interested in going for that one as well.

I spoke to a few people at the museum, and they seem quite excited by this idea! We brainstormed some ideas yesterday, and figure the most useful format for the museum might be a two-part event, in which:
 1. Museum people show us around the collections, and then
 2. Talk to us about the best way for them to contribute to Wikipedia.

I think this sounds like a lot of fun, since this way it'll be pretty freeform: we'd probably start at 2pm in the public collections, to give people time to show up; at some point, we'll all move to the collections building and be shown around the collections. The goal here will be for us to suggest how those collections could benefit Wikipedia -- would we like photographs of the items in the collection themselves? What articles could we write about the items in the collection or the people associated with the museum? After this, we could have a normal editathon, or we could continue working with museum people on a particular item which catches our interest. Do you think that's a good way of organising this? Do you have any other suggestions?

If everything goes according to plan (hah!), I should have some details finalised by early next week. Once that's done, I'm going to need your help in publicising this. I'll make sure a Geonotice goes up, but there was some talk of writing on the user talk pages of (1) anybody who's ever attended a local Wikipedia event, and (2) anybody in relevant categories ("Wikipedians interested in Colorado", "WikiProject Colorado members", and so on). If we can do a lot of that over Thanksgiving weekend, I think we'll be a good place going into December.

An event page for Saturday, December 14 is up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boulder/December_2013 -- I'll update it as more details are finalised on the Museum's side, but please fix anything that needs fixing, and do e-mail me if I've messed anything up!

cheers,
Gaurav
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