Wikipedia project promotes women artists

Cornell’s fifth Wikipedia Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon is March 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 pm. in 107 Olin Library, the Digital CoLab. All are welcome to join volunteer editors around the world and add content to or create pages on overlooked female artists, writers, performers and other notable women (cis-, transgender or non-binary).

“We’d like to encourage community members to contribute to improving public knowledge,” said Susette Newberry, head of research and learning services and art librarian at Olin and Uris libraries. “Cornell is bursting with people who have superior research skills; it only takes a few minutes to apply those skills to making a small change that makes a big difference.”

The annual project began in 2014 to improve Wikipedia’s overall content and gender balance. Cornell joined the effort in 2016.

To participate March 6, log in on the event dashboard . A list of topics and artists for Cornell editors to consider is on the library website ; librarians and editing veterans will be available to guide editors new to Wikipedia. Refreshments are provided and laptops will be available.

Volunteer editors can contribute by writing new entries, adding footnotes, translating text, uploading images, looking up information for others and sharing the project on social media . Wikipedia will track all art and feminism editing activity from March 1-31.

One-hour editing workshops for beginning or returning editors are scheduled for Feb. 27 at 4:30 p.m. and March 4 at noon in the library classroom, 106G Olin Library. Sign up at the links and bring your own laptop or tablet.

Suggested page-creation or improvement topics include artists represented in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; such as Nancy Tobin, Sally Pryor, Megan Slatoff-Burke, Alison Ames and Lucy Audubon.

Several Wikipedia pages have been created during edit-a-thons on campus, including entries for influential feminist publisher and Ithaca resident Nancy Bereano and 19th-century botanical illustrator Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft .

This article also appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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