UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In honor of Women’s History Month in March, Penn State University Libraries and the School of Visual Arts will host Penn State’s third annual wiki-edit-a-thon from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, March 17, as a part of Art+Feminism’s worldwide 2017 Wikipedia edit-a-thon initiative, which invites the public to increase the presence of women artists online.
The Art+Feminism organization notes that the “Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10 percent of its contributors identify as female. While the reasons for the gender gap are up for debate, the practical effect of the disparity is not: content is skewed by the lack of female participation. This represents an alarming absence in an important repository of shared knowledge.”
Since 2014, Art+Feminism has been helping to sponsor local Wikipedia-edit-a-thons worldwide in an effort to amend this imbalance.
The third annual daylong event at Penn State will be held in the Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library, University Park, with morning refreshments and lunchtime pizza provided. The event will kick off with an introduction to Wikipedia editing, and an overview of the library resources available for creating and editing entries. Select reference books related to women in the arts and women’s history will be available in the Mann Assembly Room.
Additionally, unique primary source material, such as the Penn State University Libraries-curated Judy Chicago art education collection and A Few Good Women oral history collection, will be available for use in the Special Collections Library Reading Room. Participants, both onsite and remote, are invited to spend the rest of the event editing and creating entries.
Interested participants are welcome regardless of level of technology knowledge or experience. Onsite participants are encouraged to bring their own laptop or electronic device; however, a small number of laptops will be available for use in the Mann Assembly Room.
For more information, visit the Wikipedia meetup page for the event, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/University_Park/ArtAndFeminism_2017/The_Pennsylvania_State_University, which includes a sign-up section for participants at the bottom of the page.
For questions about event accommodations and the physical access provided, contact Julie Porterfield, instruction and outreach archivist, at 814-865-1793 or jmp48@psu.edu in advance of your visit.