Increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently underrepresented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, with a particular focus on cultural content.
- We added new pages and improved pages for several women engineers at the Wikithon hosted by the IET Library. Attendance on the day was limited by the Southern Rail strike, but some excellent edits were achieved despite this. We also had discussions about planning a follow-up event to enable those who had missed out could get a chance to do some editing. Librarian Anne Locker has a list of more pages that are ripe for editing or creating, for whom the IET has resources to help with page creation.
- Following on from this event, Henrietta Heald got in touch to get some advice on improving the page for Caroline Haslett in preparation for nominating Haslett for the Women’s Hour Power List 2016. She made significant improvements to that page, and then went on to work on the page for Pauline Gower too. Her work on this page has highlighted the potential to improve/add pages for a number of women who were the "First Eight" women to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary, who could form the focus of a future event.
Support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level.
- Met with staff from the Royal College of Nursing to discuss the possibility of having an editathon, and how it could help to encourage access to their library whilst also increasing coverage of nursing online (and particularly women in medicine, with improvement of Gender bias on Wikipedia in mind).
- Talked to astronomers and historians at the Transit to Hawai'i event at the National Maritime Museum, highlighting the ease of editing Wikipedia and the current patchy coverage of their field. We created a new page for one notable astronomer there and then, and several expressed intentions to go home and scrutinise and edit pages.
- We had a session on the value of editing Wikipedia, plus training on how to do so, at the University of Warwick for the People's History of the NHS team, who will be coming to the Wellcome Library for an NHS themed editathon on the 22nd November. The session was also attended by members of the Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000 project.
- Library staff continue to come along to WikiClub sessions and to improve pages based on topics they come across or are asked about in the Library.
To support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK.
- Students from the University of Kent received training on how to edit, and as part of their Science and Medicine in Context module they improved pages on science communication and museums.
- To facilitate this, I developed a marking rubric fitting UK grade boundaries to help university staff when grading student wiki-assignments.
- Had a phone meeting with Jess Wade, who attended the Women Engineers Wikithon, to plan project applications to hold editathons with school students. We are hoping to hold events to highlight the hidden women of chemistry, working with state school students to both improve their knowledge of such women and to improve content online so that others can benefit from these women's increased visibility too. The applications have now been submitted and we're waiting to hear back.
- November will be a particularly busy month, with combination training & editathon events themed on history of psychiatry and mental health, and the history of the NHS: see Events & Workshops.
- We'll continue to develop plans for events in conjunction with the Royal College of Nursing and the Liverpool Medical Institution.
- As mentioned above, we now have schools projects in development on the theme of women in science.
