Edit-a-thons part of Open Access Week celebration
The community is invited to participate in two Wikipedia edit-a-thons as part of Vanderbilt Libraries’ celebration of International Open Access Week. An edit-a-thon brings together a group of people who are interested in editing Wikipedia articles on a certain theme.
The first one, happening in Vanderbilt Special Collections, is Oct. 15 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. It is being held in conjunction with the Women in Architecture edit-a-thon organized by the Guggenheim Museum to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women in architecture and to increase female contributors to Wikipedia.
The second edit-a-thon will bring together Wikipedia editors to increase the authority of the free online encyclopedia by adding citations where “citation needed” flags are posted in Wikipedia. It will be from noon to 5 p.m. Oct. 23 in the Learning Commons at Peabody Library.
“[lquote]We encourage librarians to attend for any portion of the event and help participants do research using Vanderbilt resources,”[/lquote] said Ed Warga, institutional repository coordinator at the libraries.
Lunch and refreshments will be served at both edit-a-thons, and resources will be available for beginner-level Wikipedia editors.
International Open Access Week, scheduled Oct. 19-25, is a week set aside each year to increase awareness of the benefits of opening up scholarly communication, such as making new research findings available at any time to potential collaborators. This year’s theme is “Open for Collaboration.”