UK Libraries to Host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Today

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 20, 2017) — The University of Kentucky Libraries, along with co-sponsors from the School of Information Science, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the School of Art and Visual Studies and the student organizations ACM-W (Association of Computing Machinery Women's Chapter) and LISSO (Library and Information Science Student Organization), will host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon today (Monday), March 20. The event, which individuals may drop by for any period of time, will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center.

This international event is designed to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia and to encourage female editorship. The edit-a-thon will include tutorials for the beginner Wikipedian, ongoing editing support, reference materials and refreshments. People of all gender identities and expressions are invited to participate, particularly transgender and cisgender women.

In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10 percent of its contributors identify as female. A lack of female participation has led to a dearth of content about women and art in Wikipedia, but Art+Feminism’s edit-a-thons and other initiatives make an impact on the gender gap through crucial improvements to art- and feminism-related subjects. Since 2014, over 280 Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thons have taken place across the world, creating and improving an estimated 4,600 articles.

This will be the second Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon held at the University of Kentucky. The first was held in March 2015, during which participants created or updated articles about regional artists including Adele Brandeis, Ann Stewart Anderson and Jane Burch Cochran.

This year, the UK Libraries edit-a-thon will continue to add and improve articles about female artists from Kentucky, many of whom currently have no Wikipedia entry, or whose current entries are brief stubs. The Little Fine Arts Library will bring specialized works from their collection to aid researchers at the edit-a-thon, such as reference books on women artists, exhibition catalogues, and historic dictionaries of artists and notable women in Kentucky.

The UK Libraries Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is organized by Abbye Allan, Ida Sell, Karyn Hinkle, Melissa Adler and Kathryn Lybarger. They are excited to bring attention to underrepresented artists from the region and to help make the world’s most popular online encyclopedia a more inclusive source.

For more information on the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at UK, contact art librarian Karyn Hinkle at karyn.hinkle@uky.edu.