York University Libraries team up with Yale University Library for the Annual Women in STEM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon this November 19th from 1-4 pm!
Join the annual Women in STEM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon from 1pm to 4pm on Tuesday, November 19th, 2024. This year, the Women in STEM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is a joint collaboration between York University Libraries, Toronto Canada and Yale Library, Newhaven CT.
York University professor, Dr. Dawn Bazely, will deliver a special presentation during the edit-a-thon on her experiences as a woman in STEM. Bazely also holds the 2024-25 Fulbright Canada Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Yale.
This event is a hybrid and multi-location event. The York components of the events will take place via Zoom and in-person at the Scott Library, 2nd floor, in the Making and Media Creation Lab. Additionally, York Libraries will be streaming the in-person Yale Library components of the event.
Honouring the memory of Ada Lovelace, the first female computer programmer whose contributions were overlooked for decades, this event is held every year to celebrate, recognize and most of all promote and remember the contributions of women in all the various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Women in STEM are underrepresented in Wikipedia and this edit-a-thon is one way to help create a more representative Wikipedia.
“Wikipedia edit-a-thons help us rediscover the contributions of women in STEM over the centuries,” says Bazely. “We want to engage the York community in a fun and easy way that really does make a difference in the representation of women,” says Alex Wong, data visualization and analytics librarian and co-organizer of the Women in STEM edit-a-thon. “By editing Wikipedia and Wikidata, we can impact not only these platforms directly, but also indirectly impact how women get represented in larger technology projects like Google’s Knowledge Graph.”
How to participate:
We encourage all interested students, staff, and faculty to drop-by in-person or via Zoom and to contribute throughout the event, no previous Wikipedia editing experience is necessary! The event will have in-person and online facilitators to help novice editors get up and running.
Register now for the Zoom portion of the event! Or participate in person by dropping by the Scott Library Making and Media Creation Lab (2nd floor) on November 19 between 1pm to 4pm.
Focus of this year’s edit-a-thon:
This year’s Edit-a-thon will focus on creating and improving both Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items about women in STEM fields. To learn more about women in STEM edit-a-thons, visit the Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thon guide.