Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the Center
By Leanora Lange
A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was held on July 22, 2015, open to staff members from the Center and its partners as well as students from the YIVO summer program. Twenty people attended a training session on Wikipedia and basic editing, and several stayed for an open editing session that followed. Although the session was initially focused on expanding coverage related to YIVO’s Vilna Collections, the attendees edited pages related to a wide range of topics including the history of European synagogues and notable civic figures and artists of various backgrounds. New pages were created for Arno Nadel and Fayez Sayegh, and the page for Maud Nathan was expanded. Links to relevant online content were added to pages such as the Israelitisches Familienblatt, and topics for discussion with the wider Wikipedia community regarding more dramatic edits (such as creating a separate page for the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt or changing the title of the Old New Synagogue page) were added on talk pages. Although the event was in-house, a volunteer from Barcelona saw the event via Twitter and joined our efforts by translating ca:Arno Nadel into Catalan.
Editing Wikipedia is a regular step in Center archivists’ workflows as well as that of some of our reference staff as part of our mission to encourage discovery of the archival materials held by our partners.
Leanora Lange is an archivist at the Center and a board member of Wikimedia NYC
Logo Above: “Wikipedia-logo-v2-en” by Wikimedia Foundation. Available under CC"