GLAM/Newsletter/May 2014/Contents/Australia and New Zealand report
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Libraries' support continues and strengthens
Wadewitz tribute - editathon in memory of Adrianne shows contributions of Australian women
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Wikimedia Australia held an editathon on 10 May as part of the series of tribute editathons for Adrianne Wadewitz.
The physical event was held in the State Library of New South Wales and was helped by remote contributions, including some from librarian editors who continue their support for our projects and sacrificed some of their weekend to help with this one. Our efforts resulted in a number of good outcomes that are listed on the project page. In brief, we:
- created four new articles, including one on Theodora Cowan (pictured) that was DYK on 18 May;
- welcomed and trained a new editor;
- established a relationship with the people at the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth Century Australia (EWL);
- created a useful new table that maps Wikipedia articles against the articles in the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth Century Australia. This will enable us to continue to improve articles on Australian women as well as use the EWL publication for reference;
- achieved a rise in awareness of WP as a result of a subsequent presentation given by our new user to the Digital Humanities Forum at the University of Melbourne.
Thanks to Users Lankiveil, who created the table; Aliaretiree and Rubicon49bce who created Jessie Street National Women's Library and Ningali Cullen; Wittylama who created Australian Federation of Women Voters; and WikiWookie who worked on the correspondences in the cross-referencing table.
We hope Adrianne would have been pleased with this small but relevant wide-ranging set of improvements to, and resources for, articles about women's contributions. We remember her.
Ask a Librarian
As reported in The Signpost and on the National Library of Australia's blog, there are now direct links to the "Ask a Librarian" service of the National Library (and relevant State Library when applicable) in the WikiProject Australia information boxes on the talkpages of all Australian-related articles on the English Wikipedia. For example, on the talkpage of "Darwin, Northern Territory" the text reads:
- "Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian What's this? at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library."
- "Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian What's this? at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library."
The initiative is designed to increase the availability of this publicly-funded free academic research service to the Wikipedia community. As described in The Signpost:
WittylamaThe partnership will give Wikipedia editors of any nationality the chance to use the library's research services on articles related to Australia; the arrangement is that a research librarian can spend up to one hour on the questions asked of them. While many GLAM-Wiki efforts have focused on uploading new content and editing articles related to the institutions involved, this project will break new ground by connecting Wikimedians with the NLA's research librarians. Instead of new content, Wikimedians will be provided with verifiable information backed up with reliable sources from the library's holdings.
