Wikimedian in Residence

Supporting the University of Edinburgh's commitments to digital skills, information literacy, and sharing knowledge openly

Tag: Edinburgh Award

Edinburgh Award 2023/24 Success!

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On May 3, 2024

In Uncategorized

Edinburgh Award 2023/4 Blog

Old College on the evening of the Edinburgh Award celebration event.

This year I had my first experience helping with the Edinburgh Award Wikipedia project. The Edinburgh Award is a scheme which encourages students to volunteer in various projects that are happening around the University whilst undertaking their studies, with the ultimate aim of improving employability and graduate outcomes. Having undertaken an Edinburgh Award, myself during my undergraduate degree, it was a rewarding and full-circle experience to be part of it from the other side.

The Wikipedia project for the Edinburgh Award sees students identify an area of Wikipedia which is in need of improvement or is non-existent. Students are encouraged to pursue projects to do with their own interests and hobbies, these by no means need to be linked with their academic studies. This is what I find particularly fun about choosing a Wikipedia project to help to complete the Edinburgh Award, you can spend time delving into your interests which are independent to your studies.

This year, four fantastic students saw the project to completion. Their projects were diverse, covering a wide range of topics, and culminated in a substantial addition to knowledge on Wikipedia. The projects included:

  • Mental Health in China
  • Islamic History and Culture in addition to contributions to Population Genetics
  • Latin American Literature and Publishing Houses
  • Terms in Neuroscience

Our Fab Four finishers at their celebration evening in the Playfair Library.

At the beginning, our students told it was a challenge to narrow down a topic when there are so many available to you. After a few weeks of trial and error and exploring different avenues they each settled on their chosen topic. They became really interested in researching their topic, spending lots of time fine tuning their project proposals. We encouraged the students to keep fortnightly logs so that we could keep a track of their progress. Students also identified three key graduate skills as areas for improvement. These included communication and interpersonal skills, organisational skills, problem solving, and digital literacy.

To help with this, throughout the project, we put on fortnightly drop-in input sessions so that students could attend and get any support that they might need achieving these goals and working on their projects. It also provided them with the opportunity to work together in the same space, exchanging knowledge and Wikipedia editing experiences. During these sessions, we were also often provided with lovely treats from Creme Eggs to sesame biscuits brought from Kuwait. This face-to-face contact was enjoyed by everyone. It was nice for students to be able to ask us questions and to see each other. A nice community feel was formed, and we could see the fantastic progress being made on projects week by week.

The final assessment saw the students’ update their improvement on their three graduate skills that they had identified at the start of the year. It was great to see that every student felt as if they had improved on each of their identified skills. In terms of employability, these experiences and personal progressions are invaluable. This assessment also needed the students to present their work to their peers and to us. These presentations were fantastic and really showcased the finale of all their hard work. Each student had achieved more than 50 hours of digital Wikipedia volunteering to have completed their projects, and this hard work and dedication was clear in their presentations. There was personal growth in each student, and it was a fantastic opportunity for them to show off all their hard work.

Inside of the lovely Playfair Library.

As a final celebration, to applaud all of the hard work done by each student on the Edinburgh Award they were invited to Edinburgh’s Playfair Library for a drink’s reception with staff, students and employers. This awards evening also featured a talk from the university’s own Peter Sawkins, who won the Great British Bake Off in 2020, who had himself previously completed an Edinburgh Award and even attributed part of his success in the competition to the process of completing the award! It was a great chance for all students to meet a stranger and get networking. It really was the cherry on top of the whole experience.

Overall, some amazing work was completed, with around 51, 000 words being added to English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic Wikipedia’s. Between them, the group created 18 new articles and improved an impressive 53. Their contributions have amassed a whopping 699, 000 article views. The articles created, translated, and improved include:

Ewan and I with the ‘Fab Four’!

We are really proud of our ‘Fab Four’ students who completed the project. They did an amazing job, and we are looking forward to seeing what new, exciting projects will be brought forward to us next year!

 

This blog was written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence.

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

“Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” – the Edinburgh Award

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On April 7, 2023

In Uncategorized

We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community.

To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has a new Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards– the Edinburgh Award is a programme that allows students to get official recognition for their involvement in extracurricular activities and demonstrate their digital capabilities to employers.

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

There are many different types of Edinburgh Award activity students can undertake but Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia focuses on developing 3 Graduate Attributes (e.g. digital literacy, written communication, assertiveness & confidence etc.) over the course of 55-80 hours of work and providing evidence of demonstrable learning, reflection and impact. These hours are staggered over the October to end of March period punctuated by 3 main mandatory “input” sessions.

In the first, Aspiring, in October the students self -assess themselves against the Graduate Attributes and select three to develop as part of the award. They also select a topic area of Wikipedia they wish to improve and submit a 400 word action plan for how they plan to develop their chosen Graduate Attributes and how they’ll deliver impact.

Once they have had training and researched their topic areas, the 2nd Input Session, Developing, in late December, requires them to re-assess if their Graduate Attribute ranking has changed, and submit a completed Fortnightly Log of Activities designed to evidence their work to date and their reflections on how they are progressing towards their personal project goals. We hold fortnightly group research sessions in the library (because not everything is online) to help their research and allow them to edit in  a social and supportive environment where they can ask questions and seek help; both from the Wikimedian in Residence, and from each other. 

Example student project on Francophone Literature, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

The final Input Session, Owning, is about coming together to share their project outcomes and reflections as well as ensuring the students get the opportunity to tie all this in with their future goals and how they will communicate about their Edinburgh Award experience to their peers, academic advisors or employers. This session takes place at end of March and their final submissions are an 800 word report or 3-6 minute video presentation reflecting on both their impact achieved and the development achieved in their 3 chosen graduate attributes.

Topics suggested by students to improve online

More interestingly, are the topics the students wanted to write about. Climate change, Covid-19, LGBT History, Black History, Women artists, Women in STEM. Marginalised groups, underrepresented topics, some of the biggest and most pressing challenges in the world today. This shows me that students recognise and are intrinsically motivated by the importance of addressing knowledge gaps and improving the world around them.

Here’s a short video of an example project on LGBTQ+ history and women of the MENA region:

 The final 10

We started in October with a large cohort off 44 interested students but this reduced to 10 by Input 3 but this was to be expected and is in line with other Edinburgh Award programmes similarly asking students to undergo over 55 hours in extracurricular volunteering.

These ten ‘knowledge activist’ heroes have been put forward to achieving the Award this year. 

The projects

  1. Witch hunting: past and present day
  2. Visual culture: Artworks depicting Edinburgh
  3. Francophone literature
  4. Plant pathology
  5. Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence
  6. LGBTQ history and women in the MENA region
  7. Byzantium Greece and Cavafy’s poetry
  8. International development and human rights
  9. History of menstruation
  10. Northumberland Folklore and coverage of Edinburgh related artists, banks, and writers by using museum exhibits 

The outcomes

76,000 words have so far been added to Wikipedia and over 876 references to pages viewed almost 3 million times already! 

41 articles created, 157 improved, 35 images uploaded and articles translated in German, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian and French including the accused Bavarian witch Anna Maria Schwegelin (translated from German Wikipedia) and Crime of Solidarity (translated from French Wikipedia) which is a concept coined in France by human right’s activists in order to fight against organised illegal immigration networks as well as fight against laws that prevent refuge for refugees.

Reflections on the Edinburgh Award. CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Notable new pages also include:

Here’s a short video of an example project on the history of menstruation:

Here’s a short video of an example project on Witch hunting (past and present):

Quotes from the students

“During the Wikipedia project, Critical Thinking skills were crucial to ensure the information presented was accurate, unbiased, and relevant. As the research progressed, I noticed that my skill improved as I had to analyse and evaluate the information gathered. One of the key improvements in the skills was the ability to identify and evaluate different sources of information. Initially, I relied heavily on a few sources for my research, but as the project progressed, I began considering a wider range of sources. I made an effort to evaluate each source based on its credibility, relevance, and objectivity, which helped me to identify and include the most accurate information.”

“I think that I have helped improve information accessibility on Wikipedia, as one of the most widely used free encyclopaedias I have felt it important to fill gaps in information largely concerning the LGBTQ community and women, as both of these areas are often forgotten about. I think having access to marginalised communities stories, achievements and contributions is a really important value, by contributing to these topics I have hopefully made information available to people around the world.”

“Once, I completed my second article I felt more self-assured and assertive on what was appropriate writing to upload onto Wikipedia. I had created an article on one of Cavafy’s poems, which is one of my favourite poems from his anthology. That could’ve also been a contributor to the overall experience too, since producing something which engages with one of your likes makes the activity a little more bearable. As I overcame this barrier, I was able to expand as well as develop my skills by editing as well as creating a lot more articles on Wikipedia. As it stands right now, I have contributed 10k words on Wikipedia. Although the first half of this process was excruciatingly slow, after overcoming my fears and worries I was keener with contributing on Wikipedia and practically spent most days changing, improving, or producing articles. ”

“Being a part of writing communities like Wikipedia has helped me to improve not only my writing but also my editing and proofreading skills. I have learned to use plain language, avoid jargon and technical terms, and organise information logically and coherently, thanks to Wikipedia’s style guidelines.”

“Doing this award has helped me make significant progress made on improving my independent research skills. For example, I think that over the course of my project, I have become better at picking out relevant information from very long sources and not spending too much time reading and fussing over smaller less significant details. In addition, I am more proficient at finding sources through Google Scholar and DiscoverEd and have also learnt where to look when struggling to find more information about a topic e.g. using good quality sources referenced in the bibliographies of journals and books I had already found to help grow my source lists.”

“Overall, my confidence to make bolder edits and create quality articles on Wikipedia has grown significantly since I started my project and I now feel that I can have a more significant and active presence on the site. Editing and writing articles about witch-hunting has been incredibly enlightening and rewarding and I want to continue to edit about this important topic after I finish the award.”

“My digital literacy skills have greatly improved compared with when I started my Wikipedia research project. Since the project involved extensive online research, it required me to engage with a wide range of digital tools and technologies. Through this process, I have developed proficiency in various areas of digital literacy, such as information literacy, media literacy, and digital communication.”

“My Wikipedia project on the history of menstruation has had a positive impact on others in several ways. Firstly, the project has helped raise awareness and understanding of an often-overlooked aspect of women’s health and history. By providing accurate and accessible information on the history of menstruation, the project has helped to demystify a topic that has long been stigmatized and taboo. I corrected a key part of the history of menstrual cups, which were first patented in the US in 1867, whereas before the article only included that the first patent for a commercial cup was in 1937. My article on Menstruation and humoral medicine has filled a gap in the content on Wikipedia, and highlighted the ambiguities in the ways that people viewed menstruation in the early modern period.”

“I wrote an article on Mary Marjory MacDonald, and significantly edited articles on Edwin Chiloba and the Signares. Mary was nicknamed ‘the Scottish Queen of Thieves’, and I believe it is important to represent more women on Wikipedia, especially figures who do not fit into traditional gender roles. This is also the case for the Signares, who were a group of women who acquired wealth and power in colonial Senegal. In addition, representing African LGBTQ+ activists such as Edwin Chiloba is important, since they are a group often neglected on Wikipedia.”

“I decided to focus on creating new pages to maximise my impact as some very important parts of the history of Francophone literature were missing, such as The Colonial System Unveiled, one of the earliest critiques of colonialism, which is unfortunately not recognised widely enough as a significant historical anticolonial text. I also decided to emphasise the contributions of women to Francophone Caribbean and African writing, as they can be overlooked in this area.”

“I hope that my contributions can help other students like me, such as those studying French or taking the course that inspired me to pursue this project. On a wider level, I also think my project can help increase the awareness of Francophone literature among English speakers. I believe it is very much underappreciated and people do not realise how much influence Francophone African and Caribbean thought have had on literary criticism even in an Anglophone context.”

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of Francophone literature:

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of artworks depicting Edinburgh:

In conclusion

Example student project researching artists,writers and banks related to Edinburgh. CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

“There are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street lamps“.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s words (below) are inscribed in Makar’s Court, Edinburgh. In taking this photo and sharing it openly to Wikimedia Commons and inserting it into the Makar’s Court page, the Edinburgh Award student has brought these words to my attention and helped raise my awareness that there are clearly other lovely stars in Edinburgh. Ten student stars in particular. And I have told them that they should all be enormously proud of their achievements this year.

Inscription of Robert Louis Stevenson quote in Makars’ Court, CC-BY-SA by Erisagal via Wikimedia Commons

One final student project!

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of plant pathology on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia, Student Activism and the Ivory Tower

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On April 21, 2022

In Uncategorized

This was a talk presented at the LILAC 2022 Information Literacy Conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 11-13 April 2022. The slides will be uploaded shortly.

0) Intro slide: Video of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Wikipedia page being edited.

Anyone can click “Edit” on any page on Wikipedia to improve its open-licensed information with verifiable facts. E.g. I’ve added a sentence to the page for Manchester Metropolitan University about it hosting the LILAC Information Literacy conference this year.  Backed up with a citation.

Anyone can edit, yes, but you have to CITE WHAT YOU WRITE.

1) Welcome slide

Good afternoon everyone – welcome!

My name is Ewan McAndrew and I have worked since January 2016 at the University of Edinburgh as the Wikimedian in Residence.

I presented at LILAC in 2019 about our work supporting Wikipedia in the curriculum and you can read more about that work in our Booklet of Case Studies of Wikipedia in UK education at bit.ly/wikicasestudies

Jesse Ewing Glasgow

2) Scotland, Slavery and Black History slide

We’re actually updating that booklet to include 5 more case studies of work conducted during lockdown including our work with History Students to re-examine Scotland’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and a more positive examination of Black History including creating new articles about Jesse Ewing Glasgow and more.

3) History of Art UG course programme slide

Another new case study has been working with History of Art students to improve coverage of non-Western art in Wikipedia so that even if you don’t know about the visual culture of the Ummayads in Syria (of which we have a new article written by students) you will still encounter Islamic art on pages about inkwells, pitchers, bowls and more.

4) Wikipedia and Academic Libraries slide

Another great resource relevant to this audience is the new open access book on Wikipedia and Academic Libraries published last year and we’ve contributed a chapter focusing on the work of the last 5 years improving Wikipedia’s coverage about women in Scotland and changing the way stories are told.

5) Mentimeter slide

All that said, to warm you for my talk today, tell me via the power of Menti – what is your favourite Wikipedia article? Answers here.

6) News article slide

While we wait for your answers, here are some recent news article headlines I searched for in Google about Wikipedia.

7) Prospect Magazine quote slide

This last headline I like from Prospect magazine last month as it posited the question… “Who gets to define what’s true online?...

 “In practical terms, truth is what Google’s knowledge graph … can deliver to its users.

Google’s knowledge graph is descended primarily from Wikipedia and Wikidata, an open-source collection of facts derived from Wikipedia, the remarkable participatory encyclopedia that, in the past 20 years, has become a core part of our collective knowledge infrastructure.”

Which reminded me of this earlier quote from Danah Boyd in 2017’s Did Media Literacy Backfire?

“Too many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research. As a result, the message that many had taken home was to turn to Google and use whatever came up first. They heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not.”

8) 2nd Mentimeter question

Now 2nd question – if indeed “Search is the Way We Live now” then is Wikipedia part of the Information Literacy conversation at your workplace/institution? If so, how? If not, why not do you think?

9) Video slide

While you think about that I’ll show you this video to give you food for thought, with contributions from staff, students and Academic Support Librarians at the University of Edinburgh. 

The Edinburgh Seven – our first editing event in Feb 2015

10) Edinburgh Seven slide

It’s now 7 years since our first experiment with Wikipedia, to improve topic coverage of the Edinburgh Seven on Wikipedia. The first female students matriculated at a British university when they fought for their right to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh Seven now have their degrees, posthumously. And a blue plaque commemorating their fight for the right to study. We’ll never know how many stop to read that blue plaque but we do know how many are reading their Wikipedia page. Thousands.

11) Allison Littlejohn slide

This group editing event was evaluated by Professor Allison Littlejohn and referenced in her 2019 LILAC keynote – her research further cementing our belief that engaging with Wikipedia and in conversations over copyright, neutral point of view, open access, verifiability of sources, academic referencing, writing for a lay audience and issues of underrepresentation and invisibility online were absolutely pertinent in supporting the professional development of staff and students and helping us walk the walk when it comes to sharing knowledge outside of the Ivory Tower. Becoming knowledge activists.

12) WiR slide

Since 2016, the role of Wikimedian in Residence provides a free central service to all staff and students, working alongside other digital skills trainers, learning technologists and library colleagues and our OER Service to support the university to explore and better understand how knowledge is created, curated, and disseminated online. Beyond this, what they can get out of the learning and teaching experience from contributing to Wikipedia and understanding how the sausage is made.

13) Reframing Wikipedia slide

Our students are using Wikipedia now, today and finding it useful in a clarificatory and orientating way. We need to support them in developing good practice.

So we need to see it less as a problem of passive consumption and think instead of Wikipedia as a form of learning technology that we can actively engage with and contribute to and gain so much from in terms of core competencies and transferable graduate attributes.

14) Promoting Knowledge Equity slide

This was our starting point in many ways. Working with the Wikimedia projects affords many opportunities to support transferable graduate attributes, information and digital and data literacy, but it also promotes this idea of knowledge equity.

As part of this evolving in thinking about how we engage with Wikipedia, we wanted to push on and do more. In the pandemic, the uni had something of a hiring freeze but we still wanted to offer students the opportunities for internships for roles our CIO could see merit in as being critical for our institutional mission and help get us where we needed to be.

15) Hannah Rothmann slide

Hannah Rothmann worked a 12 week internship in lockdown 2020, creating 20 short videos for different aspects of Wikipedia editing which she embedded in a 40 page website she created. All with the purpose of providing staff and students with one-stop shop for resources they needed to understand and engage with Wikipedia, be they at our institution or anywhere else. For this work she recently won an Open Education Global award.

Wikimedia internships at the University of Edinburgh since 2019

16) More Wiki internships slide

Two more interns, Erin and Clea, improved the website in 2021 and focused on adding new sections on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and WikiSource. Our new interns for this Summer 2022 will focus on expanding our work on the Map of Accused Witches site.

These internships were my way in to work more closely with our Careers Service and discussing trialling new ways to support students through also offering accreditation for the work they did outside the curriculum.

17) The Edinburgh Award slide

We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community.

To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has worked to pilot a new Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards– the Edinburgh Award is a programme that allows students to get official recognition for their involvement in extracurricular activities and demonstrate their digital capabilities to employers.

18) Graduate Attribute slide

There are many different types of Edinburgh Award activity students can undertake but Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia focuses on developing 3 Graduate Attributes over the course of at least 50 hours of work and providing evidence of demonstrable learning, reflection and impact. The 50 hours are staggered over the December to May period punctuated by 3 main input sessions.

19) Three inputs slide

In the first, Aspiring, in December the students self -assess themselves against the Graduate Attributes and select three to develop as part of the award. They also select a topic area of Wikipedia they wish to improve and submit a 400 word action plan for how they plan to develop their chosen Graduate Attributes and how they’ll deliver impact.

20) Fortnightly Log slide

Once they have had training and researched their topic areas, the 2nd Input Session, Developing, at end of January requires them to re-assess if their Graduate Attribute ranking has changed, and submit a completed Fortnightly Log of Activities designed to evidence their work to date  and their reflections on how they are progressing towards their personal project goals.

The final Input Session, Owning, is about coming together to share their project outcomes and reflections as well as ensuring the students get the opportunity to ties all this in with their future goals and how they will communicate about their Edinburgh Award experience to their peers, academic advisors or employers. This session will take place at end of May and their final submission will be an 800 word report or 3-5 minute video presentation.

21) Course level slide

Of the 23 student pilot group – the vast majority of applicants were female. Over 80%. Bucking the 10-15% of editors on Wikipedia normally.

They also tended to come from Undergraduate courses. 60%. 

22) Course disciplines slide

Of the disciplines, History of Art and Physics backgrounds were well represented. Which I believe is owing to recent project work with these departments and a willingness of the School Secretary to alert interested student groups.

Topics suggested by students to improve online

23) Topics slide

More interestingly, are the topics the students wanted to write about. Climate change, Covid-19, LGBT History, Black History, Women artists, Women in STEM. Marginalised groups, underrepresented topics, some of the biggest and most pressing challenges in the world today. This shows me that students recognise and are intrinsically motivated by the importance of addressing knowledge gaps and improving the world around them.

24) The final 11

The initial 23 reduced to 11 by Input 3 but this was to be expected and is in line with other Edinburgh Award programmes similarly asking students to undergo 50 hours plus in extracurricular volunteering. 19,000 words have so far been added to Wikipedia and over 300 references to pages viewed almost 900,000 times. This is only a pilot of course and I have much I have to reflect on myself.

25) Reflections

Like how best to support students to ascertain what is Wikipedia missing when that task is seemingly endless, how to structure student time and support without losing elements of personalisation, choice and flexible working that they like, how best to engender a sense of a self-sustaining community and collaboration between students and between the students and hive mind expertise across the university and beyond, also how best to quantify and quality assure what counts as a significant body of work and impact on Wikipedia.

26) Conclusion

I have much I have learnt myself from this trial run and it is not over yet. But when turning on the news seems to reflect the darkest of times of late, I have found faith that students find this work meaningful and relevant for their studies, for their employability and for their personal development as both empowered online citizens and card-carrying members of the human race.

Their willingness to communicate their scholarship openly for the good of all and to be the change they want to see has real and I hope profound potential which can be enhanced and greatly expanded in future iterations. Encouraging an army of student volunteers to be ambitious, reach out, learn, collaborate, to delve deep into the libraries and archives, devouring knowledge, synthesising it, finding the gaps and the people willing and able to help fill them. Everything connects after all, or it should. We can uncover hidden histories, build on prior learning, illuminate the darkness and lift each other up.

27) Final slide

So my question for you – how can Wikimedia best support you and wiki link with your work? Because that’s what this work is all about.

Down the rabbit hole with Wikipedia – LILAC 2022

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On April 13, 2022

In Uncategorized

Image of couple doing high five
High Five – by Bgubitz at English Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I asked LILAC Information Literacy Conference 2022 delegates what their favourite Wikipedia pages were and here’s what they answered:

  1. Boris Johnson (It’s not flattering)
  2. The Dyatlov Pass incident
  3. Dolly Parton
  4. Cellar door
  5. High five
  6. Mary Shelley
  7. Loch_Ness_Monster
  8. The Sopranos
  9. List of Manufacturing processes
  10. Disambiguation (disambiguation)
  11. List of The Simpsons guest stars
  12. Defenestrations of Prague
  13. Marxist economics
  14. List of Never Mind The Buzzcocks episodes
  15. The ABBA page
  16. Lists_of_films#By_genre
  17. Snapper (band) – the only Wikipedia entry I created as an assignment for Library qual.
  18. The one about the first women doctors in Edinburgh which only got added by Wikipedia after a protest at its absence. Edinburgh Seven.
  19. Toilet_paper_orientation
  20. Wolf Alice Band page
  21. Biographies i.e. person information pages
  22. As Slow As Possible
  23. A Cultural History of the Buttocks
  24. Narwhals
  25. Grey_Owl
  26. Cats_and_the_Internet
  27. Diggers
  28. N/a
  29. LILAC
  30. I don’t have one, sorry….
  31. Any public figure with a “controversies” section
  32. All Wikipedia

Thanks all! Have fun reading these on your way home 🙂

Further links:

Our University of Edinburgh website with lots of ‘how to’ advice.

Changing the Way Stories Are Told – Chapter 13 in Wikipedia and Academic Libraries open access book.

Is Wikipedia part of the Information & Digital Literacy conversation/strategy at your institution? If yes, how? If not, why not?

LILAC answered:

“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”

“Not part of the overarching strategy, but we signpost to it as a resource for fact checking/evaluating source credibility in our information literacy workshops.”

“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”

“Yes, we suggest Wikipedia as a starting point of researching ideas and concepts, but stress that it can be edited by anyone, and just as we expect citations in their work, we should expect the same from Wikipedia pages.”

“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”

“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”

“In English schools there is now an acceptance students will use Wikipedia first but then are told not to reference it but find the original source.”

“Yes – decolonising articles on arts themes. Adding artists and practitioners of colour, who represent British diaspora, international artists in UK, etc. Also resources.”

“As a student, we’re still discouraged from using wikipedia as a resource, though I still use it outside of university”.

“Part of conversation I have with students in searches. Not in strategy. Also organising a Wikipedia editathon.”

“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”

“Yes. I have delivered sessions on using wikipedia specifically to identify information gaps from underrepresented voices and using research skills to fill those gaps.”

“Not really, but if a student says they can’t use wiki I say that it’s not necessarily the worse and can be a v good start to begin to understand a topic”

“No, we tend to direct students towards scholarly material. Assumption is that Google/Instagram/Wikipedia already used extensively but are unfamiliar with specific library resources”

“No – but it’s something I personally talk to students about especially when it comes to reading up on background information, looking at lists of references, finding timelines, etc.”

“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”

“Yes – advise that it’s a good place to start but not for use as a reference.”

“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”

“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”

“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”

“Yes. We use it in our first year info lit courses as an example of a place to go to learn background info, instigate their curiosity, and find additional sources.”

“It’s not, because it is not viewed as a reliable source.”

“No, academics are not interested”

“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”

“No …
Hmm why not? That’s a good question”

“Yes – using it to teach criticality and citation by getting students to edit Wikipedia”.

“Yes.”

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