Wikimedian in Residence

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

Tag: Wikipedia editathon

An event poster showing a lighthouse in the foreground and blue cloudy skies beyond it.

For Those in Peril on the Sea: Mapping Scotland’s lighthouses on Wikipedia

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On September 2, 2026

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Join us for an expert-led guided tour of the exhibition ‘For the Safety of All: Scotland’s Lighthouses’ followed by a fun and interactive Wikipedia edit-a-thon on Wed 23rd September.

Let’s improve coverage of Scottish lighthouses in a stunning, historical building of the National Records of Scotland and turn Wikipedia’s “red links” (pages that don’t YET exist) into well-researched, published articles! No prior knowledge or experience required.

Book your place on Eventbrite here

All we need is 50-100 words+ and where you cite what you write and we can PUBLISH your work as a brand new page filling important knowledge gaps in our search results. Images all help too, some stunning lighthouse buildings and lonely Scottish promontories are not well illustrated at all online.

We can change that. #WeCanEdit

What to expect?

This in-person event will begin at the lobby of the General Register House, where the archivists, Jessica Evershed and Jocelyn Grant will take you on a guided tour of the exhibition. ‘For the Safety of All’ features enticing histories of the Bell Rock Lighthouse and the mystery of the Flannan Isles lighthouse keepers’ disappearance. Then visitors will get a unique change to have a closer look at the historical records unavailable to the public.

Afterwards, participants will have a chance do do their own research and improve the information gaps on Wikipedia. You will learn how to edit Wikipedia pages, then write and publish your very own article with guidance and support from us.

You’ll learn a new digital skill and meet like-minded people, who are all passionate about the unique legacy of Scottish engineering. Make this your day to make a difference!

Agenda

  • 1pm – 1:30pm: Guided tour of the exhibition and the records display
  • 1:30pm – 2pm: Wikipedia training from Anna Judelson.
  • 2pm – 2:15pm: Tea and Coffee break
  • 2:15 pm – 3:15pm: Research and Editing.
  • 3:15 pm – 3:30pm: Publishing your work and the event closing

What to bring?

Please bring your own laptop! The rest is sorted.

Have a look at the event page to see if there are pages you would like to help edit/create and if you fancy learning more about Wikipedia ahead of time then you can view the Wiki Basics site.

Email ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Please note:

  • The Doors Open Day programme for 2026 is live. Doors Open Days is Scotland’s largest free festival that celebrates places and stories, new and old.  Every September you can explore hundreds of fascinating buildings across Scotland for free. Some open up once a year, some just once a lifetime.
  • Wiki Loves Monuments – the world’s largest photo competition is live for the whole of month of September. This international photography competition is supported by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation and the best images can win prizes. You can see historic locations near you that are missing an image using our handy interactive map (red pins are locations without an open image). The aim is to crowdsource as many high quality, openly licensed photos as possible of scheduled monuments and listed buildings throughout the world. Why? Because documenting our cultural heritage today is so important.
  • The Edinburgh Award for Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia is OPEN too if you are a student wishing to register for a University of Edinburgh accredited 55-80hr volunteering programme to complement (or be a holiday from) your studies and where fascinatingly rich topics like Scotland’s Lighthouses or our other recent event with the National Library of Scotland on the History of the Edinburgh Fringe could be better documented, recorded and illustrated on Wikipedia from 21 October  2026 to 31 march 2027. If you are a lecturer with an idea (or a reading list) or a curator/archivist/librarian or indeed anyone with a project idea that could make for a rich student experience and plug some important histories and information gaps online then do get in touch.
A graphic depicting the face and shoulders of Ada Lovelace and a booking link detailing all the events on 14th of October to celebrate Women in STEM that day

Ten years of Ada Lovelace Day at the University of Edinburgh

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On October 1, 2025

In Uncategorized

Ada Lovelace day is the 14th of October this year and this will be our 10th year of celebrating that day!

We are planning events and activities with a climate and earth sciences theme, running in the afternoon and early evening of that date.   The day time events will be in the Main Library and the panel will be in G.03 in 50 George Sq.

uCreate takeover! 11.00-16.00 (First Floor, Main Library)

Have your chroma-key photo taken with women in STEM and explore some of the tech resources uCreate has to offer, like programming, sensors, virtual reality (VR) experiences, 3D scanners, 3D printers and more.

No need to book, just come along!

Lunch and Lightning talks   12.00-1.45 (Main Library, Room 1.07)

Lunch will be served 12pm to 12.30pm. Come say hello and meet fellow Ada Lovelace Day participants!

This session is a chance for some networking with some lightning talks from a range fascinating projects, initiatives and student societies.

  • Building Equity: the Molly Ferguson Initiative for Women in Engineering – Dr. Rhiannon Grant (Chancellor’s Fellow at School of Engineering) will provide an introduction to the initiative and what they have running at the moment, and a welcome for any input from others.
  • Digging for dinosaurs: how to be a woman in the field – Women face unique challenges when conducting field research, especially in remote locations. Milly Mead (PhD researcher, the Paleontology Society) discusses how she’s approached some of these challenges while digging up dinosaurs in the Badlands of Montana.
  • Building AdaHack – Bessie from the Edinburgh Hoppers Society on how they brought their hackathon to life and the benefits and opportunities presented to women and gender minorities through it.
  • The Mindset to Global Stages: How Resilience Powers Extraordinary Success – Anna Petrusenko (CompSoc Vice President). From fleeing a war-torn home to sharing a stage with President Bill Clinton, Anna’s journey taught her one truth: the mindset that helps you survive the unimaginable is the same one that fuels extraordinary success. This talk explores how resilience and determination can transform any challenge into possibility
  • Reflections on how my experiences have shaped my career – Ariadna Sanchez Cervera (PhD student) will share her 10+ years of experience in STEM which ranges from a career in the tech industry to academia at different stages (BSc,MSc and PhD). From these she will summarise a few insights that she has found key along the way which guides how she works today.
  • The Hidden Voices project: Unearthing the impact of women in Scottish archaeology – Lucia Michelin and Rebecca Jones (Society of Scottish Antiquaries). Many female Scottish antiquarians of the 19th and 20th centuries have made a significant contribution to Scottish archaeology, although often not given due credit for their work. This presentation will review the Hidden Voices project, where a few current Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland are collaborating to raise the profile of these women, increasing visibility of their work and contributions for archaeology.

Book for  lunch and lightning talks

Wikipedia Women in STEM edit-a-thon – 1.45-5 (Main Library, Room 1.07)

  • Wikipedia Edit-a-thon – help add the brilliant lives & contributions of Women in STEM to improve discoverability and representation online. Learn how to edit in 1hr… and how IMPACTFUL and FUN it is to share knowledge openly.
  • You’ll learn important 21st century digital research skills and have done something amazing with a tangible published outcome by the end of the afternoon!
  • All we need is 50-100+ words (cite what you write!) to publish brand new pages about all the inspiring lives, projects and research taking place all over the world currently missing from our search results.
  • This year’s event will focus on Women in Archaeology, Paleontology, Earth Science and Geoscience but all are welcome to take part and contribute knowledge about all the brilliant work by Women in STEM.
  • No experience necessary, full training will be given and tea, coffee & cakes will help fuel your editing efforts.

Book for editathon

Games and Crafts – 1.45-5 (Main Library, Room 1.07)

  • Make badges
  • Colour-in
  • Play our Women in STEM interactive game

Book for games and crafts

Celebrating Women in Climate & Earth Sciences – 5-7 (G.03, 50 George Square)

Join us for an inspiring panel discussion that shines a spotlight on the remarkable contributions of women in climate and earth sciences. We bring together four leading voices who are breaking new ground in research, policy and public engagement. The panel will start at 5.15pm.

Chair: Dr Melissa Highton (Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services and Assistant Principal Online Learning)

Panelists:

  • Elva Bannon –Research and Engineering Manager at Wave Energy Scotland. Elva heads the WES Research and Engineering team, where she utilises her solid background in Mechatronic Engineering (BEng) and Advanced Engineering (MEng) to drive the development of novel wave energy technologies. Elva is the Chair of the UK National Committee for TC114 developing international standards for the wave and tidal energy sector. She also sits on the industrial advisory board for Supergen ORE Hub and is a member of the Scientific Committee for EIMR, all roles for which she received a ‘Top 50 Women in Engineering Award 2024’ from the Women’s Engineering Society.
  • Dr Hermione Cockburn OBE – Science communicator with a career spanning television, radio, teaching and writing. Until recently, Hermione was the Scientific Director of Dynamic Earth and is currently a trustee at National Museums Scotland and an Honorary Fellow at the School of Geosciences.
  • Professor Gabi Hegerl – Award-winning climatolagist and Royal Society Fellow whose pioneering work on detection and attribution has deepened our understanding of the causes of climate change.
  • Dr Encarni Medina-Lopez – A Senior Lecturer and leads the ‘Coastal and Environmental Remote Sensing Group’ in the School of Engineering of the University of Edinburgh. Encarni is the Director of the Failure Modes of Engineering project (FeME) focusing on engineering solutions for climate change and biodiversity loss, and their impact on women, children and other underrepresented groups globally.

Book for Panel session within University (students and staff)

Public booking link 

How to run a Wikipedia editathon – a workshop for health information professionals at the EAHIL conference

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On September 5, 2018

In Uncategorized

This post was authored by Ruth Jenkins, Academic Support Librarian at the University of Edinburgh.

For some time, Wikipedia has been shown to be a resource to engage with, rather than avoid. Wikipedia is heavily used for medical information by students and health professionals – and the fact that it is openly available is crucial for people finding health information, particularly in developing countries or in health crises. Good quality Wikipedia articles are an important contribution to the body of openly available information – particularly relevant for improving health information literacy. In fact, some argue that updating Wikipedia should be part of every doctor’s work, contributing to the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Participants editing Wikipedia

With that in mind, Academic Support Librarians for Medicine Marshall Dozier, Ruth Jenkins and Donna Watson recently co-presented a workshop on How to run a Wikipedia editathon, at the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) Conference in Cardiff in July. Ewan McAndrew, our Wikimedian in Residence here at the University of Edinburgh, was instrumental in the planning and structuring of the workshop, giving us lots of advice and help. On the day, we were joined by Jason Evans, Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales, who spoke about his role at NLW and the Wikimedia community and helped support participants during editing.

We wanted our workshop to give participants experience of editing Wikipedia and build their confidence using Wikipedia as part of the learning experience for students and others. Our workshop was a kind of train-the-trainer editathon. An editathon is an event to bring people together at a scheduled time to create entries or edit Wikipedia on a specific topic, and they are valuable opportunities for collaborating with subject experts, and to involve students and the public.

Where a typical editathon would be a half-day event, we only had 90 minutes. As such, our workshop was themed around a “micro-editathon” – micro in scale, timing and tasks. We focused on giving participants insights into running an editathon, offered hands-on experience, and small-scale edits such as adding images and missing citations to articles.

Systematic review edit

Key stats from the EAHIl Wikipedia editathon

We also presented on the Wikipedia assignment in the Reproductive Biology Honours programme here at Edinburgh, including a clip from this video of a student’s reflections on the assignment, which sparked discussion from the attendees. Jason Evans’ talk about Wikimedia UK and Wikiproject Medicine, contextualised the participants’ edits within the wider Wikimedia community.

We are waiting on feedback from the event, but anecdotally, the main response was a wish for a longer workshop, with more time to get to know Wikipedia better! There was lots of discussion about take-home ideas, and we hope they are inspired to deliver editathon events in their own organisations and countries. We also spotted that some of our participants continued to make edits on Wikipedia in the following weeks, which is a great sign.

If you want to know more, you can visit the event website which roughly follows the structure of our workshop and includes plenty of further resources: https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/eahil-editathon/

Further information.

Pic of Ruth Jenkins at the Reproductive Biology Hons. Wikipedia workshop.
By Stinglehammer [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Ada Lovelace Day 2018 – nominate Women in STEM heroines

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On August 7, 2018

In Uncategorized

It’s a little over two months until Ada Lovelace Day 2018, which is happening on Tuesday 9th October this year.

Pop it in your calendar now and we’ll announce further details about the University’s plans on this website shortly.

Find out more on the official Ada Lovelace Day website – http://findingada.com

A regular activity for Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) at the University of Edinburgh is the Wikipedia editing event or editathon. This year the focus is contemporary women in STEM who do not currently have Wikipedia pages.

Who is your STEM heroine?

Nominate your contemporary STEM heroine for consideration at the Wikipedia editathon Tuesday 9th October. This should only take 5-10 minutes and it will really help us to create new role models for young and old alike on the world’s go-to source for information, Wikipedia.

Please note the deadline for submissions is Monday 3rd September.

Submit your STEM heroine nomination (Google Form)

Previous editathons

Review the Wikipedia articles improved and created at previous ALD editathons:

  1. ALD Wikipedia editathon 2017
  2. ALD Wikipedia editathon 2016
  3. ALD Wikipedia editathon 2015

Ada Lovelace Day 2017 short film

In celebration of International Women’s Day (#IWD2018) watch footage from Ada Lovelace Day 2017 at the University of Edinburgh. Via Media Hopper Create you can watch and download a Creative Commons licenced (CC BY-SA) full HD version for sharing/repurposing/remixing!

COMING SOON: Ada Lovelace Day – 11th October 2016

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On June 10, 2016

In Uncategorized

Ada Lovelace Alfred Edward Chalon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Ada Lovelace
Alfred Edward Chalon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is just a gentle reminder that Ada Lovelace Day 2016 will be coming up on Tuesday 11th October 2016 and we will be looking to reconvene a working group to prepare for an Ada Lovelace day of events; incorporating a Wikipedia editathon celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

 

http://findingada.com/

Ada Lovelace Day | Celebrating the achievements of women …

findingada.com

Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Ada Lovelace Day in 2016 will be …

At this moment in time, I am looking for expressions of interest in being involved in this event once more and Wikipedia pages we should look to create and improve related to Women in STEM.

 

NB: The focus might shift a little this year to female mentors given that Mary Somerville is to grace the £10 note this year so with an extra focus on women in maths too.

 

If you know of someone who would like to be involved then please feel free to forward on the event details and let them know I’d love to hear from them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Ada_Lovelace_Day_2016

I’ve created the Wikipedia event page accordingly so that we can populate it over the next few months with some notable women in STEM.

 

Other projects are in development too. If you would like to be involved in them then email me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh#Projects_in_Development

 

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