WASHINGTON –The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC), in collaboration with Wikimedia DC, will host a “Black History Month Edit-a-thon” on Thursday, Feb. 19. The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the MSRC Reading Room on the 1st floor of Founders Library, 550 Howard Place, NW, Washington, D.C.
During the edit-a-thon, faculty, graduate students, and others will be introduced to the skills needed to improve Wikipedia entries on African American and African Diasporic history and culture. They will also be shown how to create new entries using the MSRC’s unique collection of Africana documents, artifacts, archives and online resources. The day will feature editorial training, independent and group research and writing time, along with a “behind-the-scenes” look at some of the MSRC’s most interesting treasures.
The Rewriting Wikipedia Project has called attention to systemic biases and omissions in the free online encyclopedia’s articles on Black history. MSRC director Howard Dodson claims that the MSRC edit-a-thon, along with a similar event being held earlier in February at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will help “both to increase the numbers of Black-related entries in Wikipedia and improve the quality of current entries found there.”
“Howard University is the ideal place to hold an edit-a-thon on this broad and underserved subject area,” Dodson added. “Howard has pioneered in the development of scholarship on the global Black experience, with hundreds of scholars and graduate students focusing on Africana-related themes.”
The list of articles that will be reviewed during the event can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_African_diaspora/to_do. Participants are encouraged to bring any papers or articles that they have written on relevant aspects of the Black experience, as their text, reference lists and/or bibliographies may be helpful in creating new entries or establishing the verifiability of Wikipedia entries.
Members of the University and public communities are invited to participate, but all must register in advance, as space is limited. Participants must bring their own laptops or tablets; Internet access will be available. Coffee and lunch will be provided courtesy of Wikimedia DC.
To register and for more information, visit the MSRC’s website or call 202-806-7237. Follow and “tweet” about the event at #HULibrarySystem.
