Education/News/February 2019/Wikimedia User Group Nigeria in Collaboration with AfroCrowd Celebrate Black Month History with a 2Day Editathon

Wikimedia User Group Nigeria in Collaboration with AfroCrowd Celebrate Black Month History with a 2Day Editathon

Author: Olaniyan Olushola

Summary: The event was originated by AfroCrowd, User Group from United State of America in partnership with Oregon State University, US , Wikimedia User Group Nigeria and Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria. It was organised to celebrate the achievement of African- Americans. The event took the form of contribution to Wikipedia by all the participating partners.

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  Some participants pose for photograph-Day One
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  Group photograph at the end of Date Two
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  Dishing information to some session of the participants
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  Participant adding citation to a Wikipedia article
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  Teaching participants on how to add citation to articles
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  One of the resource person at the event registering participants for the event
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  Some section of the participants at the event
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  Curious participants at the event

The Black History Month also known as African-American History Month in the U.S., is an annual observance in Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated annually in the United States and Canada in February, as well as in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Republic of Ireland in October.

It was an electrifying moment with a massive turnout in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria, for the celebration of the first-ever Black History Month in Sub Sahara Africa where memers of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA)Ogun State Chapter participated in Wikipedia training and Edithathon in the marking the event. The event focused on selected biographies of Nigerians which are of interest to the participants. Contribution was made on the selected biographies by adding citations to the articles for the purpose of improving them. It was an amazing experience for the group of Librarians on how Wikipedia works.

The event was staged asynchronously in the United State of America (USA) by Oregon State University and AfroCrowd while Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation and the Federal University of Agriculture in Abeokuta completed the partnership in Nigeria.

At the end of the events 5 articles were created, 30 articles edited, 36 editors participated, 6 thousand words added and 142 articles views.

One of the highlights of the event is an open request by the University Librarian of FUNAAB in the person of Dr. Onifade, that partnership relationship between Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation and FUNAAB should be sealed as a way of crystallising the obvious benefits from the event.

A look at the metric of the event will tell a lot about the achievement of the event.

Social Media channels or hashtags:

@WikimediaNG @AfroCROWD Image may contain: Black history month in Ng 17.jpg