GLAM/Newsletter/October 2022/Contents/USA report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue X, October 2022

USA report

Asian American Edit-a-thons and More

Smithsonian in Hawaii

Kelly Doyle and Andrew Lih from the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative worked with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center on a series of content enrichment events focused on the launch of a new book, "We Are Here: 30 Inspiring Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who Shaped the United States." The new anthology focuses on the biographies of 30 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, ranging from well-known actors and personalities to local activists, and was the genesis of a topic list for Wikipedia and Wikidata activities.

Edit-a-thon

The book launch included the first in-person edit-a-thon the Smithsonian has held since 2020, and was in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Bishop Museum.

Doyle and Lih led the edit-a-thon with local community members and GLAM professionals and focused on improving the biographic articles and Wikidata entries related to the 31 individuals in the anthology. The event was a continuation of a previous online edit-a-thon, which focused on notable Asian American Pacific Islander women including those in the We Are Here anthology. The in-person edit-a-thon resulted in 23,000 words added to Wikipedia and the creation of four new articles. More outcomes from the event can be seen in the Twitter thread.

interactive knowledge graph of the people in the We Are Here Anthology

Portrait session

After the edit-a-thon, the Smithsonian held a book launch celebration at the Bishop Museum where Lih and Doyle took portrait photos of individuals for CC0 licensing. Some of the people in the book or notable local people from Honolulu had missing or low-quality Wikimedia Commons photos. The CC0 photos were uploaded to Commons and linked to their respective Wikidata entries and Wikipedia articles. An interactive knowledge graph that highlights the new photos and helps to visualize connections and patterns amongst the people in the anthology can be viewed here.

In the following days, a team of Smithsonian staff also visited the Manoa Heritage Center, Shangri La Museum, and the Hawaii State Art Museum to connect with local cultural and heritage professionals.

Wiki Wiki Shuttle

A trip to Hawaii wouldn't be complete without honoring the bus that started it all. Lih took fresh photos of the Wiki Wiki Shuttle at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. The shuttle bus was the inspiration for Ward Cunningham creating "Wiki Wiki Web" in the 1990s, and eventually led to Wikipedia.

Mānoa Heritage Center
Wiki Wiki Bus
Manoa Heritage Center with Smithsonian staff
Momi Cazimero article improvement

Headshots from Hawaii

Wikidata Day in New York City

Wikimedia NYC

Wikimedia NYC held a meetup, NYC/Wikidata Day at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: Filipino American History Month

San Diego Public Library and San Diego User Group held a meetup, San Diego/October 2022

Wiki Salon

This month's Philadelphia WikiSalon demonstrated Searching Wikidata with SPARQL Queries. You can view the demo video and slides along with other WikiSalon demonstrations on Commons. If you bring an idea for searching Wikidata to the November 12 or December 10 WikiSalons, we will help you to format your SPARQL query.

Wikipedian-in-residence post

Rachel Helps, Wikipedian-in-residence at the Brigham Young University, wrote a blog summarizing a paper studying the influence of wikipedia on scholarly papers, Wikipedia’s Citations Are Influencing Scholars and Publishers, Scholarly Kitchen, November 1, 2022

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