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LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 20, 2017) The University of Kentucky Libraries, along with co-sponsors from the School of Information Science, the Department of Gender and Womens Studies, the School of Art and Visual Studies and the student organizations ACM-W (Association of Computing Machinery Women's Chapter) and LISSO (Library and Information Science Student Organization), will host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon today (Monday), March 20. The event, which individuals may drop by for any period of time, will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.at Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center.

This international event is designed to improve coverage of women and the arts onWikipedia and to encourage female editorship. The edit-a-thon will include tutorialsfor the beginner Wikipedian, ongoing editing support, reference materials andrefreshments. People of all gender identities and expressions are invited toparticipate, particularly transgender and cisgender women.

In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10 percent of itscontributors identify as female. A lack of female participation has led to a dearthof content about women and art in Wikipedia, but Art+Feminisms edit-a-thons andother initiatives make an impact on the gender gap through crucial improvements toart- and feminism-related subjects. Since 2014, over 280 Art+Feminism WikipediaEdit-a-thons have taken place across the world, creating and improving an estimated4,600 articles.

This will be the second Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon held at the University ofKentucky. The first was held in March 2015, during which participants created orupdated articles about regional artists including Adele Brandeis, Ann StewartAnderson and Jane Burch Cochran.

This year, the UK Libraries edit-a-thon will continue to add and improve articles aboutfemale artists from Kentucky, many of whom currently have no Wikipedia entry, orwhose current entries are brief stubs. The Little Fine Arts Library will bring specializedworks from their collection to aid researchers at the edit-a-thon, such as referencebooks on women artists, exhibition catalogues, and historic dictionaries of artists andnotable women in Kentucky.

The UK Libraries Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is organized by Abbye Allan,Ida Sell, Karyn Hinkle, Melissa Adler and Kathryn Lybarger. They are excited to bringattention to underrepresented artists from the region and to help make the worldsmost popular online encyclopedia a more inclusive source.

For more information on the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at UK, contact art librarian Karyn Hinkle at karyn.hinkle@uky.edu.

Original post:
UK Libraries to Host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Today ... - UKNow (press release)