Are you curious about Wikipedia? Interested to know what the intersections between the university and Wikipedia are?
Dr. Constance Crompton (U British Columbia Okanagan), 2017 Honorary Resident Wikipedian hosted by the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL; etcl.uvic.ca) and the University of Victoria Libraries (libraries.uvic.ca), will give a talk titled “From Curation to Creation: Wikipedia’s Contribution to Open Knowledge,” on Monday April 3rd from 11am-12pm in room 210 of McPherson Library. Following this, we will host a Wikipedia edit-a-thon from 1pm-3.30pm in rooms A003 and A025 of the McPherson Library, where participants will learn how to edit the global, online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Lunch will be served between Dr. Crompton’s talk and the edit-a-thon, from 12pm-1pm.
This event is free of charge and open to UVic students, staff, faculty, librarians, administrators, and the general public. Edit-a-thon participants are kindly asked to bring a laptop and to register via https://uviceditathon.eventbrite.ca; there is no need to register if you intend to attend Dr. Crompton’s talk only. Participants are welcome to bring their own material to contribute to Wikipedia, or else to draw resources from the UVic Libraries. Please let us know if there is a specific subject matter or artifact from Special Collections and University Archives that you would like to work with so that the archivists may have it on hand for you on the day of.
Abstract
“From Curation to Creation: Wikipedia’s Contribution to Open Knowledge”
Some of the greatest social knowledge creation initiatives, from the Longitude Prize to the Oxford English Dictionary, have been collective efforts. We are, however, separated from those initiatives by an important cultural shift, the move from information scarcity to information abundance. In the age of abundance, the ability to curate information has emerged as a key 21st-century skill. Taking collective information curation as a starting point, this talk reflects on the opportunities for members of cultural and academic organizations to share, and perhaps more importantly, create, new knowledge with and alongside members of Wikipedia’s existing editorial communities.
Bio
Dr. Crompton is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and English in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at U British Columbia Okanagan, where she also directs the Humanities Data Lab. She is also co-director, with Michelle Schwartz, of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada project, and a researcher with the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership. Dr. Crompton serves as the Vice-President English of the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques, Associate Director of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and Research Collaborator with The Yellow Nineties Online, housed at Ryerson University’s Centre for Digital Humanities. Dr. Crompton received a PhD in Communication and Culture from York University. Her research interests include digital humanities, queer history, Victorian visual and popular culture, prosopography, and code as a representative medium, and her work on these topics and others has appeared in a number of edited collections as well as the Victorian Review, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Digital Humanities Quarterly, UBC Law Review, and Digital Studies/Le champ numérique.
Schedule
- 11am-12pm, Dr. Constance Crompton talk, ““From Curation to Creation: Wikipedia’s Contribution to Open Knowledge”; Introduction by Dr. Ray Siemens (McPherson Library, rm. 210)
- 12pm-1pm, Lunch provided (McPherson Library, rm. 210)
- 1pm-3.30pm, Wikipedia overview by Michael Radmacher and edit-a-thon (McPherson Library, rm. A003 & A025)
The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) and UVic Libraries are pleased to host Dr. Crompton as their 2017 Honorary Resident Wikipedian, a role that was previously held by Dr. Christian Vandendorpe from 2014–2016. This initiative is co-sponsored by the ETCL, UVic Libraries, Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Please direct any inquiries to the ETCL via Alyssa Arbuckle (<alyssaa@uvic.ca>), and / or to the UVic Libraries via Lisa Goddard (<lgoddard@uvic.ca>).
Registration (for edit-a-thon only): https://uviceditathon.eventbrite.ca