Let Them Eat Wiki-Cake: Editing Wikipedia in Watson Library

Richard Knipel (a.k.a. Pharos), The Met's first ever Wikimedian-in-Residence, cutting into a "Wiki-cake" at our recent edit-a-thon. Photo by the author

Have you heard that The Met recently released more than 375,000 images of public-domain artworks from our collection, and that they can all be used, shared, and remixed without restriction? Well it's true, and to help raise awareness about this open-access initiative, Watson Library teamed up with the Digital and Education Departments (with the help of Richard Knipel, The Met's first ever Wikimedian-in-Residence) to host an edit-a-thon. It was an opportunity to bring art lovers together to help enrich one of the world's most popular websites—Wikipedia—with images from one of the world's most popular museums—The Met.

This isn't Watson's first collaboration with Wikipedia (read about a successful project we've been working on since 2013), but it was our first opportunity to engage the public to help enrich Wikipedia by adding some of The Met's open-access images. Below is a picture of me (a.k.a. WilliamDigiCol) presenting on some of the work I have done with Wikipedia.

William Blueher giving a short talk, "If You've Got It, Flaunt It: Enhancing Discoverability through Wikipedia, A Case Study." Photo by Neal Stimler

Also in attendance were seasoned Wikipedians like David Goodman (a.k.a. DGG), seen below. He spent most of his day adding references to existing articles.

Photo by the author

Also in attendance were newer editors like Alicia Noel (a.k.a. Unapersoncuriosa) shown below. She was interested in uploading Met images onto Wikipedia.

Photo by the author

There were several people from the local Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC community in attendance who were available to help people who were new to editing Wikipedia articles. Below is longtime Wikipedian Lane Rasberry (a.k.a. Bluerasberry) on the left, working with another editor.

Photo by the author

The edit-a-thon was a great success (see a list of some of the participants), and it was fantastic getting to host so many eager Wikipedia editors in Watson Library.