Wikipedia workshops at British Library

In September the British Library are running two free Wikipedia workshops aimed at researchers - these sessions are open to all (details are also at http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/workshop/workshops.html#wiki

Join Andrew Gray, the British Library's Wikipedian in Residence to find out how to engage with, and contribute to, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia for Researchers
Friday 7th September, 12:00-13:00, British Library Conference Centre, Chaucer Room

This 1 hour bite-size talk will provide an introduction to Wikipedia and its community. Andrew will introduce ways Wikipedia can be used by researchers, as well as discussing research done using Wikipedia as a subject.

Introduction to Wikipedia
Monday 24th September, 14:00-16:00, British Library Conference Centre, Chaucer Room

This 2 hour workshop will involve a short general introduction to the Wikipedia projects and a discussion of how they are created and developed, followed by a more in-depth practical session involving learning the basics of editing and engaging with other contributors.

Please bring a laptop; there is wireless internet access, but computers are not provided.

Places are free but limited, so please book your place soon to avoid disappointment by emailing claire.packham@bl.uk, specifying which of the sessions you wish to attend.

Given the uneven coverage of Wikipedia with regard to the developing world (despite some excellent projects working to address this) we would encourage Commonwealth scholars who are able and interested to attend.

Wikipedian in Residence for WikiAfrica

WikiAfrica is looking for a Wikipedian-in-residence hosted at the Africa Center in Cape Town. See the G doc at http://bit.ly/tWZ9BR to apply.

The Africa Centre is a Pan-African cultural and arts social innovator basded in Cape Town, South Africa. One of its projects is WikiAfrica, run in collaboration with lettera27. The aim of WikiAfrica is to redress the critical imbalance of factual information about historic and contemporary Africa on the Internet’s most utilised information resource, Wikipedia. Its goal is to Africanise Wikipedia by generating and expanding 30,000 articles by the end of 2012. For more information on the project, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica



With the growth in reliance on the web generally and the high prominence given to results from Wikipedia, for example in google searches, it is important to reflect on issues about coverage, depth, cultural bias, selectivity, and stereotypes. It is pleasing to see African initiatives to redress the imbalance in coverage, though there is also a continuing need to assess how we in the North do or do not contribute material about Africa, not only on Wikipedia but on the web more generally.

Electronic Journals on Africa

An initiative arising from the 2008 Paris-Nanterres meeting of the European Librarians on African Studies (ELIAS) is a Wikipedia listing of African Studies journals available online.

The initial list was compiled from lists held by four institutions: Uppsala, Leiden, Frankfurt and ASAUK, creating a comprehensive list of more than one thousand African studies journals.

Locating this list within the digital encyclopedia Wikipedia has two advantages:
-the list of African Studies Journals is now available for a wide audience
-the list can be expanded and improved by anybody with knowledge about e-journals on Africa.

The list can be accessed via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_studies_journals

This is not a definitive list: it is work "under construction". The list will be expanded (ISBN etc) and updated in the future. It would be nice if all African Studies Journals would get their "own" page in Wikipedia, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aequatoria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Affairs