In December 2015 Daniel Heath Justice (author of “Why Indigenous Literature Matters") began a Twitter campaign to share the names of Indigenous writers. The reason for his efforts was to “...push back against the frequent assumptions that our literary history is any less complex, robust, or diverse than that of other peoples.”[1]
So why a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon?
Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of open community generated knowledge. The community driven nature of Wikipedia is meant to support Wikipedia’s goal of providing “…every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”[2] However, well documented systematic bias including, information gaps, exclusions, diversity of articles and editors, and assumptions about neutrality and notability greatly impacts the information that can be found in an information source with millions of views per day.
Erin Fields MLIS,
BEd, BA
SLAIS Liaison Librarian, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice Librarian, Flexible Learning Coordinator
Humanities and Social Sciences Department - Koerner Library | UBC Library
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus
1958 Main Mall | Vancouver
British Columbia | V6T 1Z2 Canada
Phone 604 822 0977
erin.fields@ubc.ca | @Emefie
http://www.library.ubc.ca | http://directory.library.ubc.ca/people/view/798