On Thursday, April 11th, City Tech Library hosted a Wikipedia editathon to celebrate our new LGBTQIA collection and increase representation of this subject area on Wikipedia. With the support of City Tech’s Gender & Sexuality Studies program and the Pride Club, we welcomed guest speaker Anthony Amiewalan, whose books can be found in our library collection. Anthony spoke about his art and gave a short reading from his latest book, Eddie & Alan, which he also donated a copy of to the library.
We were joined by members of Wikimedia NYC for a few hours of editing. Over the course of the afternoon we created 5 new Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items; we made 105 edits to a total of 17 articles; we added 20 references to the encyclopedia; and we contributed almost 6000 words. Using material from City Tech’s online databases and our print LGBTQIA collection, we edited articles about Ma-Nee Chacaby, Samuel Levi Jones, Tsweng Kwong Chi, GenderFail, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, and more. We created wikidata items about Alteronce Gumby and about Anthony Amiewalan and his creative work.
This event was organized by librarians Kel Karpinski and Jen Hoyer with support from Professor Laura Westengard and intern Jaida Clouden of Gender & Sexuality Studies. Participation in this Pride event was made possible due to generous funding from the New York City Council Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual Caucus and the Office of the Mayor, and supported by The LaGuardia and Wagner Archives.
