Earlier this year at the ‘Reform and Revolt’ Open WiGS Conference in Oxford, postgraduate delegates focused on making women visible on the digital map during the PG workshop. In a session convened by Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Oxford, Dr Martin Poulter, Wiggies learned how to upload content to Wikipedia and how to contribute to items on female figures who have been overlooked or underrepresented. As a quick recap, and for those who could not attend the session, here is an overview of the strategies we discussed in our session, curtesy of Dr Martin Poulter:
Wikipedia
The most popular informational site on the internet
Wikipedia articles get very high traffic, but it is only a starting point for research. Hence it is one of the main drivers of traffic to scholarly sites. By improving articles, we can raise awareness of a topic or event, and raise interest in specific books or papers.
Almost anything that gets substantial coverage in multiple published sources can have a Wikipedia article, but the exact requirements differ between language versions
Women In Red
A community finding notable women missing from Wikipedia and creating articles for them
These include women from any era of history or presently living. Browse the women by nationality, by era, by occupation or by what they were famous for.
More information: search WP:WOMRED on Wikipedia
Wikisource
A library of freely reusable texts, normally published texts that are out of copyright
These include books, poems, correspondence, scientific papers, laws and treaties. A sister site of Wikipedia, Wikisource is multilingual and uses the same editing interface.
Unlike other text archives, Wikisource works as a web. Each mentions of an author can link to that author’s profile. Mentions or quotations of a literary work can link to the full text of that work. Author profiles link to texts by, and texts about, that author.
Users can submit their original translations of published texts.
More information: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Contents , de.wikisource.org/wiki/Hilfe
Wikimedia Commons
A huge archive of 40 million freely-reusable digital media, all with an educational purpose
The files include photographs, artworks, maps, manuscripts, scanned books, and audio clips. Files can have rich descriptions, in multiple languages.
Some files come from individual users, but many are shared from partner institutions around the world, including the British Library, the Bodleian, the Bundesarchiv, and Deutsche Fotothek.
The site is based in the US and content marked “Public Domain” is freely reusable under US law. Copyright law differs somewhat between countries, so check the legal information underneath each file.
More information: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Welcome
Women in German Studies 