2019:Diversity/Northeastern University's "Women Writers in Review" and the case for devloping a Wikidata model depicting Cultures of Reception
 | This is an Accepted submission for the Diversity space at Wikimania 2019. |
Title
Northeastern University's "Women Writers in Review" and the case for devloping a Wikidata model depicting Cultures of Reception
Description
In my role as Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University Library's Digital Scholarship Group, I focus on writing Wikipedia biographies about pre-20th-century women writers and articles about their works, broadly construed. This is supported by scholars in the Women Writers Project as well as reference librarians. As a remote community member of the team, I have access to library resources to support my efforts. A secondary focus area is championing the Cultures of Reception of pre-20th-century works by women writers associated with the university's "Women Writers in Review" initiative, which supports research into the transatlantic reception and readership of early texts by women. Reception history rubrics exist, and using structured data to understand Cultures of Reception allows for analysis, identification, and depiction of gender bias. But Wikidata lacks a model for it, and it's unclear how easy it would be to transform the API into Wikidata. The session will discuss approaches to this Case Study, and the value of creating a model in Wikidata so that other academics can contribute their unique data sets, and researchers can study the findings.
Links: https://wwp.northeastern.edu/review/about
Relationship to the theme
This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:
4. Quality education
5. Gender equality
10. Reduced inequalities
16. Peace, justice and strong institutions
17. Partnership for the goals
Session outcomes
At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
Attendees will:
- Understand systemic bias issues associated with pre-20th-century women writers and their works
- Learn about Cultures of Reception, reception history rubrics, and gender bias associated with literary criticism
- Appreciate how women writers and their works have contributed to history
- Understand the feminist aspect of empowering women through providing information and making women visible
- Be inspired to research women writers and add them to Wikimedia projects, e.g. Wikipedia, Wikidata, WikiCommons
- Share ideas about how to develop a model on Wikidata to depict Cultures of Reception
- Connect with experienced and new Wikimedians as well as academics and researchers working in this field
Session leader(s)
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
- Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, Northeastern University[1]
- Founder, WikiProject Women Writers[2]
- Co-founder, WikiProject Women in Red[3]
Usernames
Affiliation/country
- Wikimedia District of Columbia
- WikiWomen's User Group
- WikiProject Women Writers
E-mail contact
rosiestep.wiki@gmail.com
Session type
Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:
- Workshop to identify and try to solve problem
- Lecture
Length of session
20 minutes
Supporting work
Optional:
- https://dsg.neu.edu/welcome-wikipedia-visiting-scholar/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rosiestep/WVS_Northeastern_University
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019_LD4_-_Women_Writers_in_Review.pdf
Requirements
The session will work best with these conditions:
- Room:
a small classroom or round-table seating; with a projector + screen; plus a podium would be helpful
- Audience:
approximately 30 people
- Recording:
Yes, recording allowed