Miranda Pratt is taking up the mantel of Wikipedian-In-Residence for the Kanas City Public Library.
Pratt’s position within the library is that of an advocate — tasked with increasing engagement and understanding in Kansas City surrounding the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org.
“With this position, I’m kind of creating community awareness that we can all write our history together on Wikipedia,” Pratt said in an interview with KCUR’s Up To Date.
Although the Kansas City Public Library calls this position the “the first Wikipedian-In-Residence appointed by a public library in the United States,” there are other institutions that house similar positions.
The Wikimedian-In-Residence Exchange Network connects Wikipedians from different organizations for professional networking and information-sharing.
“It’s a global network,” Pratt said. “There’s someone who works at the U.N. who’s a Wikipedian-In-Residence and they do very different things than someone who works at the Smithsonian who’s a Wikipedian-In-Residence.”
A graduate of the KC Art Institute, Pratt was introduced to the online encyclopedia through an internship at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, which was centered around writing a Wikpedia article on a person who hadn’t previously been included.
During their research, Pratt found an organization called Art + Feminism whose goal is to “increase gender representation on Wikipedia and close content gaps.” From then on, Pratt focused on underrepresented communities and the best way to get them involved in the editing process.
“Both neutrality and notability [act as barriers] when creating these articles that are not inclusive and representative of the community that exists on this planet,” Pratt says.
Throughout this year, Pratt hopes to hold virtual edit-a-thons, a group event where contributors edit a specific Wikipedia topic, and is excited to gather suggestions from the community.
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Originally Appeared Here