Wikipedia:Meetup/Corning/Southern Tier history 2014

The Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass hosted an edit-a-thon on Friday, December 5, 2014 focused on introducing local GLAM professionals to Wikipedia and editing articles related to Southern Tier history and culture.

Participants in this edit-a-thon learned about Wikipedia, the GLAM-Wiki initiative, and how their organizations can get involved in Wikipedia. They also had a chance to practice their editing skills and create and/or expand local and regional history articles

When and where

When: December 5, 2014, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST
Where: The Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass (website), 5 Museum Way, Corning, NY 14830
Cost: Free
Participants: No Wikipedia editing experience necessary; as needed throughout the event, tutoring information will be provided.
What to Bring: Attendees should bring their own laptops and power cords, if possible. Please create a Wikipedia account before the event.‎

Agenda

9:00 AM - Arrival and refreshments
9:10 AM - Welcome
9:15 AM - GLAMs + Wikipedia: Why we should be involved and an introduction to Wikipedia
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- Conflict of interest, advice for editors who may have a conflict of interest, and an example of a conflict of interest statement
- Anatomy of a Wikipedia page (article, edit, view history, talk) - e.g. Dale Chihuly
10:30 AM - Editing time
11:45 PM - Wrap-up and post-edit-a-thon survey

Goals

The Southern Tier history 2014 edit-a-thon will offer a selection of prepared projects for attendees to work on:

Build Wikipedia editing skills through tutorials and basic edits.
Create and/or expand articles pertaining to local and regional history.

If you have something else you'd like to work on you are welcome to do so!

Resources

Web access

Participants can connect to the "CMoG Guest" network while on the museum campus. Please bring your own laptop, if possible. A limited number of laptops and desktop computers will be available.

Library catalog

You can use the following online catalogs to find out what books, journals, videos, articles, and other materials are in the Rakow Library collection.

The Rakow Library Catalog - Search for books, journal titles, videos, sound recordings, manuscripts, archives, and other materials.
Glass Article Index - Search this index for article citations from periodicals in our collection.

The Rakow Library also has a large number of bibliographies on different topics related to glass and local history. Ask the reference librarian at the desk if there is a bibliography on the topic you are writing about.

Free databases

Archive.org - A huge array of digital texts, from archived webpages to digitized books, periodicals, videos and other media.
Cities of New York State, Celia M. Hastings Local History Room, a service of the Patchogue-Medford Public Library. Not a database, per se, but looks like a useful site for NY state history resources.
Chronicling America - Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922.
DPLA - A portal to 8,417,033 items from libraries, archives, and museums.
HathiTrust Digital Library - A collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world and contributed by partner institutions.
New York Heritage - A research portal with access to more than 170 distinct digital collections, totaling hundreds of thousands of items.
Old Fulton New York Post Cards - Search over 28,300,000 historical newspaper pages from the USA & Canada.

Paid databases

The following Rakow Research Library subscription databases will be available to onsite participants:

NOVEL NY also provides access to:

For a full list of databases available through the Rakow Research Library and NOVEL NY, visit this page.

Books online

Clayton, W. W. (1879). History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. Philadelphia: Lewis, Peck & co.
Martin, John H., ed. (1977). The Corning flood: museum under water. Corning, N.Y.: Corning Museum of Glass.
Hakes, Harlo; Aldrich, Lewis Cass (1896). Landmarks of Steuben County, New York. Syracuse, N.Y.: D. Mason & Co.
Holmes, Clay W. (1912). The Elmira Prison Camp; a history of the military prison at Elmira, N.Y. New York: G. P. Putnam's sons.
McMaster, Guy Humphrey (1853). History of the Settlement of Steuben County, N.Y. Bath, NY: R. S. Underhill & Co.
Mulford, Uri (1922). Pioneer days and later times in Corning and vicinity, 1789-1920. Corning, N.Y.: Uri Mulford.
Sexton, John L. (1885). An outline history of Tioga and Bradford counties in Pennsylvania, Chemung, Steuben, Tioga, Tompkins and Schuyler in New York : by townships, villages, boro's and cities. Elmira, N.Y.: Gazette Co.
Towner, Ausburn (1907). A brief history of Chemung county, New York. New York: A. S. Barnes & company.
Towner, Ausburn (1892). Our county and its people: a history of the valley and county of Chemung, from the closing years of the eighteenth century. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co.
The Crooked Lake Review - a local history magazine for the Conhocton, Canisteo, Tioga, Chemung and Genesee river valleys, and for the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario regions of New York State.

Archival and manuscript collections

The below links lead to catalog records with more information on each collection. Please ask a Rakow Library staff member if you are interested in using one of the collections.

Basics on editing Wikipedia

If you have a question about editing, feel free to ask one of the CMoG Wikipedia editors for help! The Teahouse is also a great place to ask for help from expert editors.

Editing tips

Preview your changes before you save them.
Write a brief edit summary noting your changes.
Don’t forget to use the help bar at the top of the edit box.
Sign your posts on talk pages by adding four tildes.

Useful links

Help:Cheatsheet, quick guide to Wiki markup
VisualEditor, edit Wikipedia without learning markup
Beginner's guide to Wikipedia, a step-by-step guide that brings together some of the best resources to help you get started in Wikipedia.
Editing - The Basics has .pdf handouts and videos
Wikipedia Training, includes a one-hour training for newcomers, and more extensive pages for teachers and Wikipedia Ambassadors
Wikipedia Tutorial is a hands-on approach that walks you through various aspects of Wikipedia editing
The Wikipedia Adventure is a 7-mission interactive guided tour which introduces new editors to basic editing, social, and policy skills.
Writing your first article (the Article Wizard is a great tool)

Attendees

Please indicate your intention to attend by editing the appropriate section below.

Will attend

extabulis (talk)
Incognijo (talk)
Refractile (talk)
Ladylilias (talk)
STNYtavr {talk}
MarktheMammoth (talk)
Imrrc (talk)imrrc
Groovylegumes (talk)
W.rose.v (talk)
MamaJamba (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe attending

Regrets

Will attend remotely

Users who are unable to attend in person but are interested in Southern Tier history are welcome to edit articles remotely.

Please notify me of the next Corning meetup

Please add yourself to the Corning Wikipedians list to be informed of future Corning-area meetups.

Post edit-a-thon report

At the end of the edit-a-thon, participants were asked to complete a brief survey about the event. The results of the survey and data collected at the event are summarized below.

Number of participants: 9
Selected articles edited: Corning (city), New York, Amory Houghton, Steuben Glass Works, Thomas S. Buechner
Images on Wikimedia Commons: File:Southern Tier 2014 attendees.jpg

Six attendees completed the post-survey report. Out of those six, three created their account for the event and four edited Wikipedia for the first time. Participants worked on The Wikipedia Adventure (5), created their user pages (5), expanded existing pages (3), and added citations to pages (2). They described themselves as librarians, digital communications specialists, and educators. Participants noted they were likely to continue editing Wikipedia and would attend future local edit-a-thons. They preferred the half-day event to a full-day event, and were more likely to come to a weekday edit-a-thon as opposed to a weekend edit-a-thon.