This post comes to us from SIS Student Jodi Coalter. Jodi is President of the Wayne State Student Chapter of ASIS&T and was the driving force behind the university-wide Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon in celebration of the sesquicentennial.

On March 22nd, the Wayne State University Libraries and the School of Information Sciences hosted a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon. The event focused on removing the promotional materials that made up the bulk of the Wayne State Wikipedia article, as well as creating new pages for schools and departments that didn't have one. Overall, the event made changes to over 10,000 bytes of data, and added 6 new pages to Wikipedia.

As many librarians know, Wikipedia is one of the more popular tools to gather information. Over the past decade, Wikipedia has earned a place in the top 10 most frequented sites on the internet. This makes using Wikipedia in libraries not only useful, but effective; patrons are learning on a platform that they are already familiar with. Teaching information literacy, citation checking, and information assessment becomes easy and useful when using Wikipedia.

Because of this ease of use, and because the Edit-a-Thon was a success, starting in the fall semester, ASIS&T@Wayne will be hosting monthly "Wikipedia Wednesdays". These events will continue to focus on improving the Wayne page, with the hope of branching out into other areas of interest. More importantly, it will be an opportunity for future librarians and students, staff and faculty in general to get together, share ideas, and have fun while contributing to this great resource. We encourage anyone interested in attending or helping to contact ASIS&T@Wayne president, Jodi Coalter (gc3846@wayne.edu).

As always, we encourage everyone to edit Wikipedia whenever they want to improve an article! The Edit-a-Thon libguide is still up and will be edited for use as a general editing guide. Stop by for tips and tricks on how you can contribute to Wikipedia! Remember - "Be Bold"!