Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/154

Rh through their research and work. They shared that while it was exciting to improve the pages of talented and notable people from underrepresented groups, it was also disappointing to discover that their contributions were previously unrecognized. Finally, the peer coaches learned about the active editing community that creates Wikipedia. “Editing Wikipedia is really great because you get to be a part of something that helps keep the whole world informed. It’s always fun to look at something you edited on the o cial page and think, ‘wow I really did that!’” (E. Martinez-Flores, personal communication, July 28, 2020).

Challenges

The peer coaches felt that there were some challenges both in editing Wikipedia and in planning events. Two peer coaches noted the lack of resources in the Libraries’ collections. “the most challenging part for me has been finding sufficient information about certain people. . . It is hard in the sense that sometimes I feel that the person deserves a wiki page, but it is nearly impossible to find more information about their life or works” (D. Ramos-Candelas, personal communication, July 17, 2020). Two peer coaches felt they struggled with the actual writing of information on Wikipedia pages. One peer coach felt their greatest struggle was summarizing sources into their own words while another felt that because the topics are so sensitive they needed to be particularly careful with their word choice and tone. For events, challenges include a lack of routine during planning, the struggle of carrying over editing skills between events, and the difficulty of keeping the edit-a-thons exciting for both peer coaches and participants.

Recommendations

Finally, the peer coaches have edit-a-thon advice. For student employees, they overwhelmingly suggested that they just dive in and not stress about editing Wikipedia. For librarians, they recommended involving student employees from the beginning. The peer coaches felt that librarians should not be afraid to learn alongside their student employees, but a Wikipedia editing teaching plan should be developed