Increase Information Literacy: Host a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, #Public/K-12 List, All Members

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Liz Waltman, Outreach, Education, and Communications Coordinator, NNLM SEA

April Wright, All of Us Community Engagement Coordinator, NNLM SEA

 

NNLM’s mission “to improve the public’s access to information to facilitate making informed decisions about their health” relies on building the skills of consumers and librarians in finding, reading, understanding, and using authoritative health information.

Information literacy, and more precisely related to NNLM’s mission, health information literacy, is a practice. As with any skill, information literacy must be learned, practiced, refined, and used for school assignments, looking critically at the news, and evaluating websites. In this regard, Wikipedia edit-a-thons are excellent tools for teaching and learning information literacy skills – they require that participants assess existing information, decide where changes need to be made, and add citations to relevant and authoritative sources.

This fall, join NNLM in our ongoing #citeNLM campaign by hosting a Wikipedia edit-a-thon at your organization. By hosting an event you will be joining a network of librarians, health professionals, and students from around the country working to improve the quality of mental health articles on Wikipedia using trusted National Library of Medicine resources. To get you started, we have created a Guide for Organizers that will walk you through the steps of hosting your own edit-a-thon. In this toolkit you will find an overview of the #citeNLM project, a comprehensive planning checklist, sample marketing materials, and a guide to share with your participants. We also invite you to attend our training session on Thursday, October 17 where you will have the opportunity to ask questions, learn more information, and connect with the #citeNLM community.

No matter if you host your own event or join us for our virtual edit-a-thon on November 20, we look forward to working with you to improve mental health information on Wikipedia! Check out nnlm.gov/wiki to learn more about the project and make sure to follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #citeNLM to ask questions, post photos, and share your Wikipedia experience.