Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon with Washington Medical Librarians Association

Posted by Liz Morris on July 19th, 2023 Posted in: Blog

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We have the exciting opportunity to host a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at the 2023 annual conference of the Washington Medical Librarians Association.

The Washington Medical Librarians Association (WMLA) supports and promotes the work of health sciences library professionals in Washington state. Their 2023 annual conference marks the group’s first time back in person since 2019. The WMLA board reached out to the Region 5 team to support a collaborative learning opportunity focused on rural and/or medically underserved communities.

The Network of the National Library of Medicine offers twice-yearly #CiteNLM Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons every fall and spring. Region 5 team members customized content from the NNLM Organizer’s Guide for the WMLA session, which provides continuing education credit for participants.

If you are interested in continuing education support from Region 5 at any upcoming conferences or learning events, please contact our office for more information!

WMLA Edit-A-Thon Resources

• Create a free Wikipedia user account.
• Log-in to the WMLA 2023 campaign dashboard.
• Review source guidelines: Reliable Sources, Identifying Reliable Sources (medicine) (MEDRS)
• Search for articles to edit: Assign yourself an article or find articles directly in the WMLA 2023 campaign dashboard, or search among articles with known sourcing issues in WikiProject Medicine.
• Edit away! Refer to this six-minute video if you’d like a technical refresher on adding a citation.
• Let us know how we did by filling out our session evaluation.
• 1.5 MLA CE is available for WMLA participants. The code will be shared during the session.

Next Steps

• Keep your editing skills fresh by reviewing resources on Wikipedia Basics and Editing Medical Topics.
• Enroll in the free, asynchronous Wikipedia + Libraries course from NNLM scheduled October 2 – October 27, 2023.
• Join the Fall 2023 #CiteNLM Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on November 8, 2023 from 11 – 1 PST.