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Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Public Domain Day 2020

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Join us to celebrate Public Domain Day and Wikipedia's 19th Birthday at the Public Domain edit-a-thon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on January 15, 2020!

Mattapan Railroad in Boston in 1924
Comm Ave & Mass Ave in 1924
Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), the first female student and professor at MIT


Join the MIT Libraries for a Public Domain-themed Wikipedia edit-a-thon! January 1st, 2020 is Public Domain Day – the day when works published in 1924 go out of copyright in the United States and enter the public domain, making them available for anyone to reuse and remix. To celebrate, the MIT Libraries annually digitize newly public domain works, and this year have digitized 10 works from 1924 focusing on women in academia. These will join the 100 works from 1923 that we digitized last year. Because they are now out of copyright, we can freely use images and text from these works on Wikipedia and other openly licensed projects.


Join us to explore these digitized works and learn how to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. What did engineering education look like in the 1920s at MIT? (Did you know there was once a food science program here?) Want to explore state of the art scientific instruments from 100 years ago? What about novels and poems from classic authors?

We’ll introduce the works and give you an introduction to editing Wikipedia and ideas for topics to work on, or bring our own topics. No prior Wikipedia experience is required. We will have support from experienced Wikipedia editors and librarians, as well as snacks and pizza. Join us for an afternoon devoted to exploring engineering in the Jazz Age and contributing to the world’s largest reference work.

We will combine this with an event to celebrate Wikipedia's 19th Birthday! Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001. We'll have pizza and cake into the evening to celebrate. Wikipedians old and new are invited to attend.

Please join us for any portion of the event, but do register here or list yourself below so we have an accurate count for snacks.

What: Public Domain Day Edit-a-thon

When: January 15, 2020, 4-6:45pm

Where: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, Barker Library Active Learning Classroom - 10-604. Directions: go to Building 10. From the lobby take the elevators to the 5th floor, Barker Library. Go inside the library past the circulation desk, then go up one more floor (stairs or elevator) to the 6th floor. Go to your left past some bookstacks to find the classroom. map to Building 10


What to bring: bring your laptop. Training and snacks will be provided. Drop in anytime.

Schedule

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  • 4:00p - get settled, sign up for accounts
  • 4:15p - welcome to the MIT Libraries and public domain day, about the MIT public domain books
  • 4:30p - split into editing groups and training
  • 5:00p-5:45p - editing!
  • 5:45-6:45 - Happy birthday Wikipedia! Keep editing, cake

To work on

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10 public domain books digitized in 2020 (available in Internet Archive )

Books Signup Category
Thirtieth anniversary report, sixth catalogue Category:Thirtieth_anniversary_report,_sixth_catalogue
The fourth book of the Class of Eighty-Nine Category:The fourth book of the Class of Eighty-Nine
Class record of '88 Category:Class record of '88, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mary Hunter Austin The land of journeys' ending Category:Land of Journeys' Ending
The food manufacturing industries in New York and its environs; present trends and probable future developments, by Faith M. Williams Category:The food manufacturing industries in New York and its environs
The life and letters of Emily Dickinson, by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi Category:The life and letters of Emily Dickinson
A school chemistry, by O.J. Flecker ChemLibrarian (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply] Category:A school chemistry
My book and heart, by Corra Harris; with illustrations by Frederic F. Gruger Category:My book and heart
Personal hygiene for nurses, adapted also to the use of students of physical education and other health specialists, by John Wymond Miller Bunker and Clair Elsmere Turner Ctanguay (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply] Category:Personal hygiene for nurses
Adapting nutrition work to a community, by Lucy H. Gillett Category:Adapting nutrition work to a community

More books to work on from last year's Public Domain Day edit-a-thon

  • Group: Work on images and add them to Commons
  • How to directions
  • extract images from books, upload them to commons
  • add covers to category pages
  • add metadata and categories
  • Basics of editing articles
  • Add an article for Martha Dickinson Bianchi
  • Editing wikidata items
  • Adding images to articles

What we did

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Participant List

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Register for event at MIT Libraries

To sign up for this event: Log in or create an account.