Could you describe your project at the Museum?
I'm the Wikimedian in Residence – our project is co-funded between the Museum and the Wikimedia Foundation to better incorporate the Museum's work with Wikipedia (including our research and image collections).
What does your work involve?
Most of my time has been looking through the scholarly articles in the Records of the Auckland Museum, looking for articles on Wikipedia that would benefit from the Museum's research, and then adding in this content. This meant flexing my abilities as an editor – I had never edited articles on historical events or plants and insects before!
Your work in numbers: how many articles have you published so far? How many people have viewed them?
About 20 completely new articles, but I mostly focus on improving pre-existing articles. As of mid-May, I've edited 350 articles and added 850 citations to Wikipedia (mostly from the Records). Collectively, these articles have been viewed more than 500,000 times since I made my additions.
In March 2021 alone, this glass wine bottle from the Museum's collection was viewed 51,165 times on Wikipedia.
Auckland Museum, 1997.80.28. More information ›