for a virtual edit-a-thon to potential participants who were likely either unfamiliar with Wikipedia editing or accustomed to in-person editing events. Fortunately, since NNLM is an outreach-focused organization, various channels for project promotion already existed and creation of the #CiteNLM hashtag allowed participants to ‘gather’ on social media, both synchronously and asynchronously, to follow the work of their fellow editors across the country.
Ahead of the one-day edit-a-thon, Dr. James Heilman presented a well-attended customized training on behalf of the WWG which subsequently formed the basis for all future #CiteNLM trainings. Although the inaugural #CiteNLM event lasted only one day, it ran for twelve hours to give participants across the country ample time to join. WWG members took two-hour shifts staffing a virtual meeting room that participants could visit at any time to edit, ask questions, and connect with fellow participants and campaign organizers.
To evaluate the first campaign, the WWG gathered quantitative data from the Event Dashboard (NNLM Edit-a-thon, 2018), from Wikipedia itself, and from NNLM social media accounts. At least thirty-two editors edited at least 111 articles. Notably, Dashboard statistics likely underestimated true participation because the importance of Dashboard registration was not heavily emphasized during training and promotion for the first event. Participants came predominantly from the library community, which reflected the audiences reached most effectively by existing NNLM communication channels. Although overall engagement was lower than the WWG had hoped given the number of attendees at the training session, and it became evident that quantitatively measuring the impact of edit-a-thons can be complicated, this campaign proved that #CiteNLM could be a creative and successful way to engage member organizations and individuals.
Ready to test an improved campaign structure and grow #CiteNLM, the WWG soon began planning the Fall 2018 campaign focused on women’s health. The broader topic of the second campaign raised a new question: with so many women’s health-related topics, how should an editor choose an in-scope article to edit? A simple way is to focus on articles that, according to Wikipedia’s quality scale, rank lower:
