Scotland’s Suffragettes
In recognition of the centennial celebration of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which ensured the right to vote for women who were over thirty and met minimum property qualifications, the resident facilitated three Wikipedia editing events for the university’s Festival of Creative Learning, International Women’s Day, and Processions 2018. Participants researched, published, and illustrated new Wikipedia articles about Scotland’s suffragettes. These newly published open educational resources are an act of solidarity and celebration so that the stories of these extraordinary women’s contributions to women’s suffrage will be read, added to, and remembered.
In total, staff and student volunteer editors surfaced 34 new biography articles on Wikipedia about Scotland’s suffragettes and improved 220 more articles so that people could discover all about the important contributions these women made in the fight for women’s suffrage, individually and collectively. Images of these women help make their stories more impactful, more real, and more human. Editors identified images and contacted libraries, archives, and museums to ask if they would consider sharing these images openly as a gift to the cultural commons. Many were only too happy to help illustrate these new pages, and, by extension, help bring these stories to a modern audience through the creation of a new interactive timeline of women’s suffrage in Scotland.
An Interactive Timeline of Women’s Suffrage
A hybrid exhibition, showcasing both digital and physical artifacts, was created by the residency in collaboration with the Library and University Collections team in November 2018. The exhibition unveiled a bespoke Histropedia digital timeline of women’s suffrage in Scotland (Vote 100—Histropedia Timelines, 2018) allowing the newly created Wikipedia pages on Scotland’s suffragettes to be explored collectively via an interactive website, accessible online and on a smart table in the library foyer.
The physical artifacts illustrated how some of the University of Edinburgh’s first female graduates advocated for equal
