On Saturday, March 5 from 10am – 3pm, Jennifer Krivickas, Head of the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP), and Kim Burleigh, professor in the School of Art, are teaming up with other DAAP colleagues to host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon,  a “campaign to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia, and to encourage female editorship.” #artandfeminism

Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10% of its contributors identify as female. While the reasons for the gender gap are up for debate, the practical effect of this disparity is not. Content is skewed by the lack of female participation. This represents an alarming absence in an increasingly important repository of shared knowledge.

Started in 2014, Art+Feminism invites people of all gender identities and expressions, particularly transgender, cisgender, and gender nonconforming women, to address this absence by organizing in-person, at our communal updating event of Wikipedia’s entries on art and feminism.

Over the weekend of International Women’s Day, March 6-8, 2015, approximately 1500 participants convened in 75 locations in 17 countries, on 4 continents, to edit Wikipedia articles on women and the arts – and this year’s events promise to be even larger.