I’m excited to announce a new opportunity at the University of New Mexico (UNM) for a Wikipedian interested in the following areas: Southwestern, Hispanic or New Mexican culture, health in the high desert, or environmental policy in the Southwest or Latin America.
As of today, the English Wikipedia has just short of 5.6 million articles. As impressive as this is, research shows that coverage is not uniform across subjects. Missing or underdeveloped articles exist in all subjects, including areas regarding indigenous culture, health care for native populations, and the culture of the southwesten United States. Gaining access to the collections at UNM will give a Wikipedian a unique opportunity to help balance content across cultures and languages.
Through the Wikipedia Visiting Scholars program, educational institutions empower Wikipedians who like to edit in particular topic areas by giving them remote access to databases, ebooks, and other research resources. Wikipedians gain access to high-quality materials to write about topics they’re already interested in, and institutions make a contribution to public knowledge in a particular field by broadening the impact of their collections.
This new Visiting Scholar would have remote access to the UNM Libraries’ ebooks, specialized collections, and databases, including Art Full Text, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, JSTOR, PAIS Index, and PRISMA. In addition, the Visiting Scholar would have access to resources through the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections.
Carnegie-classified as a “Highest Research Institution” as well as a Hispanic-population serving institution, the UNM is a public university based in Albuquerque with an enrollment of 32,000 students. As one of five majority-minority states in the country with 60.8% of the population identifying as being part of a minority group, the collections at UNM reflect the diverse makeup of the state.
Examples of topic areas relevant to this opportunity:
- Intersections of science, design, art, and architecture in New Mexico
- Energy, water, and environmental policy in the Southwest and Latin America
- Healing and foodways in the high desert
If you are a Wikipedian interested in gaining remote access to University of New Mexico’s resources for use in improving these topics, fill out the application here. For more information about the Visiting Scholars program in general, or to learn how you can get involved as a sponsor, see the Visiting Scholars section of our website.
