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Wikipedia has long been one of the first online stops for college students when they need a question answered. However, a staggering study completed by Wikipedia shows that less than 10 percent of the websites contributors identify as female.

Such a discrepancy in the gender of Wikipedia authors leaves a significant gap in the amount of information available on female artists and many other female figures in general. On Saturday, March 25, the University of Georgia held an event to combat the issue.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Georgia Museum of Art hosted its own chapter of the ongoing, international Art + Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thons, adding to a long list of cities and institutions who have joined the annual cause held during Womens History Month.

The Art + Feminism events are a worldwide series of gatherings, held in collaboration with Wikipedia, in which people come together to edit Wikipedia articles in order to work towards solving the problematic lack of information available about many females in the art world.

Women get most of their information not from themselves, said Lindsay Reynolds, the art librarian at Lamar Dodd. Its important for women to take ownership of research and information.

The editing portion of the event included a variety of resources for participants who may have needed assistance in editing Wikipedia articles. In fact, no experience was necessary for this event, and though participants were encouraged to set up Wikipedia accounts ahead of time, they could even have registered on the website at the event itself.

The edit-a-thon organizers compiled a list of artists, primarily from the Georgia Museum of Art collection, who either have no articles or articles that are lacking in information, and pulled research from various library databases to provide information for participants to add to the pages. However, participants were also encouraged to bring other ideas of female artists.

Anyone was invited to join in on the event, not just students or women. A main goal of the event was for participants to walk away with a greater understanding of how information is presented on the web.

The overarching goal of the edit-a-thon, according to Reynolds before the event, was not only to get information out about female artists, but also to encourage people to use resources such as the art library and Wikipedia responsibly.

I hope its an entry point to understanding that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and represent yourself and your sisters, and that its not so scary, said Reynolds. Its important to know where that information comes from; so many people use Wikipedia and never think about it.

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Wikipedia edit-a-thon boosts coverage of female figures online - Red and Black