Still woefully behind…I should be on Thing 18 by now and I’ve only reached Thing 10 :}  Never mind though because Thing 10 is a wonderful Thing.  Thing 10 is Wikimedia!  It’s a bit of an understatement to say that I am a huge fan of all the Wikimedia projects, whether it’s Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikidata, I use them all regularly and together they constitute a vast open educational resource of incomparable value.

I’ve been involved with Wikimedia for a number of years now; most of my involvement has been in the form of participating in and supporting Wikimedia events such as conferences and editathons and I’m also honoured to be a member of the  Board of Wikimedia UK. I’ve never been much of an editor though.  I’m already juggling so many other commitments that I never seem to find time to actually edit Wikipedia or contribute content to any of the other Wikimedia projects.  I had high hopes of submitting some photographs to the Wiki Loves Monuments competition, which is a fabulous initiative to capture pictures of historic monuments and submit them to Wikimedia Commons but alas I missed the deadline. The month went by in a flash before I even had a chance to look through my photographs.

I’m hoping that as of this week I can become more of an active editor though.  As part of the University of Edinburgh’s Samhuinn Editathon I created my very first brand new Wikipedia page about the Scottish women’s education reformer Janet Anne Galloway.  Despite being instrumental in founding Queen Margaret College, which was later incorporated into the University of Glasgow, Janet, and her equally important colleague Jessie Campbell, had no Wikipedia entries.  Janet now has her very own shiny new Wikipedia page and I’m hoping that I can also create one for Jessie and also tidy up the entry for Queen Margaret College which lacks citation and says more about the building that housed the college than the remarkable women who established it.  There is a beautiful stained glass window in Bute Hall commemorating Janet, Jessie and Isabella Elder, the Glasgow philanthropist who supported the college. Alas the best picture I could find of it online is held in the Scran archive which is sadly paywalled and therefore can not be added to the cultural commons.

One last thing I’d like to add, I’ve met and worked with a number of Wikimedians over the years and they are without doubt some the nicest people you could ever wish to meet 🙂

I also won the prize for best Halloween Tumshie 🙂 by Ewan McAndrew