By Greta Suiter, Manuscripts Archivist

On September 27, the library hosted a Wikimedia Commons edit-a-thon during which we added images from OHIO yearbooks to the world’s largest media file repository of public domain and freely licensed content. Right now (10/1/2024 at 4:35pm) there are over 109 million files in the Commons which means that in addition to adding images there are also many maintenance and curatorial tasks that volunteers can do to improve coverage and findability.

For the event, we focused primarily on images of buildings and took time leading up to the event to think about how this effort aligns with local mapping projects, historic preservation efforts, and understanding the changing built landscape of the Athens campus. Since we had yearbooks already scanned and knew them to be copyright free, images from yearbooks became our source of inspiration and raw materials.

The Ohio University Yearbooks Collection is part of the University Archives and can be accessed in a few ways – from the University digital collections, from the Internet Archive, and now, on Commons. Each of these websites provide different ways of interacting with the yearbooks. For browsing the pages I prefer to use the Internet Archive thumbnail view (activated by the four squares in the lower right corner) for browsing the yearbooks.

When it comes to cropping images and moving them out of the yearbooks we highly recommend using the CropTool in Commons. This allows one to crop an image out of the yearbook, but still maintain a link to the original source and context of the image.

One of the goals of the event was to build out and add to subcategories in the main category “Buildings of Ohio University.” Each building having its own subcategory. So far there are individual categories for 31 buildings. These include buildings that no longer exist or were not part of the University originally. For example, Haning Hall, which used to be the Post Office in Athens.

In addition to images of buildings we also did some cropping of images of people. We were able to expand categories for Charles J. Ping (President of OHIO from 1975 to 1994) and Irma Voigt (Dean of Women from 1913 to 1949).

Overall, we added 101 images to the Commons from the yearbooks and had 11 editors contribute to the project. These images can then be used in Wikipedia articles, such as this one for Cutler Hall, and in Wikidata items, such as this one for Alden Library. The work on Commons is ongoing and never done, so there’s always something to edit, move, or add to!

To receive notifications of upcoming meetings and events related to edit-a-thons on Wikimedia and other open collaborations with Ohio University Libraries add your name and contact to our interest form and check out the Wikiproject Ohio University Libraries project page.