Adding Australian Women in Religion to more Wikimedia projects
As part of Wikimedia Australia’s Partner Projects, the University of Divinity has hosted Linda Pascal as their Wikipedian in Residence to add content to Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource for the Australian Women in Religion project.
The Australian Women in Religion project began in 2019, led by the University of Divinity’s Kerrie Burn, who has run several projects and events on Wikipedia and Wikidata to grow the representation of Australian Women in Religion.
Kerrie has worked closely with Linda, who has worked remotely and has relied upon the University of Divinity’s digitised collections.
These collections mainly focus on Christian denominations, that has informed the subjects and topics chosen as Linda has created new Wikipedia articles.
One of these articles is on Peta Sherlock, an Australian Anglican priest who was formerly Dean of the Anglican Diocese of Bendigo.
She was one of the first women ordained as an Anglican deacon in 1986 then as an Anglican priest in 1992 and the first woman Dean of an Anglican diocese in Australia.
The article has gone through significant changes in the months Linda has worked on it, and has enjoyed contributions from other editors too.
Linda also created an article on Australian Anglican priest Susanna Pain, and an article listing the first women ordained as priests in the Anglican Church of Australia in 1992.
Beyond Wikipedia, Linda's residency has also including adding to and expanding information on Wikidata, which helps make it more accessible to search engines and other large databases.
The project is due to be completed later this year, and we look forward to sharing the full outcomes from the fantastic work being done by Linda and Kerrie with the collections of University of Divinity.