Episode 112: “Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet”

Welcome to Season 9!

I am a proud citizen of the CUNYverse and I feel especially fortunate to be here right now. CUNY is in the middle of a three-year, Mellon Foundation-funded project called Cultivating Archives & Institutional Memory. It’s an unprecedented survey of the university’s history that involves collecting, documenting and providing access to CUNY’s rich archives that is already resulting in a valuable resource for historians and the general public.

At the same time, and in collaboration with the archiving project, CUNY has its first Wikimedian-in-Residence thanks to funding from the Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

In this episode, you’ll hear a conversation between three avid champions of Wikipedia and all its offshoots. Ann Matsuuchi, an instructional technology librarian at the LaGuardia Community College Library who has been a guest host on this podcast before, facilities a great discussion with Natalie Milbrodt, University Archivist and co-principal investigator (with Michael Waldman, Interim University Dean of Libraries and Information Resources ) of the Cultivating Archives project, and Wikimedian-in-Residence Richard Knipel. They provide some context that many of us might overlook or take for granted, that is, an overview and appreciation of Wikipedia and its role and evolution over the nearly 25 years of its existence. They focus on CUNY’s active role in facilitating community engagement in documenting history and culture for CUNY citizens, New Yorkers and the world.

If you teach at CUNY, you have the opportunity to work with these professionals in your classes. As you listen, you might develop some ideas, and you are invited to engage with Natalie, Richard and Ann in your classes.

Lastly, thanks to the Cultivating Archives & Institutional Memory project, all past and future episodes of this very podcast are now archived on JSTOR Forum, along with so many of the other items that the team is collecting and preserving. A special thanks to team member Digital Archivist Bridget Day for all her work on this and to all the many contributors to this podcast over the last eight years.

Thank you for listening, and enjoy the conversation. Here are some of the topics discussed in this episode: