Grants:Project/Rapid/SallyBrownErinBrockCarlson(Art+Feminism)Amplifying Appalachia Edit-a-thon 2022 @WVU/Report

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Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

As outlined in our original proposal, our goals revolved mainly around recruiting new editors, improving content on under-represented Appalachian creators, and to continuing to build infrastructure for the event. We did meet those general goals, we did not have as widespread of participation in terms of sheer numbers as our first event in 2021; however, we engaged a different depth of engagement this year. That is, the folks who did participate participated more. In addition to the dashboard, please see these statistics:

Words per editor rate

2021: 260
2022: 449

References added per editor

2021: 3.1
2022: 4.4

Commons uploads per editor

2021: 0.04
2022: 0.19

Articles edited per editor

2021: 0.63
2022: 2.1

So, while we had fewer participants, they contributed more (proportionally) throughout the edit-a-thon, which we are counting as a win. We also developed two important documents/resources that will aid us in future years: a libguide that serves as a hub for our event, as well as an extra credit packet that could be distributed directly to students.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	1 event
50 participants	37 participants	We had fewer than expected because fewer faculty participated.
25 new editors	30 new editors!
40 articles created or improved	77 articles edited, 1 article created!

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Our documentation was really strong this year; the addition of the libguide and the revamping of existing resources resulted in far fewer issues the week of the edit-a-thon. (In fact, we set up a help form through Google Forms to streamline requests and we received zero this year!) The live intro session was also really useful this year, according to survey participants. All of this, we believe, resulted in the vast depth of engagement. For 37 editors to contribute over 16,000 words is impressive, and that means that each editor spent more time on the site. (See stats above for more on this.)

What did not work so well?

As noted above, we had significantly fewer participants (94 last year, 37 this year) for the edit-a-thon, which was a disappointment to us. Also as noted above, we did have deep engagement with the folks who did edit, and that's really amazing, but we are still hoping that next year we can recover. After all, one of our goals is to expand our participant base over time, and so we want to see those numbers grow. Our plan is to begin recruiting faculty participants earlier in the fall, rather than waiting until December when folks are planning their spring classes; additionally, we are going to reach out to student groups and see if we can establish connections that way.

What would you do differently next time?

We have two big goals for next year: First, we are going to have an in-person event. According to our post-event survey responses, that is 1) a common desire from participants, to be able to edit with other folks in the same space and 2) was cited as a way to encourage them to keep editing and be more engaged. Second, we feel that we have developed enough materials and infrastructure that we can invite other institutions to participate in our campaign. Of course, Appalachia is a vast region, and we know a lot of folks at other schools. That, combined with the fewer faculty at WVU that we could recruit this year, has led us to plan to invite other institutions to participate, so that we can expand the work in a meaningful and sustainable way.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

We spent a total of $116.55 for post-event survey participant gift cards. We got some really important data from that, including evidence that our materials from this year were more effective, and that in-person events are desired.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

We do. We would like to request to keep the remaining funds ($401.45) to support an in-person event next year.

We plan on spending the money next year to support an in-person event (promotional materials and food), and potentially continue with the survey incentives.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Thank you so much for the support--as a committee, we've learned so much over the last two years and we're excited to take this cross-institutional in the future. (We have already met with the digital scholarship librarian at University of Pittsburgh!)