New Year new #Wikipedia list.
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Random crushes on people in Wikimedia Commons. David Nunes Carvalho was the son of a man who might be the first Jewish photographer in the US. He followed in his dad's footsteps for a time and then became (if you believe the news stories) one of the world's most accomplished handwriting, ink and paper experts, testifying in over 2000 trials including a few you've heard of. His daughter published a biography of him after his death which promoted her father's legacy.
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Will and Harper began its limited theatrical release this week and starts on Netflix on the 27th. I know all about Will Ferrell but was interested in knowing more about Harper Steele (you know, the other star and the entire reason there was even a movie) but there was no Wikipedia article.
Harper Steele is an Emmy-award winning writer who worked at SNL for thirteen years. She seems neat, and now she has a Wikipedia article which I hope others improve on.
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I've been eating at the Wayside Restaurant since before it was 100 years old (over 25 years ago) and you'd think a place this embedded in Vermont history would have had a Wikipedia page but it did not.
Bonus: got to use my own parker house rolls photo in the article.
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I've joined the Twenty Year Society of Wikipedia editors. I've written 418 articles, I've served on the Wikimedia Foundation Board, fixed typos, added citations, added photos of people who should have them, and added a lot of fair use and public domain content there and on Wikimedia Commons.
My favorite things I've done are adding photos of BIPOC librarians, creating the stadium organist and state library association templates, and defending articles about trans folks from pronoun vandalism.
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My friend runs the town's historical society. People regularly give him boxes of crap to deal with. One of the things in one of the boxes was a stock certificate for the Murray Motor Car Company in Boston MA. He'd never heard of it, couldn't find anything online. I'd never heard of it, but, you know me....
A few hours later and a LOT of scraping through Newspapers.com and the Internet Archive's old books and car magazines, presto! The cybertrucks of their day!
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I should not write more Wikipedia pages about terrible white men but sometimes I can't help myself. Someone should tell people that they were here and they were... kind of awful. Huge props to Trove (Australia) which has a "cite this source on Wikipedia" which helped a great deal.
Look at this guy's face! Look at this shit he was talking WHILE AT WORK AS CONSUL TO AUSTRALIA. I didn't even get into all the looting.
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Wallace Kirkland was a social worker turned award-winning Life Magazine photographer. If you're in the US, he's taken some photos you've definitely seen. I saw a picture of him... taking a picture, by famous Australian photographer Max Dupain and went to Wikipedia to learn more and... nothing! I was fortunate that there were a number of terrific archives which had done the work so that I could learn more about him, and now the world can too.
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Robert Coover died recently. His obits mention his wife, an accomplished textile artist who does a weird and cool kind of needlepoint. Her life is really interesting and I decided to write a bit of it up for Wikipedia.
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Herbert Foerstel was a science librarian at the University of MD. The FBI came to his library on a fishing expedition looking for patron records of people with "Eastern European or Russian-sounding names." He was not ok with this. Through FOIA requests, he was able to learn about the FBI's "Library Awareness Program" which he eventually wrote a book about, along with many other books about patron privacy and book banning in the US. This was a fun article to write.
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Found an image of Dorothy Follis in the Library of Congress' Flickr uploads. Was wondering who she was. Apparently a big deal of a singer and actress (and good at getting into the papers). Had a twelve-year career, was in a few Broadway shows and sang with the Chicago Grand Opera Company and then toured with her own company. Noted for her beauty and her talent, she got married to a newspaper man and died just over a year later at the age of 31.
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Language Log asked why there was no Wikipedia article about badass bibliographer (you heard me) Julia Emily Johnsen. Well, now there is one.
