Kelly Doyle has been hired as Wikipedian-in-Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Libraries. She will be charged with increasing the number of entries in the online encyclopedia on people from West Virginia, with a particular focus on boosting the number of Wikipedia articles on women. According to Wikipedia, nearly 90 percent of the site’s volunteer editors are men.
The first Wikipedian-in-Residence was hired by the British Museum in 2010. By 2014, there were 31 Wikipedians-in-Residence at institutions around the world. The post at West Virginia University is supported by a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.
In her role at WVU Libraries, Doyle will facilitate the research and writing of articles about West Virginia women who have excelled in their fields – whether that be science, healthcare, business, or entertainment – but who have not yet garnered the public attention they deserve. She will be responsible for organizing volunteer writers, training them to write and edit for Wikipedia, and identifying subjects for the articles.
Doyle has been serving as an instructor in the English department at West Virginia University. Before coming to the university, she was a research assistant at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Doyle is a graduate of the University of Delaware, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree in English literature from the College of Charleston and The Citadel Graduate College.