« Explanatory Notes on SF Conventions #1 | Main | Murray Bail Interview »
August 20, 2008
Australian Literature on the WWW
In October and December 2006 I wrote a couple of pieces about the lamentable state of Australian literature entries on Wikipedia. In particular I focussed on the Miles Franklin Award page, noting that, firstly, a number of authors who had won the award did not have Wikipedia pages devoted to them, and, secondly, the award-winning novels were even more poorly represented.
I'm happy to say that this situation has now been rectified, and all winning authors and novels now have entries on Wikipedia. Not all of them are as extensive as I'd like but the framework is there. I should point out, however, that the Wikipedia Miles Franklin Award page does list all the shortlisted works from 1987, and all the longlisted works from 2005, and not all of these books and their authors have been fixed up as yet.
Any help you can provide, by way of additional information, will be greatly appreciated. It's really not that hard once you get into it.
Posted by larrikin at August 20, 2008 08:43 AM
Comments
Hello Perry
Glad to see you've been working on this...I have made my own small contribution with the page for the Vic Premier's prize, but I haven't indexed it very well so it doesn't show up in searches, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Premier%27s_Literary_Award
I notice that you have covers for some pages, but not others. I have most of these books so if you would like me to scan them and email them to you, just ask.
Lisa Hill
Posted by: Lisa Hill at August 20, 2008 06:28 PM
well done Perry. Did they mediate and cross check at all, or does that happen later?
I'm a great believer in Wikipedia and heard Jimmy Wales speak last year. Unlike Goggle they haven't caved into the Chinese with "sensitive" content and their site is therefore unavailable in China, so Jimmy says.
Posted by: Julia at August 20, 2008 08:48 PM