Situated at the intersection of library and information science (LIS), Wikipedia studies, and fandom studies, this book is a digital (auto)ethnography that documents the information behavior of Wikipedia "fan editors"-that is, individuals who edit articles about pop culture media. Given Wikipedia's prominence in LIS and fan studies scholarship, both as one of the world's most heavily used reference sources and as an important archive for fan communities, fan editors are a crucial component of this ecosystem as some of Wikipedia's most active contributors. Through a combination of fieldwork observations, insight from key informants, and the author's own experiences as a Wikipedia editor, this monograph provides a rich articulation of fan editor information behavior and offers a significant contribution to scholarship in a number of fields. Scholars of library and information science, media studies, fandom studies, and popular culture will find this book of particular interest.
Autorentext
Paul A. Thomas is a library specialist at the University of Kansas and a PhD candidate at the Emporia State University School of Library and Information Management. He has been an avid Wikipedia editor since 2007, having created 260 articles, made over 60,000 edits, and promoted over 296 articles to "good" or "featured article" status. From 2017 to 2020, he also served as a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, helping to improve articles on Ancient Roman and Latin literature. He lives in Overland Park, KS.