One day of a 73-year-old Wikimedian

Now that the busiest part of exhibiting at this year’s Library Fair has passed and I’ve returned to my normal routine, I’ll record a typical day in my life.

■When I woke up this morning and read the newspaper, there was an article introducing Ishigaki Rin’s Notebook. I first learned about the poet Ishigaki Rin when I was cataloging sheet music at the library, and I’ve thought ever since that she was an amazing person. Many composers have set her poems to music. I checked Wikipedia and saw that her Notebook weren’t listed yet, so I added them.

■I read Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life, a book I borrowed yesterday from a nearby library. It’s a picture book by Maurice Sendak, and I had heard about that book from a friend, but I hadn’t read it yet. I had imagined it to be a picture book for young children, but it turned out to be more than that; it was a fantasy story based on Mother Goose, more suitable for adults. I checked the Wikipedia article, and while there was no entry in the Japanese Wikipedia, there was one in the English Wikipedia, so I translated that part and added it to the Japanese text.

■I photocopied two articles about Wikipedia that appeared in the Asahi Shimbun in October from the library. I wanted to record this information somewhere, so I searched Wikipedia and found a page called “Wikipedia:Press Coverage,” which I then added the information to. This page serves as an archive of press coverage from newspapers, magazines, and websites, and is paired with a “Bibliography of Wikipedia.”

■Last year, I met Ms. S, a Wikipedian from Ghana, at Wikimania in Poland. She recently messaged me on social media asking “How are you?”, so I sent her an update on my life along with some photos. Although she didn’t come to Nairobi Wikimania, I was happy that I was able to travel so close to Ghana from Japan. She had previously sent me photos of her visiting a local coffee market, so I also bought some coffee in Kenya and drank it at home. We’ve only met once, but I feel a strong sense of connection with her because we’re both Wikimedians.

■If you subscribe to the Wikimedia Foundation’s blog Diff, you’ll receive email notifications about new articles. I selected a few that caught my attention and posted the links to the Facebook group “Diff Japanese Edition Club.” Previously, I only shared Japanese articles, but with the advancements in automatic translation, I’ve recently started sharing articles in other languages ​​as well. Today, I shared articles about Wikipedia Town in Japan, Wikimedia Commons in Argentina, the CEE meeting in Greece, and language preservation efforts in Indonesia. The group currently has 116 members, half of whom are from overseas.

Today, I spent the whole day just going to the library, but through Wikimedia Projects, I was able to interact with people from all over the world and contemplate the future of our planet. The Yokohama Edit-a-thon that I started last month is still ongoing, and there’s also Wikipedia Asian Month in November, so I’m looking forward to participating in that as well.